[Xbox] The installation process for MW ‘19 is quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.

[Fiery Phoenix]

I go on the Xbox store, find the game 50% off, and realize that I've yet to play the campaign I've only heard good things about, so I go ahead and choose to install it. The game starts downloading so-called 'packs' that range from 10 MB to a few GB. I was pretty sure this wasn't the game. Then I realized there was a 88 GB install for the 'base' game. I go ahead and install that.

Now, I launch the game, be greeted with a message asking me to create an account or bust, and then… ding ding, I can't play the campaign. There's even MORE shit to download before I can the play the campaign.

Fine. I install Campaign data packs from the in-game menu.

But wait, I'm still not able to play the campaign. Huh? Oh right, I'm missing the Campaign/Specs Ops compatibility pack. Right, go ahead and download that.

But wait again, my game is now standing at something like 150+ GB, even though I only ever wanted to play the campaign and have exactly zero interest in anything else. Yeah, no. You have to download all the other crap you don't care about first, then (and only then) you get to play your campaign.

This is honestly such a convoluted process I'm not sure what the hell IW was thinking. Even if you're only interested in the campaign like me, you have to download the nearly 100 gigs of Warzone. They made it such that Warzone is the base game, and everything else (campaign, regular MP, etc.) is bonus content you download on top of it. If this isn't the definition of shoving crap down your throat, I don't know what is.

I've never gone through so many hoops trying to install a game, much less a game that I don't intend to spend more than a dozen hours playing. It's now taking up the space of at least 2-3 full-size games, despite me only wanting to play a single mode and be done with it. I don't know how IW/Activision managed to fuck this up. There's literally all sorts of different things they could've done to avoid this mess, yet here we are.

 

[ASleepingMonkey]

The idea on paper is great. You don't need the campaign files after you finish but want to play MP, great, you can delete it!

But it's split up in all these bizarre ways that you might as well just have everything installed, which is really annoying

 

[Lowrys]

Yeah I went through exactly the same torture a few weeks ago. Needed two online guides just to work out how to install the fucking campaign. Utterly ridiculous.

 

[EvilBoris]

It's really bad now. Are there things that are shared between cod games?

My game and what I had installed seemed to get out of sync and I couldn't work out why

 

[Pyro]

I feel like Activision & co. know it's bad but that they can ultimately get away with dog shit file size/compression because it's CoD and that people will just make room for it instead of other games.

And I don't think it's purposeful like some folks say, like its some kind of dark pattern, it's just really low on the list of stuff to do.

 

[Reckless Onion]

I had the same issue on playstation, just deleted it all.. what a fucking mess

 

[Mechaplum]

I think they give zero damns about campaign only players unfortunately. You're worth nothing to Activision.

 

[Fergie]

Yep the multiple packs and mix and matching nonsense they have for MW is absolutely insane. One update and that can corrupt the link between them. Even though it's installed, re-installing the packs brings up multiplayer/SP suspended etc. Have to delete everything and reinstall.

Feels like it wasn't built up from scratch this way and something hobbled together later on. It's just a mess.

 

[RedbullCola]

One word: Warzone. Warzone is huge business to publisher due to season pass sales, so now the game it shipped with has become a sacrifice.

 

[Hoggle]

I can't actually play the campaign because I don't have Xbox live. Even searching for all the dlc I need it always shows I'm missing one pack and I need a live account to access it.

 

[Tigerfish419]

That's CoD for ya, no other game has this issue of having to download multiple packs just for the shit to work.

I can't actually play the campaign because I don't have Xbox live. Even searching for all the dlc I need it always shows I'm missing one pack and I need a live account to access it.

Click to shrink...

You don't need Xbox Live to play the campaign so not sure what's happening there.

 

[Hoggle]

That's CoD for ya, no other game has this issue of having to download multiple packs just for the shit to work.



You don't need Xbox Live to play the campaign so not sure what's happening there.

Click to shrink...

I need gold to download the DLC packs that are required to play the campaign.

 

[Tigerfish419]

I need gold to download the DLC packs that are required to play the campaign.

Click to shrink...

Have you went to my games and apps and went to manage CoD and download the packs there? also have you tried the Xbox App that might work.

