Call of Duty: Warzone gets its content updates and hotfixes at a brisk pace, and with how many weapons, items, and gadgets there are in the game, sometimes it's easy to miss some of the changes that are being made in the grand scheme of things. One of these changes seems to have been made with the game's latest update, in particular.
Namely, players who had gotten used to how Call of Duty: Warzone handled its implementation of armor plating and the way they drop from killed players may be in for a surprise. The community has now discovered that, in the process of updating how satchels work, developers also seem to have reduced the overall number of available armor plating in any given match.
According to Reddit user throwawaybones11, the game's armor plating system has been fundamentally changed with the new COD: Warzone Season 2 Reloaded content update. Whereas killed players would previously drop 8 fresh armor plates and a satchel, counting for 16 armor plates in total (if the player picking them up didn't already have a satchel), plating is now included in the satchel itself, meaning that there are generally fewer armor plates available for players to pick up.
Following the update, armor platings now drop as part of the satchel, and players can get a maximum of 8 plates from a player they had killed. Further, a player with 6 plates can only take up to 2 extras from the dropped satchel, leaving the rest for other players to pick up. This isn't necessarily set in stone, as Raven now offers Warzone balancing polls so that the community can decide what it wants out of the game.
The community generally agrees that the change makes sense, but the fact is that there's simply less armor for players to manage in a Warzone match. Arguably, the original behavior was similar to an old Call of Duty: Warzone armor plate bug that allowed players to stack armor over the designated cap, and this is merely a fix that would've been deployed sooner or later. Still, it does seem to come as a bit of a shock.
Raven Software has been rather busy over the past few days and weeks. Aside from deploying a variety of gameplay tweaks and fixes, such as the armor plating change, and a whole new season's worth of content, the studio also pushed for a massive Call of Duty: Warzone ban wave, getting rid of almost 100,000 cheaters in one fell swoop. This, along with changes to how plating works, should make for a fresher and fairer gameplay experience.
Call of Duty: Warzone is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.