My Opinion on the Change to Competitive Maps

It has just been announced that a major change was made to the map rotation in competitive Call of Duty. The map changes will take effect immediately and will be implemented at the 2015 Call of Duty Championship.

Change 1: Bio Lab Capture the Flag will be replaced by Drift Capture the Flag

Change 2: Recovery Search and Destroy will be replaced by Drift Search and Destroy

When it comes to Capture the Flag, many people have a problem with Ascend. The map has always had a spawn issue, making it difficult for teams to run to the other teams base without forcing the opponent to spawn in their own base. This map hasn’t been as much of a problem as of late, probably due to a spawn change in the last game patch.

Instead, Bio Lab CTF has been eliminated. Bio Lab is a problem map due to the uneven sides. The team spawning at the top of the map, Blue, has a much easier time capturing the flag. Of course, two sides are played, giving both teams equal opportunities. There also seems to be a pretty big spawn issue with Bio Lab though.

Now we have Drift, a Havoc DLC map. That means that in order to play with a full competitive map set, all players must download the extra DLC content. As far as I am aware, this is the first time a DLC map has been added to competitive. Of course, the players attending Call of Duty Championship will be competing for a share of a million dollar prize pool, so $15 should mean nothing to them! In fact, it’s an investment that MUST be made in order to have a fair chance at the tournament.

I never once thought that Recovery SnD would be taken out of rotation. I personally have always enjoyed playing the map, but can see the disparity between the two sides of the map. If I were to chosen a map to be eliminated, I would probably have chosen Terrace or Riot. Terrace literally has 6+ different levels. It can be difficult to play because of it’s complexity, which doesn’t make it all that fun in my opinion. Riot is decent, but has 3 main, long-range lanes. I guess it just doesn’t fit my play style.

And once again, we have Drift replacing Recovery. Most people have never played competitive on this map before, so it will take some time to get used to. Strategies will evolve, just as they always do at the start of something new.

https://twitter.com/ParasiteCoD/status/575093292351815680

https://twitter.com/Drift0r/status/575093907760906240

Change can be good though, so maybe this map change will be good for competitive Call of Duty.