In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the pro players of the “Call of Duty League” are upset with the developers. There was apparently a major change to the spawns in the last patch, yet the pros were once again kept in the dark. They refer to it as a “silent update” and criticize it.
What is going on here? On Twitter, some pros clearly complained about secret adjustments that supposedly recently changed the spawn system in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. However, the changes are said to exist only on the special servers of the “Call of Duty League” (CDL).
The players are upset that no pro was informed about the adjustments.
In recent days, more and more pros have noticed a new behavior of the spawns and are now quite sure that something is different. And they have hardly any kind words for this secret change to one of the most important features.
Secret spawn change drives pros crazy
Who is complaining? Especially 2 pros from the current CDL vented their frustration on Twitter:
- The long-time pro Ian “Crimsix” Porter, who has won the most official CoD tournament victories and currently fights for the franchise “Dallas Empire”
- Trei “Zer0” Morris, who plays for the European team “London Royal Ravens”.
Crimsix said: “Infinity Ward with another one of their notorious, silent spawn patches…”
Shortly after, he followed up. He examined the changes more closely and even found another adjustment at the end of domination rounds:
In the tweets he writes: “I love it when I get ‘Cecot’d’ and have to figure out what they secretly changed. It’s like a puzzle, just in Call of Duty.”
The meme “Cecot’d” refers to Joe Cecot. He is one of the developers at Infinity Ward, who has to bear the blame for some players regarding the lack of patch communication.
With a third tweet, Crimsx then clearly shows how upset he is about the situation. He posted the Cecot meme as a photo and wrote: “It seems that these changes were implemented only on the 60Hz scrim servers of the CDL teams. They are currently messing with us.” On the scrim servers, the teams train between tournaments.
„Zer0“ shares a similar view as Crimsx:
In his tweet, he writes: “We expect the game to be changed annually. But the developers of every game we play decide to change that to 6-month periods – It’s embarrassing. What’s even worse is that it was a silent change. Not a SINGLE PRO PLAYER was aware of it. Embarrassing.”
In another tweet he provided an example of the new spawns during a match against the team “Paris Legion”:
He commented on the video with “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life before” and is pointing out that the spawns definitely behave differently for him than they normally do.
Secret change is an unannounced rule adjustment
Why is this a problem? In the CDL, the pros play 3 different game modes:
- Domination – There are 3 fixed flags on the map. The team that holds more flags for longer wins.
- Hardpoint – A rotating flag on the map. Points are only awarded for a team if a player stands on the active flag point.
- Search & Destroy – One team attacks, one defends. No respawns.
In the modes Domination and Hardpoint, the spawns play a significant role in team tactics. It is part of being a really good player to anticipate where the opponents and your own team are going to respawn from the current match situation. In Modern Warfare, this has already been difficult. One pro referred to it a few months ago as “the most awful spawn system I’ve ever played”.
And although it is indeed considered very difficult to predict how the spawns work in CoD MW 2019, the pro teams have adapted to it over the 6 months since release and have adjusted their tactics accordingly. One of the teams even used the “broken” spawns in a training match to launch a strong attack via team wipe.
But with the change, this developed “feeling” for the spawns has become obsolete. Even if normal players might not have noticed these adjustments, for the pros, a change in the spawn is a big deal. Only the fact that these changes were introduced secretly seems to upset the pros even more.
Normal players likely won’t feel the effects
Does this affect me as well? According to Crimsix’s statements, these changes only occurred on the special CDL servers.
On these servers, the top players of CoD play their training matches and tournaments. The netcode that handles the connection between the match participants offers the pros a 60Hz connection for custom games and competitions. Normal clans and competitors who organize their games are stuck with a 12Hz connection.
This rather minor change to the spawn system would likely have gone unnoticed by regular players. It often happens that CoD MW 2019 spawns an enemy behind the players. But for the pros, Call of Duty is their job, and they deal with exactly these kinds of details every day.
Since release, important changes have been missing from the patch notes from time to time. At the start of Season 3 alone, there were 7 secret changes.
What do you think about the incomplete patch notes? Annoying, or is it the developers’ right to keep some of their work from the community?
