Cod Modern Warfare 2 Battle Pass

[Carlos Beirise]

Illjust put it out there up front. I don't play a lot of videogames, but my partner and I wanted a nostalgic hit, so we bought the new Call of Duty game. It's really fun! The multiplayer is really exciting (Even if I hate that one death and wait for respawn mode on the trench map), and we've been enjoying it the last couple of days.

However...there's one thing I just don't understand. It's the "Battle Pass". I don't think I've ever played a "Live service" game before, but I understand they're all over these types of games. But it seems like at every avenue, there's a meter filling up, or we're unlocking baubles for our guns, or we're completing quests.

I'm no stranger to videogames historically, but all this is new to me. Please can someone explain all this, what looks very predatory, concept? Please dumb it down as much as you can, because I'm utterly clueless.

@sombre: While it might seem like a predatory system, it's actually a step to be less predatory since regulators were starting to wise up to how bad loot boxes were, whereas players tend to not like the "buy what you want from the store with Michael Transactions" style of monetisation.

The easiest way to explain the general gist of Battle Passes is actually CoD. Back when Call of Duty came up with leveling and prestiging, it was somewhat of a revolutionary concept for multiplayer games. Instead of the game relying on the core gameplay loop being fun, you earned stuff from just playing the game so it felt like there was permanent progress. Battle Passes are this, but brought to the modern live game ecosystem. You pay for a season's Battle Pass and it gives you an XP track, where you unlock cosmetics related to the theme of the Season and the more you play and achieve goals, the more you unlock.

The cool thing about Battle Passes is that it gives you a fun incentive for playing and coming back to the game. The flipside is the question of "what happens when the season is over?". Different companies have solutions that range from shitty to actually fair to the players. One: Do you lose your battle pass? Some games like Halo let you keep grinding even if the Season is over, others cut you off immediately so you HAVE to play it as much as you can to unlock everything. Two: If you missed a season, have you missed the cosmetics completely? For a lot of games the answer is yes, because bringing back old cosmetics pisses of the people who already own them. For others, they come back to the store from time to time.

But really, don't think of it as something you have to buy. If there are cosmetics that would seem cool to you in the Battle Pass and you feel like you want to play, go ahead and buy it. If not, don't. You're playing with your partner, so there's no peer pressure to get the coolest possible cosmetics anyway. Just do what makes you happy.

It's pretty simple. If you like a game enough to pay a little bit of extra money for in-game content, the battle passes is a way to do that without breaking the bank buying store cosmetics and other items. However, these days, developers like Bungie will also lock story content and progression behind battle passes, so if you care enough about the lore of a game, you'd have to pay to see how the story advances. Call of Duty for example now has battle pass tiers like the "Black Cell", and they try to encourage players to pay for the most expensive version instead of the basic eleven dollar one.

But I will say when it comes to CoD, one of the good things is that you can earn in-game currency by playing through the battle pass, and save up enough to buy the next one without spending any more money. This is what I've been doing for years since the release of the Modern Warfare remake. For example, I recently got the last CoD MWII battle pass, because the character Spawn is featured, and I'm a fan of that series. But given how gross MWIII turned out to be, I might be done with CoD, at least for a while. We'll see...

With 22 days left in the Season One Call of Duty: Modern Warfare battle pass, players still have a chance to collect all the rewards and rank up before the global rank reset and the launch of Season Two. Since unlocking the battle pass I've been freaking cranked. But now I've completed it. 100 rewards unlocked and collected. What now?

Frankly, all that war has exhausted me. It got to the point where I was just grinding to rank 155 from 154 and battle pass level 100 from 99 by only playing Infected. I need a well-earned vacation from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. So last night I strolled back into the colorful and constantly changing world of Fortnite, apparently refreshed after that ominous black hole.

There are still things to do in Fortnite, especially since I haven't played the game since Chapter 1, Season I don't remember. There are bus stops to visit, food trucks to visit and a Metaverse to look forward to. So for the next 22 days, I'll be jumping around Fortnite, not building anything and hoping I don't get merc'd before the top 25 at least.

