Recently, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare received a massive update that fixed numerous issues in the game. However, not everyone was pleased. A professional player heavily criticized the patch because it apparently ruined an important league match for his team.
This update is about: A few days ago, Modern Warfare received the major Update 1.13. Among other things, it included the new weapon crossbow as well as numerous bug fixes for various issues.
By the way, some changes from Update 1.13 were not communicated in the patch notes: CoD MW: 5 changes from Update 1.13 that were not in the patch notes
Who is criticizing the patch? The criticism now comes from the well-known CoD professional player and two-time world champion Ian “Crimsix” Porter. He is a member of the professional team Dallas Empire, which competes in the CDL (Call of Duty League), the professional league of Call of Duty.
Last weekend, Dallas Empire started the CDL season 2020 with two losses and Crimsix used the official post-match press conference to express his displeasure with the latest Modern Warfare patch.
This is why the patch is causing discontent among the professional team: In short, Crimsix believes the update was probably beneficial for the game itself, but brought significant disadvantages for his team.
As background: The update came just 2 days after the start of the CDL 2020 (on January 24) and brought a lot of adjustments that also impacted the competitive ruleset.
For example, the “Slide Cancel” exploit was fixed, which many professionals used to prepare their weapon faster after a sprint. Furthermore, adjustments were made to the Trophy system and certain weapons, and the field upgrade Dead Silence was nerfed. The headshot multiplier was also reduced.
In general, these changes were also welcomed by the pros, but the timing of the adjustments was heavily criticized. Basically, there was no time to train with the new features before the league’s start event kicked off. This was supposed to be a factor for Dallas Empire as well. Although they had trained very well before, the league start failed with 0-2.
This is what Crimsix said in detail: In the press conference, Crimsix elaborated: “Infinity Ward, you guys release a patch two weeks before an event. I strongly urge you not to play this patch then.”
He then further criticized the patch policy: “This patch fixed everything, but in other e-sports, it’s considered a joke to do what we did. So, Infinity Ward, get your shit together because it’s just annoying.”
However, he then collected himself a bit and explained that not only Infinity Ward is responsible: “I mean, it’s not just Infinity Ward. Every single year, we have a patch before a major event. Three or four times, every single year. That shouldn’t happen.”
Crimsix went on to explain that while he does not solely blame the patch for his team’s performance, it definitely was a factor and hit the team hard. The changes to slide canceling, the trophy system, and the adjustment of the headshot multipliers completely changed the meta and created hundreds of new, strong positions.
For example, before the patch, fast SMG players were encouraged to challenge slower players through head glitches. However, after the patch, that was no longer possible, and the way teams played changed completely.
In conclusion, he criticized that the preparation and work in the pre-season were completely in vain: “It’s just annoying because we probably played the most of all teams here, and that was not even relevant. Thanks again, Infinity Ward.”
The interesting part is: Dallas Empire was allegedly the first team to know about the slide canceling bug and actively integrated this into their strategy. It strongly appears that they had prepared to utilize slide canceling, head glitches with SMGs, or other exploits, and are now angry that it ultimately did not work out.
What do you think about this topic? Does Crimsix have a point, and should the developers give the pros more lead time with new patches, or better align patch times with major events? Or is this just a sore loser whining because he could no longer exploit some mechanics?
