Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War’s new ranked League Play mode is live now, but the highly competitive multiplayer game mode has come under fire from players almost immediately. Responding to criticism that the mode does too little to distance itself from Black Ops 4, Treyarch has rolled out new loadout restrictions for League Play.
For the uninitiated, League Play is Call of Duty’s highly competitive ladder mode that reduces matches to 4v4, and restricts loadouts and game modes in order to replicate the Call of Duty League professional setting. In League Play, you can’t use shotguns, launchers, LMGs, or several other weapon types, and you can’t use a wide variety of attachments, perks, and scorestreaks available in other game modes.
League Play in Black Ops – Cold War is very similar to the League Play in Black Ops 4 – too similar, many fans have complained. As Eurogamer notes, smoke grenade and field upgrade spam have quickly emerged as commonplace practices in League Play matches, and players have told developer Treyarch that more items need to go on the banned list.
Fortunately, Treyarch appears to be listening closely. Today, the company announced that several more loadout items have been restricted in League Play. Here’s the tweet:
New League Play restrictions now live:
• All Suppressors
• Task Force Barrel
• Spetsnaz RPK Barrel
• CMV MIL-Spec Barrel
• Tiger Team Barrel
• Mounted Flashlight
• Target Designator
• Tiger Team Spotlight
• Armor
• War Machine
• Jammer
• Molotov
• Gung-Ho
• Ghost— Treyarch Studios (@Treyarch) February 9, 2021
Several controversial scorestreaks are now restricted, including War Machine and Armor. Also banned now are suppressors, Molotov, Jammer, and Ghost.
It’s a decent start, and players seem to be responding positively to the changes. We’ll have to see how much more it takes for League Play to stabilise, though: players have pointed out more fundamental issues with the mode, such as the way ranking is handled (through gems that can effectively be farmed) and the opaque way that skill ratings are calculated.