Call of Duty season is finally here, bringing with it a slew of early opinions about the new game on its first day of full release.
Modern Warfare is an important game for CoD esports since it’ll be the first game played in the new Call of Duty League, so the eyes of the competitive community are on this title—and early scrutiny is here.
One of the main complaints on day one is about the game’s map design. A lot of the maps are larger than CoD players are used to and many forgo the traditional three-lane design for a more vertical layout with numerous lines of sight on important areas.
Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag is a particularly trusted voice in the Call of Duty world, both because of his long history as a pro player and now his new role as owner and CEO of 100 Thieves. He expressed his displeasure in a big way both on his stream and on Twitter during the game’s first night.
“They made a game that caters to casual players but they’re hosting a league where teams paid $25 million for competitive,” Nadeshot said while playing the new game early this morning. “It just shows that Activision and the devs aren’t synced up. I mean, I’m curious to see what happens. There could be four or five of these maps that work for competitive, maybe.”
Nadeshot also tweeted that “gunplay on Modern Warfare is great but the maps are horrendous,” and many players on Reddit agreed with his sentiments. A post about his tweet is filled with replies bashing the game’s map design.
Nadeshot is in a unique position to voice his opinion without consequence because 100 Thieves don’t own a team in the CoD League. But just watching the streams of any players already confirmed to be in the league will bring cause for concern about the state of the maps and how they’ll work for competitive play.
Obviously, the large 10-vs-10 maps that players encounter in Quick Play will most likely be quite different from the curated maps and modes that the league will have. But the early reaction to how the maps feel on day one is something to keep an eye on.
