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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Digital Foundry- CoD Black Ops Cold War

DonFerrari on 24 November 2020
Otter said:
DonFerrari said:

Minor drops that aren't replicable are exactly what you would expect of a bug. Something that is present 100% time, for 100% people for 100% of a mode isn't a bug it is a tradeoff choice. Do you that curiously the time they though was a bug were the ones that Xbox was doing worse? And the only one that have been positive confirm of bug (doesn't always occur) is on the PS5 and they acknowledged that later. But on video you would thought Xbox version runs much better (and on Shikamaru table the impression is even worse) with PS5 hiccups being expected, on the other hand similar situation shoes reversed they will do different. But I feel like I'm restating myself. Even more as I already said I don't think they are biased, but struggling with finding explanations to their expectations not being met.

shikamaru317 said:

I'm not surprised really, this game was rushed out. Originally CoD 2020 was supposed to be a Sledgehammer game; since Sledgehammer's last CoD was WWII in 2017, it was Sledgehammers turn on the CoD studio rotation. However, there was some kind of falling out over at Sledgehammer with the founders leaving and then disagreements between Sledgehammer and Raven (who was co-developing it with them) on the direction of the game, so 1 year into development Activision took Sledgehammer off the project and Treyarch got brought in to convert their planned 2021 CoD multiplayer into multiplayer for 2020 CoD, with Raven put in charge of the Cold War campaign. So basically Cold War got 2 years of development, like CoD 1 through Ghosts, instead of 3 years of development like CoD Advanced Warfare through Modern Warfare 2019. And CoD 2021 will presumably have 2 years of development as well now because of the upheaval to the studio rotation, though we don't know yet if CoD 2021 will be Infinity Ward or Sledgehammer developed.

So a game that potentially had much more rushed development and was favored to PS5 got a virtual tie, how does that fit with the other games that had preference to Xbox but run worse?


Well Series S just had its shadows patched in so, so I think bugs can be present 100% of the time (obviously DF didn't know this was the case). If not a bug than an error. Trade off implies something was done to salvage performance this is what they assumed off the missing shadows (even if RT Is still missing from XBSS), error/bug means human mistake in the code which is impacting the experience unnecessarily or delivering something that was not intended. You'll be surprised that sometimes the first time devs are finding out about issues is when DF or other sites contact them. DF makes their money off comparisons, whereas developers are super time constraint working on 8 versions at the same time and can easily miss this stuff 

The last note on the fps topic, if they never restarted from the checkpoint it could be human error that Digital Foundary missed it. I think you're going on the presumption that they were already aware that it could be eliminated by restarting but just didn't report it. The tweet where John acknowledges it as a bug was today only, but the video was of course made before that tweet was sent.

And no I don't find it curious that they've often looked at the Series X versions for having bugs. Again if you just look at the examples its clear why they thought there was something up. AC, literally screen tearing so much its hard for people without VRR to enjoy and features a camera glitch which makes the fps looks unstable when it is. Dirt5, has LOD which are multitudes worse than PS5 despite us understanding them to be comparable machines where the difference should be fps or resolution. DMC, dropping 50frames below the PS5 version during the 120fps mode....

COD, runs almost perfectly, just dips a bit here and there during setpieces. This is not like the others lol. By your logic they would have claimed the Series X running worse at 120fps was a bug but they didn't. I don't see the bias but I'll leave this thread here.

I wouldn't be surprised that something escape devs and is seem by users or crash reports, etc. That is nature of bugs. But Compared to the time QA test the games compared to the time DF had with it something as obvious as the whole mode not having the right level of assets seem very odd to miss.

Nope not saying they already knew it was a problem, what I'm saying is that for the drops in Xbox versions they assumed it was a bug (almost all of them), while for this case on PS5 they passed over it accepting as HW limitation.

If you don't find it curious that let's say 100% cases of problems on Xbox (even if repeatable and present the whole time) are supposedly bugs, but 0% on PS5 are expected to be bugs ok.

You know what they said about Series X running worse at 120fps? VRR will cover for it, it isn't much of an issue, and "I don't know why that is happening".



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kirby007 on 24 November 2020

This is hilarious cant be a bug on series x but it is on ps5 gj gj



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Evilms on 24 November 2020



foodfather on 24 November 2020
shikamaru317 said:
foodfather said:

While the deep dive from DF is appreciated , plenty of reviews have declared this games MP a visual downgrade from MW.

The whole debacle reminds me of Ghost a bit. Good graphics in the SP but the MP graphics and quality of gameplay are poor.

I'm not surprised really, this game was rushed out. Originally CoD 2020 was supposed to be a Sledgehammer game; since Sledgehammer's last CoD was WWII in 2017, it was Sledgehammers turn on the CoD studio rotation. However, there was some kind of falling out over at Sledgehammer with the founders leaving and then disagreements between Sledgehammer and Raven (who was co-developing it with them) on the direction of the game, so 1 year into development Activision took Sledgehammer off the project and Treyarch got brought in to convert their planned 2021 CoD multiplayer into multiplayer for 2020 CoD, with Raven put in charge of the Cold War campaign. So basically Cold War got 2 years of development, like CoD 1 through Ghosts, instead of 3 years of development like CoD Advanced Warfare through Modern Warfare 2019. And CoD 2021 will presumably have 2 years of development as well now because of the upheaval to the studio rotation, though we don't know yet if CoD 2021 will be Infinity Ward or Sledgehammer developed.

This makes sense. I'd be sure to avoid the 2021 COD too. 



Too_Talls on 24 November 2020
foodfather said:

While the deep dive from DF is appreciated , plenty of reviews have declared this games MP a visual downgrade from MW.

The whole debacle reminds me of Ghost a bit. Good graphics in the SP but the MP graphics and quality of gameplay are poor.

As far as downgrades go, it's not really that much of a bad thing when you consider EVERYTHING. 

firstly, cod at it's heart and most popular is a 60 fps MP game. and lately, MW especially they forgot the most important part of the franchise's foundation, and the largest install base which was the base xbox one and base ps4. The visual improvements MW introduced catered to the mid-gen console refreshes, and the PC base that was being incorporated through cross-play.

The end result was a nice looking game on the optimized hardware, but a juddery mess on the base consoles running at like 40 to 45 fps on average. 

Cod should be built for performance 1st visuals 2nd, because the majority of people that buy the game don't care about the campaign where visuals matter more.

Cold war was clearly built performance 1st as it should be, which can be clearly seen on the base consoles that perform better than MW did on those consoles. If you played any of these games on the base xbox one or ps4, you'd see that black ops 4, and cold war both look better than Modern Warfare looks running on those consoles because of the optimization.

As for this gen, both ps5, and series x have great performance so yeah.............screw anyone that complained about the wrong thing.



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DonFerrari on 25 November 2020

After several updates and discussion on tweet with John I would update the OP table.

Both games run essentially the same on textures, effects, resolution, etc and also same framerate for most of time. On the 60fpsRT the drops on PS5 were confirmed to be bugs so in fact they run the same. On 120Hz PS5 runs slightly faster (drop less frequent and with smaller quantity) so it is so close that it can also be called a tie. Multiplayer 60 and 120 are locked on both consoles. And finally VRR being supported on Xbox but not on PS5 (currently) the small drops in 120hz are less concerning in Xbox (still that only benefits a small number of games and don't change performance). So this face-off can really be declared a tie in everything. Even Series S performed well for what is expected of it.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

KingofTrolls on 26 November 2020

Confirmed - no RT on Series S.