Warzone's Caldera Is A Great Map, But Players Are Frustrated With So Many Issues

Call of Duty: Warzone's Caldera has seen several updates since the December 8 launch of the new Pacific-themed map, but players are still unhappy with the game's rough state. Currently, Warzone players can experience some seasonal action by securing Christmas trees, chasing elves, and dodging the wrath of Krampus for Call of Duty's Festive Fervor event, but the holiday spirit seems to be dampened by all the bugs and performance issues with Caldera.

A ton of weapon balancing has taken place over the last few updates and several small bugs have been squashed, which include tweaks to audio and patched map exploits. However, Warzone's new Pacific map is still struggling, especially across all of the console platforms. There are still graphical bugs that make guns and operators look like a polygonal mess, parachutes don't always properly deploy, and there are game crashes that require hard resets of PCs and consoles. The most recent December 19 update made a few improvements to the game, but did not address any of these major problems, nor did it help with the recent freezing issues that many players are experiencing. Personally, I find myself freezing every time I interact with a Buy Station while playing on my PlayStation 5, and flickering and frame drops are common too.

Raven Software is still investigating Caldera's problems related to controller disconnects and performance on PlayStation consoles, visual inconsistencies with weapon and operator models, and audio bugs, too. These issues and more can be seen on the Warzone Trello board, which shows problems that Raven Software has acknowledged and is working to investigate.

While the Trello board mentions performance problems on PlayStation, there doesn't seem to be any acknowledgement that Xbox users are suffering from similar issues. Performance seems to be lacking across all of Xbox and PlayStation, including those hard-to-find current-gen consoles. Additionally, Xbox Series X users are reporting that they aren't able to play in 120 fps. This issue doesn't seem to be listed on Trello, but it was acknowledged on Twitter by Raven's Creative Director Ted Timmins. Timmins says the team is aware of the problem, and that he's in the same boat as an Xbox Series X user.

All of the performance issues come as console players are still feeling the sting of having a brand-new map, but still not getting a FOV slider on Xbox or PlayStation. The lack of this feature means console players can't change their field of view, something that console users are now accustomed to doing in Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard's multiplayer. This also gives PC players a bit of an advantage in Warzone's cross-play setting.

It's a shame that Warzone feels in such a rough palace right now, as Caldera truly does feel like a proper successor to the Verdansk map, but Raven Software is struggling to make all the necessary updates. The recent weapon tuning has been nice, as the developer works to keep a healthy balance for Warzone's growing weapon pool, but too many bugs can still create a miserable time for some players. Hopefully, Raven Software can iron out some of the bigger problems sooner rather than later. As it stands after all the recent updates, Caldera actually feels rougher today than it did on launch.

Of course, it's worth mentioning that Caldera arrived as some QA staff at Raven Software participated in a walkout in protest of surprise contract terminations within the QA team that began shortly before the Season 1 update. Activision Blizzard faces lawsuits and other investigations related to alleged sexual harassment and discrimination against women.