Season 6 of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare started today and boy oh boy, do I think I’ve caught onto something.
With each new season, at least two new weapons have been added to the game that can be unlocked either by completing in-game challenges or by grinding that season’s new battle pass. Guns like the Grau, Bruen, FiNN, AN-94, Fennec, and many more have been introduced to the game post-launch using this system.
But…have you noticed anything off about the guns that have been added to the game?
Now yes, these clips are from streamers that play this game for an average of 8-10 hours a day and get paid very well to do so, but have you noticed the trend? On Day 1 of every new season, we see clip after clip of these guys absolutely obliterating people with the new weapons. Remember a month ago when the FiNN was added?
Don’t get me wrong; TeePee is a beast and a former Call of Duty World Champion. But that gun just melted through every single person he shot at regardless of the distance. And for about a week, everyone used it. You couldn’t go into a single multiplayer game without getting mowed down by people trying to upgrade the gun. Almost every streamer I watched was using the gun as their mid to long range weapon of choice. And then a week later, everyone reverted back to their old standby (the Kilo, the Grau, the Bruen, the M4, etc).
And I feel like we’ve had the same thing happen over and over as each season has dropped. We saw it with the AN-94, the Fennec, the CR-56 AMAX, etc. These guns absolutely shred in the first week or so of their debut and then slowly fade away like
Why is that? Is it because it takes a week to determine whether these guns are the new meta? Is it because we are all so drawn to something new and shiny that we ignore the weapons that have guaranteed us victory for the last few months?
Or, is it because that’s exactly how Infinity Ward wants it to work?
Track with me here, we already know this studio only cares about one thing: money. I mean, just look at their track record for the last year. Do you notice how in the skins in the store are WAY better than any of the skins they release in the battle pass? They released a shitty looking knockoff of Ghost in the Season 2 Battle Pass only to drop the original skins from MW2 in the item shop weeks later. Do you notice how none of the weapon skins in the base game look good, but the blueprints in the store look badass and cost $10-15 each AND only go to one specific weapon?
What about the Grau and the Bruen? For months those guns were incredibly overpowered in Warzone and every single member of the CoD community begged Infinity Ward to nerf them. And they did…after multiple weapon blueprints had been cycled through the store.
So here’s my theory: for the first week or so of each new season, Infinity Ward is intentionally overpowering the new guns released in the game and then turning them back down shortly after without telling anyone in patch notes. Why would they do this? To sell more battle passes and maximize profit during the hype of a new season.
Watch the TimTheTatman clip again; even the MP5 when it was broken didn’t shred that fast in standard multiplayer. And speaking of the MP5, remember that days before CDL Champs (a partnered esports league with a $4.6M prize pool) Infinity Ward made a change to the ADS of the gun without mentioning it in the patch notes. So they’ve done this type of stuff before, it just hasn’t always been noticed.
I have no stats to prove this theory and I may be dead wrong, but think about it this week while you grind the new AS VAL and SP-R208. Those guns may be extremely powerful over the next few days and then next week, poof. You’ll start getting shredded by the ole standbys.
One thing I know for certain though just from watching Twitter during the alpha: we will not be getting this level of shadiness from Treyarch. That company actually cares about weapon balance and player feedback. I cannot fucking wait for Black Ops Cold War.
