How Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Can Fix Shields and Launchers
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is currently one of the best multiplayer first person shooters available, and its staggering popularity is testament to that fact. With a multitude of modes, including the ever-popular battle royale Warzone, Call of Duty has a massive playerbase and plenty of dedicated fans, perhaps more now than ever before. That's not to say that the game is perfect, though, as there are still changes that need to happen to bring the game into its best form.
To reward fans and keep them playing, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has continually added new content, balancing changes, and bug fixes, but there are a few weapons that are still quite annoying to deal with in multiplayer. Both rocket launchers and riot shields have some serious balancing issues that have yet to be addressed by the developers, and even worse, they are so unbalanced that they can operate totally outside the otherwise well-crafted loop of FPS gameplay.
Riot shields are probably the worst offenders when it comes to game balancing. It's not that they are particularly strong; in fact, it can be quite difficulty to get the kills necessary to unlock all the skins for the riot shield. What makes riot shields so offensive is that they completely alter the normal pace of gameplay and have relatively few counters compared to any other weapon in the game. When a player comes across a crouching enemy shield user, no matter how many bullets they pepper the shield with, there is no way to get through. The only way to damage a shield user is with explosives like thermites, but many shield users equip the EOD perk, making them practically immune to that tactic.
Especially now that secondary weapons like the Renetti pistol can go toe to toe with some of Modern Warfare's primary weapons, shields are much more common as a primary. In a game that is all about fast-paced tactics and reflex-driven gunfights, shields completely stop the flow of gameplay. No matter how overpowered the enemy's weapon is, it should always come down to a gunfight because even with a weaker gun, a skilled player can still win. However, once their explosive has been tossed out, a player faced with a shield user has no option but to leave, wait for the shield user to move (which is usually a death sentence) or give in and accept an inevitable, unblockable, unavoidable melee attack.
Shield users on objective game modes are especially heinous, able to cower in a corner behind their immovable fortresses and capture the objective while the other team is left with almost no tactical solution. A shield user without EOD is not too terrible, and even the primary combined with the extremely strong perk can be stopped with a semtex or a clever flank, but the fact remains that shields totally upend everyone else's gameplay and should be fixed.
Rocket launchers are slightly less of a problem. On large maps, they tend to be just a useful utility for taking out killstreaks, equipment, or the very occasional cluster of players. However, on some objective game modes and especially on smaller maps, they can upend the well-balanced shootouts of normal gameplay almost as severely as shields do. The bread and butter of Modern Warfare is skill-based gunfights. With a rocket launcher, fair gunfights go out the window. When a launcher and a rifle meet each other face to face, the player using the launcher can completely miss, die first, and will still kill the rifle user with splash damage.
In a one-on-one, launchers negate the need to even win the gunfight. Launchers should remain as a valuable tool for dealing with the dreaded Wheelson or VTOL, but clearing a point of four enemies in a daring dash of blazing gunfire and snap-headshots doesn't carry the same sense of accomplishment when any player with an RPG-7 can do the same thing with one button. Needless to say, anyone who has played a match on shipment in which half the players were using rocket launchers knows a kind of suffering that has no home in a game that should be fun.
There are a couple of very simple fixes for shields. At first, it might seem simplest just to remove shields from the game, but that is very unrealistic and would ruin the fun for those shield users who are genuinely trying to help their team and earn some objective points. If they were better balanced, they would have the potential to shake up normal gameplay and make it more interesting, rather than totally ruin the natural flow. The best fix for shields is just giving them a set durability. An explosion or a full extended magazine of high-caliber bullets should break a riot shield and leave its user to rely on their secondary. That would allow shields to still be viable, but also provide a fair way to counter them with the right equipment and tactics.
Rocket launchers are a lot more difficult to fix. They are genuinely useful utility items, and there is no easy way to make them excel in that role but less viable against players. Making them slower to aim and carry might do a lot to prevent all the terrifying jumping RPG-7 shots from around corners, but it wouldn't really fix the issue of being able to ignore the normal skill requirements of a gunfight. With a bit less splash damage against human targets, they would be a lot less frustrating, but also a lot less realistic. That said, Modern Warfare is not a game that typically survives on hardcore realism.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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