 

[Stoney Mason]

I went through the process over a year ago to try to play some multiplayer and figuring it out was enough to make me uninstall and never try to install again. It's a bloated convoluted nightmare.

 

[Creepy Woody]

Cold War was like it too. Played both on PS4 and took some troubleshooting. It's so overly convoluted.

 

[Deleted member 46948]

For sure, went through this bullshit with MW and Cold War earlier this year. Took some googling.

 

[Hoggle]

Have you went to my games and apps and went to manage CoD and download the packs there? also have you tried the Xbox App that might work.

Click to shrink...

Yep. Downloaded every dlc lack I had in there. It seems to be a common problem a bunch of others have mentioned it on Reddit.

 

[Deleted member 16908]

Warzone is poison. Every new game in the series has to hook into it and it has turned into a nightmare.

 

[Man Called Aerodynamics]

Yeah it sucks. I too just wanted to play the campaign but it took hours to figure out which packs were necessary and then to actually download and install them, which kept erroring. The whole point of a console is that it's not this hard.

The campaign is worth it though, it's excellent.

 

[Zombegoast]

Cold War MP is less then 100gb and Zombies is optional and yet it uses assets from the campaign but doesn't require to download the whole fucking game

 

[J_Viper]

MW19 is maybe my favorite online shooter ever, but I had to stop playing it because I couldn't get the damn files to download right on PS5

Cold War MP is less then 100gb and Zombies is optional and yet it uses assets from the campaign but doesn't require to download the whole fucking game

Click to shrink...

Is Cold War worth checking out now?

 

[Zombegoast]

MW19 is maybe my favorite online shooter ever, but I had to stop playing it because I couldn't get the damn files to download right on PS5


Is Cold War worth checking out now?

Click to shrink...

They have more maps, guns score streaks. The new maps are mostly good but weapon balance is overall bad like the Akimbo Marshal. Fire Team Elimination is like Black Out and wished it got more attention

What kills this game for me is the SBMM

Edit: if it's an option for you, Blops2 with the plutonium mod is the best option on PC

 

[ron_bato]

Every time a new patch comes out I'm unable to play the damn thing until I redownload all the compatibility packs which were already installed. Deleted the fucking thing after it happened for the third time. This is the worst system of game installs and updates ever.

 

[Fiery Phoenix]

I was thinking to myself, why not make Warzone a separate F2P install and have everything else be under MW? But I don't understand why that's such a difficult thing to do.

Warzone is poison. Every new game in the series has to hook into it and it has turned into a nightmare.

Click to shrink...

Is this seriously their plan?! Fuck me if I buy another COD game.

 

[Megamind.]

Its horrible. On PS4 its the same mess too. It takes up so much space that I end up uninstalling it if I dont play it much. Sometimes I feel like playing it, I just dread the installing process. Because I have to install it, download what ever updates there are. Open the game, download packs, and keep doing that process till I got it right. Its takes so much time.

 

[gnexus]

A year or so ago, I tried to play the MW campaign on Xbox, and I seriously had to redownload everything like 2-3 times. I downloaded all the packs, and all the addons and everything and it... just. wouldn't. work. I seriously burned through like 600 gigs in bandwidth in two-three weeks from this game. Such a mind boggling design, but I get it. Gotta focus on warzone for streaming and lulz and MTX. Cool, but can we at least play some basic campaign too without doing backflips?

 

[calibos]

"UPDATE REQUIRES RESTART"

-Call of Duty everyday

 

[GlitchyDegree]

Damn, everything I'm hearing in this thread makes me glad I never got into MW. Sounds like it would've burned through my data cap.

 

[ZeroWil]

I don't know if it's still the case but the worst part of this is that one or two of the packs are actually useless (for MP). IIRC there is some duplicate map data that prevents you from joining a match, requiring you keep one or two of the packs uninstalled so that you can play!

 

[Roli]

Was just about to install it on my Series S as I had an itch to play COD again, but after seeing the problem you described I was just not in the mood to deal with it.

 

[FisherTea]

It's absolutely horrendous and a complicated mess. Ended up uninstalling it due to the storage it takes up and the micromanagement of DLC, addons and texture packs.