Look, I enjoy playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare but without the dangling carrots of ranking up and obtaining battle pass rewards (and if my friends aren't online for team matches where we can just screw around and run over people in Ground War), then some of the excitement has been drained. I enjoyed the frequent Mosh Pit updates and game mode changes (and bundles to help fight the Australia bushfire), but I have nothing to grind for anymore (at least until Season Two).

Meanwhile, I'm currently at level eight in Fortnite. I'm yet to uncover the entire map. I still am absolutely terrible at building things on the run (yet, routinely finish in the top ten). But since playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare so much, I have noticed some differences in how I play Fortnite now. I actually rack up some kills alongside my sneaky sneaky methodology of hitting the top ten.

My aim has gotten better, as far as moving and firing. Usually I just sit and wait for the circle to close and I'm in the top ten and try to survive til the top two, let them all kill each other. But I've been more aggressive. The constant attack of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has changed my methodology. This has made Fortnite more interesting and engaging for me, I'm not just waiting out the clock anymore.

While past Call of Duty games have featured a season pass and paid map DLC, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will instead employ a battle pass system, much like the one popularized by Epic's hit battle royale shooter, Fortnite. Fans are still waiting for the first battle pass to arrive, but according to Activision, it'll be ready to go next month.

During its latest quarterly earnings call, Activision revealed that Modern Warfare's first season will kick off sometime in December 2019. The company didn't pin down an exact date, but it did note that the December time frame is "later than planned." Modern Warfare released on October 25.

Activision has previously shared a few details on how the new battle pass system will work. There will be both Free and Premium streams of content to earn; the former will let you unlock anything that has an impact on gameplay, such as weapons and attachments, while the latter will only feature vanity items like cosmetics. Players will also be able to earn COD Points with the battle pass.

In the meantime, Activision is rolling out some free new content for the game later this week. Beginning Friday, November 8, players will have access to a new multiplayer map (Shoot House), a new Ground War map (Krovnik Farmland), and another game mode, Hardpoint.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare launched on PS4, Xbox One, and PC and quickly became PS4's best-selling game of the month in the US. GameSpot awarded the title a 7/10 in our Call of Duty: Modern Warfare review. Critic Kallie Plagge wrote, "The pitfalls of Spec Ops don't detract from what Modern Warfare does well. Realism mode is an excellent addition to the slate, and although not all the new multiplayer modes are great, Gunfight and the Night Vision playlist are refreshing standouts."

Thermometers are peaking, birds are chirping, and the air outside is hot and thick. You know what that means, folks, a new season (of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) is here, and it's bringing all sorts of changes (to the maps and gameplay of the hit Activision-published FPS) with it. Bad news, though: If you've got dreams of completing Modern Warfare 2's season 4 battle pass, you've got about two fewer weeks than you had last season to do it. Chop chop.

MW2's season 4 patch dropped yesterday, introducing, well, too much to go through bit-by-bit. I'll link the full notes below, but the stuff that leaps out at me is the new maps, new operators, and the changes to the game's extraction shooter DMZ mode. Oh, and the fact that this season will only last 48 days, a big drop from the 63 days in season 3. That does mean you'll get to the new content in the mid-season update (and the next season) a little sooner, but you'll have to scurry if you wanna unlock everything in the battle pass.

We're also getting new operator skins, just in time to replace the ones that got yanked from Modern Warfare 2 after a streamer one of them was based on couldn't help but say some incredibly dense stuff that many criticised as anti-LGBTQ+. Season 4 adds Nikto (hey, that means "No one" in Russian!) a former FSB agent who fears nothing and loves violence; Ana Vega, a special forces lady with a tragic past and a big gun; and yet another Blackcell guy, who looks like one of those villains from the start of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

DMZ has been reset to kick off season 4, so kiss goodbye to your contraband weapons and completed missions. Still, it's justified (kind of) by the new features being bolted onto the mode in this patch. You can now tend to a forward operating base, which you'll be able to upgrade by completing missions which will give you passive advantages in the field (new insured weapon slots and the like).

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