Opinion: Issues the CDL has to solve

Competitive COD has a bunch of issues right now that need to be solved for it to take the next step. This is an opinion piece that will look at many of the issues on the amateur level that are highly impacting the League.

To start, a change 18-year-old rule could be better for the growth of the esport. Players between 14 and 18 choose other esports because they don’t want to wait years to enter the Tier 2 scene. Why waste good competitive years when you can go compete in Fortnite or other games? The solution should be allowing 16+ to compete in Challengers but not the Pro League. This allows younger players to gain experience within teams and actual competitions. The point should be that if you’re good, you’ll have other pathways open up like College COD, and be able to see your potential earlier.

Starting playing at 18, you are taking massive risks if you don’t have a backup plan. Many players just fully try to compete while making the League is extremely difficult. Finding better ways to develop players, grow secondary pathways, and create a healthy ecosystem needs to be a priority.

The next issue revolves around the current Challenger system. Challengers have 3 main ways to compete: Cups, Elites, and Open LANs. Most years it is impossible to compete against professional players & the SND scene has drastically decreased. In regions outside of NA & EU, players only have Cups.

Let’s start with the Cups. The number of Cups has ranged from 10-20 each year and always takes place on weekends (Saturday/Sunday). The positive is that it should allow players to go to school or work during the week. BUT the negative is that 10-20 weekends from November to June are taken up with largely meaningless online tournaments. Combining taking up every weekend with AMs using the professional practice schedule of two slots at 2 pm & 4:30 pm EST, means they are competing full-time. Another large issue is the surplus of other online tournaments constantly going on while competing online has massive issues. The goal should be:

1: Changing the practice times to 4:30 & 7:30 EST. This allows AM teams to still practice against pro teams in their first slot. It also means that they have the majority of the day to work or go to school, which ties into the 16+ age limit not conflicting with high school. This move would create a healthier lifestyle for amateur players in the future.

2. The Cup system desperately needs are overhaul. To start, no Challenger player should be competing on 10-20 weekends over 6 months, including holidays. Players are punished for missing Cups or having a life during weekends, creating a “crunch” lifestyle of just work/school/COD that is highly unhealthy.

📸 Photo by @IAmBdan

The goal should be to create a system where players have more freedom, while also having good opportunities to play. My solution would be to have LAN-style tournaments online until a system like ESEA Leagues is developed (Stay tuned). Think of a group play & double-elimination bracket being played during a week so that it doesn’t compete against the CDL. The League could have the top Challengers teams auto-qualifying based on points from previous tournaments, LANs, and Elites. Then having public qualifiers for any team to qualify for the tournament. 

This would create serious Tier 2 online tournaments that would be much more than Cups while mimicking a proven esport in CS. In the future, these can moved to LAN once it’s feasible. The goal should be to have a tournament heavy Challengers, where College COD & regular teams can compete. Incoming players should be pushed towards qualifiers for these tournaments, playing in open LANs, and doing individual training. This would also promote the ability for Ladders to come back for players to find new teams to start competing.

A quick issue that also needs to be touched on is Open LANs. The Open LANs that take place at Majors are a very difficult problem to solve. They aren't valuable enough to have during their own weekend, as the cost would balloon. That results in them taking place during the same time at the same place as the Majors. In return, when the matches are being streamed, they are directly competing against the professional broadcast, effectively kneecapping the streaming potential. Most of the matches themselves aren't streamed, recorded, or documented. This kneecaps our ability to promote the LAN and any other outlet that wishes to do so. That also doesn't take into account franchises having to find venues that have the space to throw the event and finding the PCs for the stations.

Without the high-placing teams joining the professional bracket, Open LANs are just expensive side tournaments that are very hard to market and showcase. They are important to the ecosystem but seem like the misplaced part of the circuit with no real good solution.

One switch that should be easier now, would be the return of console play for amateurs. PCs are more expensive, cost more to power, are an uneven playing field online, and are easier to exploit. While consoles still have their own exploits, with Microsoft owning Call of Duty, switching back to consoles makes a lot of sense for AM play. This would reduce costs, even the playing field, allow AMs to use PCs to stream more (instead of losing performance to stream while playing on PC), and be cheaper to throw Open LANs. If the cost of LANs reduces, then it's more likely to get more Open LANs in the future.

Next, we have to look at the top of the pyramid. Currently, there are 12 professional franchises and 48 professional players. One organization is fielding a team from the MEA region, another organization has a full Spanish team, and at least three other organizations are heavily European. This is amazing, showing that COD reaches all around the Globe. The representation is what the League should be shooting for and continuing to grow.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

The problem is that it puts a cap on how many players from each region can actually make it. There are now sub-36 opportunities for NA amateurs to make it into the League, while older professionals are being pushed into Tier 2. That results in upcoming AMs now competing against pro-level players for the only prize money they can get while they aren’t allowed to actually start competing until they’re 18. 

