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Sledgehammer Games Is Saving Call of Duty: Vanguard and Treyarch and Infinity Ward Should Take Note


Fixing Issues Outside of Bugs 5
Credit: Activision

Call of Duty: Vanguard is here, and the game has changed a lot since its alpha. Every Call of Duty changes over time, of course, but Vanguard has changed a lot and been built specifically for gamers in ways Call of Duty games aren't usually. Sledgehammer Games continues to demonstrate a willingness to listen to the community more than any other Call of Duty developer. So, in this article, we'll explain how Sledgehammer Games is saving Call of Duty: Vanguard and why Treyarch and Infinity Ward should take note.

Fixing Issues Outside of Bugs

Fixing Issues Outside of Bugs
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Credit: Activision

In Modern Warfare (2019), for example, footstep audio continues to be a problem. It's just too easy to hear people stomping around, encouraging a slow, campy playstyle where you're constantly listening for footsteps at every opportunity. This is a problem years later. It's not a bug, but it's a design decision almost nobody likes.

Sledgehammer Games has completely rebalanced Vanguard's audio, they've overhauled spawns across maps and modes, they've changed and updated perks from Modern Warfare (2019), and they've addressed visibility issues players have had with things like muzzle flash, smoke, and weather effects. They've done all this at the request of fans.

Related: Call of Duty: Vanguard Got a Huge New Update Overhauling Spawns

In a sense, this might sound like the simple job of a developer: to update their game and make it the best product it can be. That's true. But developers often have better things to do with their time than to adjust systems in a game that work when they have to focus on their next project as well as support their last project.

In Modern Warfare (2019), the game came out, and it really never changed that much. The reception many of its systems or maps had at the time and have now never influenced the devs to make a change or work on an update to address the concerns of gamers. Sledgehammer does.

Giving Players New Features They Actually Want

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Credit: Activision

In Modern Warfare (2019), for example, often the game's most beloved playlist, Shoot the Ship, would get removed from circulation. Rust, the other most popular small map in the game, oftentimes didn't (and doesn't) have a dedicated playlist. In Black Ops Cold War, the 12v12 Mosh Pit comes and goes, and you're limited in terms of what maps and modes you can play 12v12.

Related: A New Era of Call of Duty Is Coming: CoD 2.0 Explained

However, Call of Duty fans are very clear: They love small maps, or bigger maps with lots of players, and more importantly, they want easy access to that kind of intense, action-packed experience at all times with a direct mode they can play. Vanguard introduced Combat Pacing to deal with this phenomenon, actually giving players what they want, giving them the option to pack lots of players onto a map while providing small map playlists.

Players love customization, too, and giving players options to customize their operators, more ways to adjust how their gun performs or how it looks, these are all popular additions in Vanguard. Even for all those who miss operators tied to teams, many love how they can use their favorite operator every game. Same with the expanded gunsmith system. Sure, balance issues with so many attachments are a pain, but players like customizing their weapons in all kinds of ways.

Maps in Call of Duty: Vanguard

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In Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare (2019), both games launched with relatively small rosters of maps with many looking for more. In Modern Warfare (2019)'s case, most new maps were disliked, and in Cold War, fans complained about the number of remade maps vs. entirely new maps.

Related: Ex PlayStation Boss Says No Call of Duty Xbox Exclusivity, But He's Wrong

Vanguard launched with tons of maps, and not just remastered maps, new maps. Plus, more maps have continually been added to the game since launch. Vanguard directly responded to fans' dissatisfaction with the launches of the previous two Call of Duty games.

Plus, new maps in Vanguard aren't widely disliked like many of the maps in Modern Warfare (2019). They take a bit more inspiration from the map design in Cold War, opting for more defined lanes, while generally being a bit larger and truly encompassing a wide variety of environments.

Sledgehammer Does What Infinity Ward and Treyarch Don't

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Infinity Ward is the studio that innovates. They push the series forward, the engine forward, and they set the tone for the next few Call of Duty games whenever Infinity Ward releases a game. Accordingly, Infinity Ward Call of Duty games are some of the most beloved and most hated.

Related: Why Call of Duty: Vanguard Failed: Vanguard's Low Sales and Poor Performance Explained

The studio takes risks and makes huge, new changes that players didn't ask for and might look at with suspicion first but later come to love. They also take the series in directions players don't want, and they struggle with balancing multiplayer and designing maps in recent games.

Treyarch is known for more polish and better balance; they tend to iterate on whatever Infinity Ward did in their last game, folding in those new elements and adding in some of their own. Treyarch games tend to play more smoothly than Infinity Ward Call of Duty games, but they're less exciting.

Sledgehammer straddles the middle between the two. They tend to take more risks and upend the traditional formula more than Treyarch does, but they are nowhere near as innovative as Infinity Ward. They also tend to listen to their community and polish their games up like Treyarch, but their games aren't as balanced, stable, and smooth as Treyarch games.

Related: Top Changes Fans Want in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022)

Both Infinity Ward and Treyarch could take some cues from Sledgehammer, listening to their communities more and knowing when to change things up and what to keep the same.

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