Crimsix: ‘We’re essentially scrimming a system we’re not actually competing on’

The Dallas Empire’s Crimsix sounded off on the spawn system in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War during a team press conference today.

The three-time world champion said that “every team is dealing with” inconsistent spawns from practice to official matches but none of them want to talk about it publicly. He said the players have been told there’s no difference in spawns between practice, which is played on 20 Hz servers, and Call of Duty League matches, which are played on 60 Hz servers. But he says that’s simply not true.

“Because of the difference between 20 Hz to 60 Hz [servers], the spawns are… it’s funny because as players, we get told, ‘No, there’s no change. They’re exactly the same.’ And then we are literally replicating the same exact situations from matches to scrims… and the spawn system will be different,” Crimsix said. “We’re essentially scrimming a system we’re not actually competing on. That, to me, is just completely unacceptable and needs to be changed immediately.”

Players had nearly identical complaints about Modern Warfare during the inaugural CDL season last year. Clayster, who won the 2020 CDL Championship with the Empire, told Dot Esports in June 2020 that playing MW with the inconsistent spawns was “really, really tough.”

Although there are much fewer players publicly criticizing the Cold War spawns, Crimsix said he believes this a deep issue within Call of Duty.

“Not only is this the second year in a row where spawns are different on 60 Hz from standard custom games’ tick rate, it’s a second year in a row across two different CoD titles and different developers,” Crimsix said. “So there’s a huge issue somewhere deep down in the coding—or I don’t know where it is—but it really needs to be addressed and looked at.”

The Empire and the other 11 CDL teams will take part in the league’s first $500,000 Major, which begins on March 3.