After only one weekend of beta testing, the folks at Sledgehammer Games are already taking feedback from fans. One issue that garnered a lot of discussion was spawns. The devs plan to update the community on several concerns, including Operator Visibility, Slide Timing, and Spawn Selection.
Spawns have been a contentious issue for the franchise for a while now. I noticed it the most on Domination. It felt like the spawn system was all over the place. I’m not sure what kind of system they’re using. It didn’t feel like squad spawns we’ve seen in the past. Even when it felt like spawns should flip (the team pushes too far toward the opponent’s home flag), it didn’t always flip spawns like it usually does.
I’d like to see an in-depth dev blog post covering how the spawn system works. That would make it much easier for the community to offer feedback besides “spawns feel terrible.”
I’m sure it’s tough for the developers to get the spawn system to a place where most of the community doesn’t complain. Static spawns lead to trapping. Squad spawns can affect flanking/map flow. There’s no easy answer here, but a dev post covering how it’s supposed to work and its reasoning would be nice.
On Slide Timing, the devs are likely referring to the delay some fans complained about. While Slide canceling returns in Modern Warfare 3, it doesn’t reset Tactical Sprint like in Modern Warfare 2019. Instead, there’s a short delay after the slide animation.
And Operator Visibility should be the easiest one to fix. In the first beta, the blue dot appearing over friendly teammates’ heads can be hard to see when in close firefights. I imagine the devs will make that stand out even more going into the second beta weekend. An outline of teammates when they are in view would be even better. f
We’ll see how the devs tackle these issues this weekend and beyond. We should get a blog post or an announcement of the changes made shortly. I’ll update this post once we hear more.