It only took a few days for Modern Warfare 3 players to get worn out on the game’s new limited-time mode, Vortex.
The idea behind Vortex had players excited when it was first announced along with season one, but the execution simply didn’t land for many, according to social media sentiment like a Reddit thread from Jan. 6.
In Vortex, a free-for-all game mode where there are no teams, players spawn in with their own loadouts on remixed versions of MW3 maps. One player, however, will randomly spawn with the Ray Gun from Zombies, a one-hit kill weapon, and they’re marked with a red outline to differentiate them from other players. But other than that, the LTM functions just like the regular Call of Duty Free-for-All mode does.
“I thought it would be a one-vs-five with five players killing whoever had the Ray Gun but it’s actually just a lazy reskin of FFA with a Ray Gun that nobody uses,” the original poster of the thread said.
One player suggested that you should only get points when you have the Ray Gun, and others agreed, claiming that the Ray Gun really didn’t feel like it mattered.
“I had three matches of this game mode,” the player said. “Even if I got 90 percent of the kills with a Ray Gun there was always one guy who didn’t even touch the Ray Gun and they ended up winning because they had a few more kills than me.”
My experience with Vortex has been very similar. The Ray Gun didn’t feel very impactful, with many players not even seeking it out, instead choosing to post up and look into spawn areas to get free kills on players as they spawned back in.
One positive thing players seem to agree on is that the remixed maps are done well. Satan’s Quarry (Quarry), Sporeyard (Scrapyard), and Tetanus (Rust) were all well-received.
“I would’ve just rather them make MWZ round-based maps in those Vortex maps, they are cool reimagined versions that feel a bit wasted if they only do Vortex with it,” another player said.
While many find the mode disappointing, playing it isn’t required to earn all of the Vortex: War’s Domain event rewards, so you can avoid it entirely until it’s removed on Jan. 17.
