Drift0r explains why Black Ops Cold War Beta is ‘two steps backwards’

Renowned Call of Duty content creator ‘Drift0r’ has revealed precisely why he is disappointed in the Black Ops Cold War Beta, claiming he’s reluctant to play it due to a variety of concerns about performance and mechanics.

Moving from the Black Ops Cold War Alpha back in September to October’s Open Beta, different content creators, players, and professionals have expressed varying criticisms about the upcoming Call of Duty title. 

That’s theoretically good, as these experimental phases are meant to incur feedback, but what’s not good is that Drift0r believes some of the changes from Alpha to Beta have actually hurt the game, rather than helped it.

While the majority of players, pros, and streamers have focused on skill-based-matchmaking (SBMM) as their prevailing concern, Drift0r cites an uncomfortably long list of issues as the cause for his disappointment in the game. As Dr Disrespect tanks his kill-death ratio to counter SBMM, Drift0r has instead ignored that competitive aspect and focused specifically on the details that leave him unwilling to play the Beta.

“I didn’t want to make a video like this today, I didn’t want to be negative. I wanted to wake up and have a super fun stream, to be really hyped to play with the new stuff … but my experience from playing the Beta and my impressions were overwhelmingly negative. So negative, as a matter of fact, I cut my stream early.”

• Read more: Dr Disrespect reverse boosts & breaks Black Ops Cold War SBMM on stream

Driven to the point that he had to cut short his intended four-hour stream by a full two hours, Drift0r goes through about 15 minutes explaining why he thinks the game is “still rough” and has left him both “unhappy” and “upset.” Among his complaints, the principal issues appear to be lag, movement mechanics (including with vehicles) and what he describes as “painful” audio issues. 

 

While there are some cool mechanics possible in the Beta, from Drift0r’s experience, the gameplay was choppy, with consistent frame-rate drops. In response to hoped improvements in the Beta patch, he actually found movement to be more inconsistent and counter-intuitive. 

Similarly, he found that the vehicles were almost nerfed too strongly by making their maneuverability incredibly cumbersome. And last, while understanding that Treyarch’s decision to add more bass to the gunfire was an effort to placate fans who miss Modern Warfare’s realism, he found the audio to be overdone and painful.

• Read more: David Vonderhaar appears to confirm Black Ops Cold War ranked play

Ultimately, Drift0r explains that, despite some great improvements to graphics and quality-of-life options, “in terms of fundamental gameplay, it was a step or two backwards.”