So, on one hand, you have pros that are just on the edge of the Pro League, with established brands & streams, with years of experience and connections. On the other, you have new talent who you force not to compete until they are 18, who can make a brand before that, who have 0 experience in high-level teams, and no connections. That is just going to lower the incoming talent pool even more.

Looking at other regions, they’ve been feeling this for years. That is the reason regions like APAC and Europe have deteriorated over the last five years while both MENA and LATAM struggle to grow. You can’t limit the pipeline so greatly and expect to have a healthy esport. You have to create opportunities to keep these regions active, so they can grow their brands and showcase their talent. 

The COD League doesn’t want big brands pushed out of the League prematurely, but that is what is happening due to the limited spots. Players such as Scump, ZooMaa, Methodz, Crimsix, FormaL, Karma, Havok, and many others will large individual brands are no longer competing. Many have stayed linked to the League, but losing the brands competing & streaming hurts the product. One of two things will have to happen in the future. 

Either expanding the League to 16 teams or creating a tournament schedule in which AMs are involved is extremely important. At the very least, online tournaments need to return with the top AMs competing with the pros. What would be ideal is creating a Black Ops 4 CWL-style Major tournaments where pros can do online qualifiers to determine seeding and what pool they go into. Then 4 AM teams qualify into pool play. What is important is going GSL where the Top 2 finishers from each group go to Upper, while the 3rd placing teams go to Lower. 

One way to incorporate this directly into the CDL structure is during the qualifiers. Many fans grow tired of the qualifier matches by the end of the season. Overall, the online qualifiers are an important piece to the structure but there are ways to improve them with a breath of fresh air. Instead of 3-4 weeks of online qualifier matches, the League could separate the weeks with an online tournament with amateur teams for CDL points. For example in Major 4, we could have:

• Week 1, Qualifier Matches

• Week 2, Online Tournament, easy format for be: 12 franchise teams with 4 AM teams start in the Upper Double elimination Bracket. 4 AM teams start in the Lower bracket. That results in 4 rounds of the Upper Bracket, 7 rounds of the Lower Bracket, a Grand Finals, and 20 teams being included. The CDL would give CDL points to the franchises based on where they finish. Overall, the tournament could run between two to three days over the weekend.

• Week 3, Qualifier Matches

• Week 4, Major

This freshens the Major cycle and breaks up the continuous online matches while giving fans more tournaments to watch against new competition. 

Overall, the League needs to find more ways for players to compete across all levels. This doesn’t mean increasing prize pools or putting loads of more money into the circuit. It just means finding unique and fun ways to get competitive players motivated and playing the game at the highest level. While the majority of the work needs to be done outside of NA, the NA system also desperately needs an overhaul.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

For outside regions, having a variation of the Elite competition is a very important start. The Elite competition is one of the best innovations the League did for Tier 2, but this will be the 5th season with it included yet they have not expanded it or innovated in any other way. This would lead to more orgs coming in & higher visibility for regional LANs. The goal should be growing the player base in each region so third parties can throw LANs if the CDL can’t afford to.

The League needs to find ways to make regional circuits better. Players from APAC, MENA, and LATAM shouldn’t be forced to do nothing until Challenger Champs or paying thousands to attend open LANs in the states. There are easy solutions that must be put in place instantly such as separating North & South LATAM, making MEA an actual region, and working with local orgs & brands to bring the spotlight back onto COD. While many will focus on the budgeting problems, the key would be just giving players opportunities to compete and giving the regions a chance to grow. With a coverage site like BreakingPoint, we can help give greater visibility to these regional Elites, online tournaments, and LANs to help further grow each region. 

If we continue to allow regions like APAC, LATAM, MENA, and EU to die while limiting the player base to 18+ while at the same time heavily limiting the professional slots and pay, what are we actually doing here? Each year, everyone in the community from the top to the bottom should be pushing the scene further. Not excluding players, limiting opportunities, and pushing talent to other esports.

These are just some of the issues that are currently plaguing the Call of Duty League, many of which don’t touch on the actual professional play, the death of the SND scene, the impact of shutting down GameBattles, the negative impact that pro points caused, the lack of different tournament structures being used, whether the esport needs to return to consoles, and the problem with motivating players to stream & create content. There are many issues that if corrected, could make Call of Duty one of the premier esports in the World. The problem will always be finding creative solutions and breaking through the negativity to motivate everyone to do better. With another Treyarch title coming up, I want nothing more than one of the best competitive seasons to occur and flourish this upcoming year!