Warzone 2 makes a radical change to loadouts that could leave casual players behind

Infinity Ward is overhauling the loadout system in Warzone 2, the new free-to-play Call of Duty battle royale which is set to launch on November 16. And while I welcome change after hundreds of hours spent stalking the streets of Verdansk, Caldera, and Rebirth Island, I worry about a widening gulf between the most casual and committed players. 

Let's start with the change to how custom loadouts are distributed across Al Mazrah. For starters, only your primary weapon can be purchased from Shops (which are replacing Buy Stations) with earned cash. The rest of your loadout – containing your secondary weapon, throwables, and perks – can only be equipped if you're successful in looting Strongholds guarded by AI soldiers, or in battling to access global Loadout Drops which are available to all players at a random location on the map. In other words, if you want your full loadout, you'll need to survive one or two bloodbaths.

This is a disruptive shift, and I'm excited to see the early-game routine ruptured. In Warzone, the first ten minutes of any given game see squads frantically completing Scavenger and Recon Contracts to accrue the $10,000 required to request a Loadout Drop from the nearest Buy Station. Once the Grau 5.56 assault rifle, Ghost perk, and Heartbeat Sensor are in my hands, well, then it's time to party. And by party, I do of course mean get ambushed by a squad who was able to get their loadout just that little bit quicker. Warzone 2 appears to be doing everything it can to push away from this cycle. 

Getting a full loadout will necessitate converging on dangerous, high-player density areas – it may not be worth the effort for many squads. The first group to clear a Stronghold will earn the opportunity to equip their full loadout, making these locations more perilous than Vaults; subsequent squads can converge on these locations to try and get their favorite equipment, but the challenge will compound gradually over time. And you just know that these areas are going to be camped heavily by players who instead rushed to purchase their primary weapon – likely to be a SA-B 50 or SP-R 208 Marksman Rifle with all the trappings, which already play a role in two of the best loadouts in Modern Warfare 2.   

The Gunsmith Grind

This decision sharpens the focus on finding better ground loot, and ultimately, on preparing a killer primary weapon via Gunsmith – which is where my concern for the more casual leaning players comes in. If Modern Warfare 2 – which shares a suite of progression systems with Warzone 2 – has shown me anything, it's that weapon building is a mess, one which ultimately rewards those with plentiful amounts of time and patience. The process of unlocking weapons and attachments is more complicated, complex, and time-intensive than it ever has been before. Some players will get left behind in Warzone 2 as certain primary weapon builds become inevitably dominant, and otherwise difficult to access. 

Let's look at the best Vaznev-9K loadout in Modern Warfare 2 as an example – an SMG which I believe could become an early favorite in the Warzone 2 weapon meta. To get access to this gun, you'll need to complete the Kastovia Platform – requiring you to level three separate assault rifles and SMGs before the Vaznev-9K is even available. You have to level the Kastov 762 assault rifle to 13, which will unlock the Kastov 545 assault rifle; that will then need to be leveled to 13, which will unlock the Kastov-74U; that SMG will then need to be leveled to 14, which will give you access to the Vaznev-9K, and (hopefully) most of the attachments that folks are shouting about on social media. 

It's a lot to ask of players, particularly those who don't have access to Modern Warfare 2, and will otherwise be unable to grind through levels of popular weapons in games of TDM and Domination. And with no Plunder or Rebirth Resurgence equivalent (seemingly) in Warzone 2, there may be no easy way to grind unlocks within the Warzone 2 ecosystem itself – as players could with the original game. This means that as different weapons rise to the top of the tier list and define the meta – they always do, it's unavoidable – the barrier to baseline survivability and viability has become greater. 

Grinding weapons to stay competitive has always been a part of Warzone. I can recall Sunday afternoons spent whipping through weapon levels on Kar98k, M4A1, M13, Grau 5.56, Krig 6, and MAC-10 to get myself back on a level-playing field around big meta shifts. But the difference here is that an 'afternoon' may transform into a week, or longer, thanks to the more complicated Gunsmith system. This is time many casual players may not have to spend just to get their hands on primary guns that the rest of the lobby is wielding. 

Ultimately, I think the changes to the way weapon loadouts are handled in Warzone 2 is positive for the overall pacing of the battle royale, but I'm keen to see whether an increased focus on Primary Weapons and Gunsmith grinding has a net-negative impact once the sweats find their feet on Al Mazrah. 

Warzone 2 is coming online alongside the Modern Warfare 2 battle pass on November 16. Season One will also introduce a way to properly check your KD in Modern Warfare 2 and the new battle royale.