With the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Alpha out of the way, fans can now look back at all the action and voice their opinions. While many enjoyed the new game modes, thrilling maps, and new weapons, there is a large section of the community who have a concern. Miami and maps of a similar size may be too big for classic Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War 6v6 scenarios.
This is an issue that appeared in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare as some of the new Black Ops Cold War maps were simply too big to be fun. Instead of dodging bullets and having epic gunfights, players spent their time hunting for enemies only to loop the entire map without an encounter. While this does not mean these are bad maps, it does mean that Treyarch needs to rethink what it is doing with battles at a larger scale.
While a larger map can often be seen as an opportunity for versatile battles, early looks into Black Ops Cold War bring back a fan concern of maps being too big. Hours of gameplay spent on maps that are too large can result in fans losing XP and simply wasting their time, especially in a game where XP rewards are directly tied to kills and objective time. While a larger map can be great in theory, it usually has a few extra conditions that need to be paid attention too.
Fan Reception to Miami
Miami is a bright city with active neon lights, large beaches, and interwoven buildings making it a versatile map. When first described, many players thought it may be a replacement for Plaza from Black Ops 2, serving as a large dance club party scene for two teams to battle it out on.
The map itself is divided between several large buildings, bustling streets, and a large beachfront area. Most of the action is expected along the streets of the city itself which has cars positioned for cover, explosive damage on the surrounding builds, and with the neon lighting set up an epic combat scene. The buildings can provide alternate breach points on the street while objectives are easily placed at equal parts throughout the map. In theory, this would be a map that would prioritize close-combat situations, funnel players into street battles, and grants several fall back positions in the way of building placements.
Instead, players who queued into Miami were met with a fairly different experience. Due to the size of the map itself, finding another player quickly became a time-consuming task. As one player weaves into a building, another weaves out in an endless chase of cat and mouse. The epic street fights resulting in short and sporadic confrontations, and the buildings were ignored for the large part of many player's games.
Streamers commented on the pure size of the map with one streamer even falling asleep due to the lack of action. While the game mode did see some activity in the more objective-based sessions, any fan of Team Deathmatch realized that Miami turned into a waiting game. The size of the map means that in 6v6 situations players are just not encountering each other, and it was not long into the Alpha that fans started using the in-game map voting feature to skip any operations in Miami.
The Joys of Shoot the Ship
One of the most requested map playlists in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is Shoot the Ship. This playlist is a combined multi-game mode rotation of the two maps Shipment and Shoothouse. Many fans love these two maps, and the reason they love them is on the same vein as the reason that Miami is way too big for Black Ops Cold War's players.
It boils down to action versus effort. In Shipment, players have to walk maybe three steps before finding an enemy to shoot at. Shipment is a very small map, which means players are constantly fighting and running in a frantic race of non-stop action. Meanwhile, Shoothouse provides a rather standard three-lane map set up with players fighting across a smallish battlefield.
The main virtues of both maps revolve around the fact that enemies are easy to find and the maps are simple to learn. It only takes one or two rounds before any fan knows their way around Shipment, and maybe three or four for Shoothouse. There is a charm in the simplicity and directness of the map that allows players to craft their own aggressive, or not aggressive, strategies for dealing with enemies.
Maps Need Balance
Treyarch needs to take the lessons from Shipment and Shoothouse and apply it to their own maps. While having a larger map is not inherently a bad thing, the developers need to make sure that there are enough players involved on the map to provide the action that fans are looking for. If the needs of the community are not met by the map, despite its carefully designed properties, then most fans are simply going to skip it.
With Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War showcasing larger and bigger battles, fans start to get concerned over losing the value in a smaller setting. Close-knit combat scenarios are what make Call of Duty a defined series. Although the bigger battles do have "epic moment" defining qualities, the community is looking for a much smaller reaction.
This does not mean that big maps are bad and most negative feedback could be solved by simply increasing the map's population; it just means the developers should consider other factors. Even the most epic and well-defined map of the entire series is not worth much if players are going out of their way to skip it.
Every Call of Duty game has a map that the community defines as "too big" from Modern Warfare's Aniyah Palace to now Black Ops Cold War's Miami large map. The question that now resides in many fan's minds is: will the community be forced to play them in small-map game modes.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is set to release on November 13th for PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X.