Black Ops 6
It was a rare day on reddit Thursday, when Season 1 of Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 released. Usually, the subreddit is filled with upset gamers complaining about everything from spawns to map layouts to the various bugs that plague every Call Of Duty game.
But yesterday, there was an air of surprised satisfaction in the community. It was like an early Christmas: All of our old XP Tokens from the last couple Call Of Duty games and Warzone were suddenly available to use in Black Ops 6, a game with a notoriously laborious grind especially if you choose to Prestige.
I noticed I had dozens of XP tokens in my inventory that weren’t there the day before, and quickly activated these as I played the new Season 1 content, most of which I really enjoy, as well as the new Area 99 Warzone map.
I like the new maps, Hideout and Evacuation, the first a nice midsized map with lots of cool flanking options and the second a much larger map with great sniping lanes and strategic options. I’m less fond of Heirloom, though it might be better as a Gunfight 2v2 map than as a 6v6 Faceoff map.
I’ve been on the Prestige grind and it was nice to have some extra XP tokens to make that a little less grindy, and some 2XP Weapon Tokens to get some of these slow-leveling guns closer to max. The community was just as pleased as me, with multiple posts on reddit praising the decision to give us our old XP Tokens. It’s probably the most positive I’ve seen a Call Of Duty subreddit in as long as I can remember.
Then I booted up the game today and all of them were gone. It turns out, Treyarch and Activision never meant to give us our old XP tokens back. It was just an error. The developer tucked the update into the UI section of Friday’s patch notes, writing: “Fixed an issue that incorrectly allowed legacy XP tokens to be activated in the Black Ops 6 UI.”
I have to say, this is a monumental screw-up on Treyarch and Activision’s part. Even if it was an error to allow these to be used in the game, once the genie is out of the bottle the very worst possible thing you can do is try to stuff it back in. They should have just owned the mistake and let their players enjoy using the tokens—tokens they earned in previous Call Of Duty titles to begin with.
This is the best way to turn accidental good will in the community into ire and discontent. Fortunately for gamers, there is still a workaround, albeit an annoying one. Simply go into Warzone and all your tokens will be there. Activate the tokens in that game then hop back over to Black Ops 6 and they’ll remain active there. This is such an easy workaround, it makes one wonder: Why remove them to begin with? Why make your entire community upset when it makes no material difference one way or another.
I reached out to Activision to see if they had an answer to this question, or at least a statement on why the decision was made to remove the XP tokens in the first place. I’ll update this post when and if I hear back.
For now, I’m mostly pretty happy with Season 1, but this rubbed me the wrong way and I’m far from the only one.
Other issues this season include an apparent accidental nerf of damage range for many Assault Rifles that makes them incredibly underpowered at even medium distance, the bizarre inability to unlock the Ghost perk, and the addition of some of the ugliest Operator Skins and most annoying death effects any gun in the entire Call Of Duty franchise has ever included.
I will have more to say on these last points in a separate post, but I’m a little sad that the pre-season is over and now we have to watch glowing green dragons run around and while getting exploded by tracer rounds that feel more like rockets. It’s a real shame. I really wish that Activision and its studios would do a better job at coming up with creative skins that aren’t such eyesores, and give players options to turn off the distracting special effects.
Overall, I really love Black Ops 6, which I called “one of the best Call Of Duty games in years” in my review.