3 lessons Black Ops Cold War can learn from CoD Mobile

While Black Ops Cold War has been met with its fair share of praise, there’s a good amount that the premium title could learn from its free to play counterpart in CoD Mobile.

Call of Duty being on an annual cycle comes with its pros and cons. On the plus side, fans get an entirely new game to sink their teeth into every 12 months. Though on the other side of the coin, such small development periods leave little room for innovation.

Developers have to tick all the right boxes to keep fans happy. From Zombies to Warzone and everything in between, these are massive projects that lean on hundreds of developers. Meanwhile, CoD Mobile comes from a smaller team that is consistently able to build upon the one title.

The mobile devs are able to invest more resources knowing that their game won’t be made redundant in a few months time. With that in mind, here are three key ways in which Black Ops Cold War could take inspiration from CoD Mobile to improve the experience for everyone.

Reusing more classic maps from CoD history

First up is to fall back on some fan-favorite maps from over the years. Season One reintroduced Raid to BOCW and it instantly became the highlight of the update. We often see a handful of returning maps with each release but CoD Mobile handles things better than every mainline title in this regard.

Instead of playing favorites with certain developers, CoD Mobile features maps from every studio. You’ve got Black Ops classics in the same playlist with Modern Warfare staples. There is a huge assortment of popular battlegrounds to sift through and this leads to a more enjoyable experience overall.

Having BOCW – and well, every main entry moving forward – feature a broader selection of maps from previous years would be ideal. Not just for online multiplayer, but for the competitive scene as well. Certain iconic maps could be locked into the professional rotation while one or two new additions are slotted in with each passing year. 

Going the extra mile with weapon camos and Operator skins

It’s no stretch to say that CoD Mobile features some of the most impressive cosmetics in CoD history. With each big update comes new skins, dynamic camos, and more ways to personalize your in-game appearance.

BOCW lets you apply a few different weapon camos and some Blueprints have their own styles as well, though none ever stand out quite as well as CoD Mobile’s. While leaks have shown us what Warzone is capable of with dynamic camos, we’re still yet to see it come to fruition.

CoD Mobile features all sorts of animated skins to spice things up. There are weapons that change their appearance with each kill in a streak, while others will literally make your enemies explode in the final kill of a round.

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There is a good amount of room to experiment here. It’s just a matter of developers pulling the trigger on some more flashy visuals for the otherwise fairly tame set of cosmetics in BOCW.

A constant rotation of events to keep players coming back

One thing that CoD Mobile has always done particularly well is timed events. Essentially every time you login there will be some kind of limited-time event taking place. These can vary in scope from small weapon-based events to major spectacles that split the entire community into two warring factions.

In BOCW, we get the odd seasonal event to celebrate Christmas and of course, Warzone had its fantastic Halloween-themed takeover in 2020. Though huge gaps in between could have players dipping away to other titles until new content comes around.

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Constantly having something new to login for, whether it’s a new unlock to grind out or a larger goal you’re working on, keeps the experience fresh every day. XP Challenges are one way of keeping your community active, but a more consistent influx of new events would help keep the game thriving.