The beta of Call of Duty: Vanguard has now been running for almost 4 days and revealed the current weaknesses of the new CoD. MeinMMO summarizes players’ opinions and highlights the 3 biggest issues that the developers have already responded to.
What’s going on? The new Call of Duty: Vanguard is set to release on November 5 and is currently testing important aspects of the shooter in a multiplayer beta with the community. The developers at Sledgehammer Games are explicitly asking for constructive feedback and have received a lot of responses.
MeinMMO is looking at player reactions and showing which problems have already been specifically addressed by the developers.
Beta with 3 significant issues – visibility, spawns, and audio
What is the issue with visibility? Even in the alpha, visibility of enemies was a problem. However, the Vanguard makers have adjusted a few graphic sliders, and foes are now much easier to see. The visibility issues have not completely disappeared, but they have shifted somewhat.
Enemies now stand out much better from their surroundings, but once you open fire, it is the effects of the weapon or bullets that “fog” your vision. On the one hand, there are strong, billowing muzzle gases that create a haze between you and the enemy with every shot, and on the other hand, there are distortion effects that impair your field of view.
We are embedding a screenshot from an English video by CoD expert “TheXclsuiveAce” to illustrate the problem:
The fog in the scene comes from a stun grenade, but the distortion of the enemy comes from the firing weapon, a small automatic pistol. The effect is so intense that it looks like the enemy is bending at the torso to dodge the bullet.
What is the issue with spawns? When you go down, the game respawns you at a more or less random location on the map. An optimal spawn point is generally defined by 3 points:
- Not directly in the line of sight of an enemy
- Close to the action so you don’t have to run forever
- You can roughly estimate where the enemy spawns are from your own spawn
The beta showed some weaknesses in all 3 points. Sometimes players had to run for ages on the large maps to rejoin the fight, and other times they appeared directly in the crosshairs of an armed enemy. These large fluctuations further lead to unpredictable spawns.
Here are some comments from players who provided feedback to the developers on Twitter (via Twitter.com):
- @deadspace4932: “The spawn logic is completely broken.”
- @slackalot: “Red Star patrol spawns are so broken. When you spawn, you can wait there for a minute and the entire enemy team spawns right in front of you.”
- @Razki_: “Fix the spawns, they are so bad right now.”
What is the issue with audio? The audio outputs seem very underdeveloped for some players. Some players reference the footstep and weapon sounds of friends and foes, making it difficult to discern the direction from which the sounds are coming.
Others criticize the overall quality of the audio effects. For example, the transitions between different audio areas are very abrupt. Just a small step determines whether your weapon sounds like you are indoors or firing outside.
Here, the developers received a lot of feedback under their Twitter post as well:
- @Ciervo78: “I can’t believe that the footstep sounds and the direction from which gunfire comes are better heard in Cold War and Modern Warfare.”
- @YesImVenom: “Improve the overall audio quality.”
- @GamerWinner55: “Fix the audio quality, it’s way too low. I can’t hear enemy footsteps, and when I do, they’re already right next to me.”
From the comments about audio, however, two directions can be inferred from the feedback. Many are not satisfied with the overall audio quality, but some players appreciate the quiet footstep sounds as they support an aggressive playstyle. This is also related to a perk from earlier CoDs – Dead Silence. Modern Warfare from 2019 and Vanguard have this perk only as a limited field upgrade.
Developers bring hotfixes for spawns and updates for audio and visibility
What do the developers say about it? The 3 points listed here appear most frequently in the feedback comments, and the developers have already responded to them:
Tweet translation: “We are aware of the spawn issues in ‘Patrol’ and are bringing a fix to adjust the spawn logic.”
Over the course of the weekend, several minor updates were made to address spawn issues or change the playlist. The map “Hotel Royale” even briefly disappeared completely from a playlist due to issues with the spawn system.
The developers also had a brief note regarding visibility and audio:
We’re aware there is a significant amount of discussion around player visibility and audio mixing. Stay tuned as we will address some of our planned updates later this week.
— Sledgehammer Games (@SHGames) September 11, 2021
Tweet translation: “We are aware that there is a lot of discussion about player visibility and audio mixing. We will address the issues with our planned updates later this week.”
How much the developers can adjust before the start of the second beta weekend is currently unknown. The release of Vanguard is still just under 2 months away, and the developers want to primarily use the beta for player feedback, from which there is already plenty available.
If you want to share your thoughts with the developers, you can leave your feedback on the Sledgehammer Games Twitter account, preferably in English.
If you haven’t had a chance to test the beta yet, you can find all the dates for the open beta on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC here: CoD Vanguard: Open beta for everyone runs this weekend – release, download, dates
The 3 issues listed here are likely the biggest challenges the developers will tackle in the coming days. But they are by no means all of them. Many are already complaining about matchmaking, having problems with the new movement, or complaining about the maps or time-to-kill.
In the end, only the developers have the complete overview of which points are the most important and which points the CoD creators actually want to work on – movement and time-to-kill.
You are welcome to leave your feedback with us in the comments. If you have played the beta – what was your impression of the first hours in the game?
If you prefer to read more about the details of multiplayer, check here: CoD Vanguard: All information about multiplayer – maps, modes, and gameplay
