ESN Editorial: Is Two Better Than One?

As the climax of the Call of Duty season looms near, players and fans alike continue to try to make minor adjustments to the game in order to make it more enjoyable to both play and watch.

Season 1 Playoffs, EU Regionals, and NA Regionals will ultimately lead up to Call of Duty Championships, which is renowned as the biggest event of the year, and will prove which squad has put in the most effort and truly deserves to be crowned as the 2015 champions. But aside from gun tweaks and a few bans on Exo abilities and such, there’s another pressing matter that plagues the community: what game types should be played?

Currently two teams are pitted against each other in a best of five series. The series kicks off with Hardpoint, followed by Search and Destroy, Capture the Flag, Uplink, and then concluded with a deciding Search and Destroy match. It’s also worth noting that CTF and Uplink often vary in the order of game types.

Entering Advanced Warfare, you would have expected the best of five rotation to include two Hardpoints, two Search and Destroys, and one Capture the Flag. But with the addition of Uplink, a new fan favorite across the board, competitive Call of Duty has decided to scratch one of the Hardpoint games to add in Uplink for more variation.

Off the bat, many players and fans were hesitant about adding Uplink into the competitive rotation. But after getting acquainted and finding the appeal of this new gametype, the community accepted Uplink and the new best of five rotation.

A few months go by and we were pleasantly surprised that Uplink was not that was the gametype that was frustrating the players. It was one of the most storied modes in Call of Duty that was the issue plaguing the community: Capture the Flag.

The introduction of the Exo suit resulted in more quick and agile movements among players, causing the game mechanics of the classic gamemode to conflict with the new style of play. On paper it appears as though it would create more excitement in every game mode and every engagement between players; but in Capture the Flag, it does the opposite.

One of the initial problems with Capture the Flag in Advanced Warfare is the spawn system, which ends up propelling the negative effects that the movement has on the gametype. When Team A, clears out Team B and pulls the flag, Team B then spawns out in the middle of the map on the peripheries to prevent spawn killing. Because Team A has Team B’s flag and is on their way back to their base to capture the flag, Team B already has a head start toward Team A’s flag and will be able to grab the flag and create a stalemate.

The ability to move so quickly would, in theory, make you think that the overall quality of gameplay improve and make the entire speed of the game increase. This is what makes the new gamemode of Uplink so successful just a few months into the game; players can dash and jump around the map trying to make the exciting, game-winning play to be the hero for their team.

Capture the Flag has become the opposite type of gamemode, creating stagnant gameplay as players have been able to recover quickly after being slayed by the other team. When it becomes extremely easy to get the other team’s flag and just keep it in your base, it creates long stalemates that keep players protecting their own base and looking to make no progress.

As it has been for many Call of Duty titles before, there has either been two Hardpoints or two Dominations. In my opinion, two Hardpoints is the perfect solution for the best of five rotation.

There are too many issues with Capture the Flag in Advanced Warfare to take the risk of keeping it in best of five rotation and letting the gamemode ruin a team’s chances of winning a monumental tournament.

This issue has become a prevalent debate on Twitter lately, thanks to many of the most popular pro players giving their opinion on it. Here are some tweets and discussion about this issue.

https://twitter.com/NAMELESS/status/568168038022963201

https://twitter.com/OpTic_NaDeSHoT/status/567407167159148545

https://twitter.com/OpTic_Scumper/status/568161265740341248

Nadeshot has recently made a video describing the spawn issues in CTF by drawing out different situations on a white board. It is a very informative video and a great explanation as to why CTF does not work in AW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu8q3OS-A-s