Call of Duty: Vanguard has had a rough two months, and some new issues are causing players to finally label the newest title in the series as “unplayable.” Sledgehammer Games has had their work cut out for them since launch day in November, with problems ranging from overpowered fire grenades to larger issues like Vanguard‘s very slow-progressing battle pass system. Patches have been rolled out to fix certain problems, but now, the main issue has shifted to packet bursts. Dedicated players are begging the development team to bump this game-breaking bug to the top of the to-do list, as it’s been negatively impacting players for the past few weeks.
For those unfamiliar, packet loss refers to moments when, while in a game, players will randomly lag out and skip around the map for a few seconds. Many Vanguard players have taken to social media to report this issue happening multiple times in every single match, causing some to have major disadvantages.
“Over the last few days, the server connection has been horrendous. They should not be legally allowed to sell a game like this in this state,” Reddit user sniphskii said. Another user, Barium145, responded with a sad truth: “Been like this for most people since launch. I doubt they’re ever going to fix it.” The packet burst issue has been noted on the Vanguard Trello board since the game launched in November, yet the problem hasn’t taken a single step towards resolution. Call of Duty: Vanguard is only one-third of the way through its first season, so Sledgehammer needs to find a way to address this problem and apologize to impacted players as soon as possible.
Call of Duty: Vanguard was released on November 5, 2021, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. The title managed to be the worst-selling Call of Duty game in 14 years after launch, and Sledgehammer has promised that a number of changes are coming in 2022. Whether or not any of these are the changes players actually want remains to be seen.