Has Crossplay Been Good or Bad for Call of Duty?

A topic that I've seen reappear a lot in the Call of Duty community recently is Crossplay and whether or not it has a net positive or negative impact on the franchise. Today, I wanted to share my thoughts on the pros and cons of Cross-Platform and Cross-Input play as well as some feedback on how I feel it could be refined going forward. What are your thoughts on Crossplay in CoD? Do you you think it's good or bad for the franchise overall?



0:00 Intro
0:57 Cross-Platform Pros
2:35 Cross-Platform Cons
5:45 Potential Solution(s)
7:14 Cross-Input Pros
8:22 Cross-Input Cons
11:22 Potential Solution(S)
13:22 Wrap Up

[throwbackglitcher]

Disbanding lobbies has been bad for cod

[notagod]

Honestly my only issue is the cheaters, everything else is fine to me but the fact that the cheating problem is so rampant kills the enjoyment which sucks because I play on PC

[SedanChevy]

I wouldn't have been playing cod the last few years without cross play, allowing me to play with friends regardless of platform. Another benefit is that the older games have a higher population and don't die off as quickly. The problem is that we really need the option to opt out of cross play, or at least segregate controller vs KBM. Overall I think cross play is a good addition but it could be better integrated.

[sharkboi]

It's a lose lose situation. If you remove crossplay, some people will complain that they can't play their favorite modes or match making times are too long. If you keep it, people will point fingers at other platforms for things like cheats or aim assist. At the end of the day, Activision will keep crossplay because it benefits their metrics. 🤷

[lazermaster]

Imagine a PS vs. Xbox playlist
Im sure the between round talk would be interesting

[martinduebner]

An optimal solution would be to have an option not to fully disable crossplay, but to mark a preference to rather have no mixed player pool. This way for example PC/Mouse-Keyboard players could get exclusive lobbies when there are enough players, but when a PC player wants to play an unpopulated mode where there are too little players currently queuing for a match, they can get put into controller lobbies. This way it's more flexible and ensures that no platform dies out. And since this only happens when there are very few PC players, it shouldn't be that big of an issue.

[kaj]

If there was a console only option, I'd be hitting that 100% of the time

[masnerfed]

before crossplay, pc clients were never taken seriously. iw and treyarch routinely used to release trash pc clients, and iw loved to impose 91fps p2p only and fov locks. treyarch was the better of the two, but both also had rce exploits.

because of the party game feeling of cod and limited maps and no dedicated servers, it was never popular on pc. that changed with mw2019. i think it would have succeeded on its own just by having dedicated servers, but crossplay definitely helped. the reality is that ever since mw2, activision was very hostile to pc, and purposely made shit clients.

another thing to consider is this. the rise of pubg and fortnite. as i said before, activision never cared about pc with their clients. but suddenly pubg sells like hotcakes, and fortnite is big and they think pc is a good market again. they wanted to heavily monetize the game, and the only way to do that was with crossplay.

[deadly_actual]

For Xbox players you can disable the cross play in the settings menu just go on to settings then account - privacy and online safety - Xbox privacy view details & customize then communication & multiplayer - block on cross-network play hopefully it makes sense.

[Medieval_Dead]

Crossplay is perfect for co-op games like Warframe. Cross-console is what we wanted for games like CoD. PC being added to crossplay in competitive games is insane.

[baanfrey]

Cheating aside, MW 2019 for me was bought on the sole fact that I could play with ALL my friends and family. For the first time ever in a decade, I could play with my uncles, brother, and friends all at the SAME time. Before we were all separated on PC, Xbox, and Playstation.

That to me is WELL worth having to deal with cheaters.

[monkeybusinessrs]

crossplay is cool but it should never be mandatory

[hacimdoowlla]

That point about higher skilled lobbies input based matchmaking, i felt that lol. The highest sens most competitive controller players go is 8/8 without losing too much accuracy. But, in a high skill lobby, a kb&m low sens can make that 8/8 look like 4/4 in a gunfight.

[GurkenhobelF]

I think, Crossplay is a great idea in general, but input based Matchmaking should be standard in every fps

[MLGTrenton]

If they have a really strong Anti-Cheat then cross-platform wouldn't be such a big concern. I've been playing Valorant since beta and maybe encountered 5 cheaters all together. Obvs thats a PC only game. But their anti-cheat is really good imo. As regards to the different inputs? I agree with ace. No matter what they do, it will always lean towards one inputs over the other. Both have advantages and disadvantages respectfully 🤷‍♂️

[HeroGerik]

I've been playing CoD on PC since the first entry of the franchise back in 2003. I think the addition of cross-play has been a good thing overall. I can play with all of my friends now instead of only the ones on PC. I believe that a small degree of aim assist is needed in a cross-play environment due to how joysticks work.

With that said, HOWEVER, I have been noticing a trend in all the new CoDs that keep making the Rotational Aim Assist stronger and stronger. (MW22 is absolutely bonkers strong for example!) This enables controllers to have god-like tracking ability in CQB with barely any effort which is frustrating because that's mainly what 6v6 MP is all about. In WZ it's not as bad since I can try to counter it by just out-ranging my opponents so the rotational-AA has a harder time to snap on. I just wish there was a way through smart play to counter or break the strength of the tracking! I have dozens of video examples on my SSD I recorded where, thanks to the rotational-AA, an opponent was able to track me though a wall, through smoke, stuns, and even flashes! Makes it very frustrating to watch killcam after killcam dying to what would normally be called aimbotting on a PC-only FPS game.

I know many people on controller like to point out the insane aiming ability of CS:GO pros and other top streamers who play games on M+KB all day. However, even they had to practice for thousands of hours to even get to that level of accuracy. The average joe on PC isn't nearly as good and since the aiming is all raw input with no assistance, most people just can't track to the same degree of fully locked in rotational aim assist.

[dannygomez]

For me and my friends even tho we want to play CoD with each other we don’t because we don’t want to play with PC and agree that we should be able to pick which cross play platform we want to play with!!!

[timothywolleck]

I love your idea opting out of cross play with PC

[blazekings]

Crossplay is a big win for my friends and I even when I was on xbox and they had a PS4 it actually got us back on Cod after taking a break for years.

I've since switched to PC and its fairly unbalanced the competitive advantages you get from having the stronger unit with higher fov. It is big a deal for multiplayer but for warzone its game changing imo.

Sure ive gotten better at the game over time but to go from 1.59kd player to a 2.20 without changing to a playstyle which focuses on boosting KD shows me a competitive advantage I was missing out on which plain and simple isnt fair to console players.

[sethmartin]

Yeah, it has. I never wanna have to play against MK players who have better frames, graphics, and can snipe very well with the mouse movement. Not to mention how much more they can cheat. Miss the old days when it was just all console folks.