CoD Mobile Season 5 exclusive: more Warzone crossovers, bigger seasons on the way ActivisionIn Deep Water, Call of Duty Mobile\u2019s fifth seasonal update of the year is now in full swing. Dexerto spoke with the development team directly to uncover what goes into the game\u2019s major seasonal updates and to get a glimpse of the bigger plans in store for the rest of 2021. CoD Mobile Season 5 launched on June 28, bringing everything from new maps and operators to fresh competitive experiences. The rapidly expanding player base has grown accustomed to these massive content drops on a near-monthly basis. But what does this process look like for the dev team working behind the scenes? From picking new weapons to balancing an evolving battle royale, and even crossovers with mainline entries in the franchise, there\u2019s always something new in the pipeline. CoD Mobile\u2019s general manager Matt Lewis gave Dexerto a peek behind the curtain and revealed how the team stays on top of one of Activision\u2019s biggest properties. How CoD Mobile settles on classic maps to restore More and more we\u2019ve seen classic CoD maps being brought back to life in recent years. Treyarch\u2019s Cold War has already integrated six fan favorites back into the mix but no title quite matches the range of CoD Mobile. From Modern Warfare hits to the best of the Black Ops series, the handheld title is constantly bringing familiar locations back into the spotlight. With Season 5, we saw three more Modern Warfare maps added. With such a range to pick from, what exactly goes into deciding the next CoD Mobile maps? \u201cFirst and foremost, we look at the data available to us and try to understand which maps have performed well within the Call of Duty ecosystem. Next, we look at how well the map will translate and if the community has actively engaged with it. \u201cWe also take into account what the community has been asking for as our player\u2019s feedback helps drive our decisions. \u201cBecause Call of Duty: Mobile has a new theme every season, it\u2019s important to contextualize these maps and introduce them when they fit in well with the narrative of the season. For example, in our current season, Season 5, we decided to go with maps such as Docks and Suldal Harbor because it fit well with naval-inspired content of the season.\u201d Which CoD guns deserve a mobile spot? \ud83d\ude0f Have you been putting the new assault rifle, CR-56 AMAX to good use? \ud83d\udd13\ud83d\udcaa Obtain the functional weapon from the #CODMobile Battle Pass now! pic.twitter.com\/ofMdeDmWdu \u2014 Call of Duty: Mobile (@PlayCODMobile) July 6, 2021 In the same vein, CoD Mobile also seeks to bring many of the most popular weapons over from previous titles. This time around, Season 5 gave us the CR-56 AMAX, a Modern Warfare Assault Rifle that\u2019s had its fair share of attention in recent Warzone metas. When bringing guns over to the handheld title, does the dev team adopt a similar approach to the map selection process? \u201cWhen we look at what weapons to bring to each season, we ask ourselves three simple questions in addition to looking at trends and how it relates to development timelines. How did Call of Duty fans enjoy the weapons in the console experience? Does this weapon fit within the larger weapon meta we\u2019re making? Does it require other nerfs or buffs? Are players going to be jazzed with the introduction of the weapon?\u201d Balancing CoD Mobile\u2019s Battle Royale mode Not only does a new season mean new tools to play with, but it often means new classes to experiment with in CoD Mobile\u2019s Battle Royale. For Season 5, we were introduced to the Time Traveler. The latest class allows players to warp back in time, something completely new for the handheld experience. With more than a dozen innovative classes now available, how does the team keep balance in mind when designing these new abilities? \u201cWe\u2019re always ideating and coming up with new ideas, but what sounds good on paper doesn\u2019t always translate well into action. Sometimes, the ideas can feel out of place even if they might potentially work well and sometimes just don\u2019t add a lot of value to the mode itself. \u201cWhen we playtest, we try to evaluate them as a player would and gauge the value it adds from that lens. Again, it\u2019s all about how it evolves player experience against other options, and we try to add classes that maintain the overall balance in the game but at the same time offer our players something new to experience.\u201d Improving success of CoD Mobile\u2019s seasonal structure For Warzone and CoD\u2019s yearly titles, seasons work on a different schedule. New seasonal updates arrive every two months, with a mid-season update adding further content along the way. With CoD Mobile, however, new seasons arrive at a much faster pace. Throughout 2020 alone, the handheld title saw 11 full seasons. That output has kept up in 2021, with major updates landing on a near-monthly basis. Will this cycle continue indefinitely or could there be a future where CoD Mobile seasons align with Warzone and the annual CoD entry? \u201cSeasons are a key framework in how the Call of Duty: Mobile team packages and delivers new maps, modes, cosmetics, and new functional items to players. Most console and PC games have seasons somewhere between two and four months, and that works great for their audiences. On mobile, we\u2019ve found players prefer seasons that are shorter and more thematic. For example, with the launch of our latest season, Season 5: In Deep Water, the content is not only jam-packed with new maps, weapons, a limited-time event that\u2019s super fun, but the season also has a Naval aesthetic and we\u2019ve brought back a fan-favorite character from the Call of Duty franchise. \u201cThis gives you insight into how we\u2019re approaching our content drops for fans that\u2019s different from what can be done in a console or PC game where the storyline is a bit more streamlined. \u201cWe\u2019ve worked hard on planning a cadence throughout the year that we think players are going to like. We certainly have bigger thinking around Call of Duty Mobile seasonal content that we can\u2019t wait to share with fans. For now, this is what works for us.\u201d More Warzone and Black Ops Cold War crossovers in the works In recent weeks we\u2019ve seen CoD Mobile collaborate with Warzone and Black Ops Cold War in unique ways. First was the Season 3 crossover event to celebrate the launch of Verdansk \u201884 in Warzone. Then came the 80s Action Heroes bundle seen across every active CoD title, a first for the franchise. Moving forward, can we expect to see more of these collaborations for special occasions? \u201cYes, we scratched the surface with events like \u201880s Action Heroes and look forward to much more to come. As we continue to build this ecosystem, we\u2019re not only reaching new players in new geographies, but we\u2019re able to reach our players creatively and in fun new ways.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CoD Mobile Season 5 exclusive: more Warzone crossovers, bigger seasons on the way ActivisionIn Deep Water, Call of Duty Mobile\u2019s fifth seasonal update of the year is now in full swing. Dexerto spoke with the development team directly to uncover what goes into the game\u2019s major seasonal updates and to get a glimpse of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}