 

[J_Viper]

They have more maps, guns score streaks. The new maps are mostly good but weapon balance is overall bad like the Akimbo Marshal. Fire Team Elimination is like Black Out and wished it got more attention

What kills this game for me is the SBMM

Edit: if it's an option for you, Blops2 with the plutonium mod is the best option on PC

Click to shrink...

Thanks!

Im on console so I might give it a shot. I'm in a COD mood, but I don't feel like fucking around with MW's fucked up installation process, and Vanguard looks like it coming in hot

 

[Lewpy]

Don't get me started on that. I was in your shoes a few weeks ago, wanting to only play the campaign. The amount of bullshit hoops I had to go through was ridiculous.

I could give 2 shits about multiplayer Warzone and being online, yet that is front and centre during the whole process of trying to play the only thing I was interested in.

Having to install 100+ Gb to play single player is a joke. It was immediately uninstalled the moment the credits rolled.

 

[plain]

It's no better on PS5. The shit is a complete mess.

Uninstalled and never bothered with it again.

 

[Dog]

Yeah it's a mess, hopefully vanguard is better.

 

[Deleted member 7148]

I had this problem with Cold War on PS5 and eventually I uninstalled all of it and didn't even touch multiplayer or finished the campaign because of it. I remember trying to simply remove Warzone and when I did it wiped out the campaign too even though I never chose to remove that component.

 

[DanteSparda504]

I mean, it's nice because it means it's not going to unnecessarily download things you don't want to utilize and it wasn't overly complicated or cumbersome to use either.

The choice is best for large games like that.

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

Wait, since I haven't kept up with COD in forever and been wanting to play Modern Warfare Remake campaign,and with the dynamic scaling resolution it benefits nicely with PS5/Series X in BC mode automatically, isn't Warzone the free one you can download like right now off PSN and Xbox Live separately?


So they force you to download the massive Warzone just to get to the campaign and even regular MP?

Blegh.

 

[OSHAN]

I have Cold War on PS5 and as far as I can tell I just have mp installed--no campaign, zombies, or warzone--and it is close to 150gb.

 

[HylianMaster2020]

Looking to add to the fire they made an extraordinary game but the install process is scary.

 

[BradleyLove]

It's actually even worse.

Randomly MW will "forget" you have these packs downloaded and installed, and so the cycle repeats. I've had to download these things four times so far.

 

[Stoney Mason]

So they force you to download the massive Warzone just to get to the campaign and even regular MP?

Blegh.

Click to shrink...

You don't have to download Warzone. You just have to download a bunch of multiplayer or campaign packs. The problem is, they don't specifically detail which packs you need. So you end up having to hunt down some Reddit posts which detail exactly which packs you need for which mode you want to play because it's not clear at all just by looking at the names of the packs.

My attitude is if they don't care to make the process as painless as possible then that shows their attitude towards the consumer.

 

[Noisepurge]

It is extremely annoying that they push Warzone so hard that you can't uninstall it and that's always the first on the menus.

I still play Modern Warfare multiplayer only, and like 75% of the menus push some Warzone/Coldwar/Vanguard season passes i have no use for and can't uninstall that shit taking up hundreds of gigabytes in space...

Now I'm just curious to see how long will they keep updating Modern Warfare with new COD games, will i see 12 different games in my MW menu and have to still keep updating Warzone in 2025 and beyond? Wish they would just make a standalone Warzone game.

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

You don't have to download Warzone. You just have to download a bunch of multiplayer or campaign packs. The problem is, they don't specifically detail which packs you need. So you end up having to hunt down some Reddit posts which detail exactly which packs you need for which mode you want to play because it's not clear at all just by looking at the names of the packs.

My attitude is if they don't care to make the process as painless as possible then that shows their attitude towards the consumer.

Click to shrink...

Thank you for clarifying...oh boy, I guess I'm going to need to do so homework when I get the game.

 

[LilScooby77]

There's still matches that simply won't start because someone has too many multiplayer packs installed and there's no way to know who is the cause, so you just back out when you notice the match never loads up.

 

[Adam Tyner]

Are there any murmurs about native PS5/Xbox Series versions, or does it seem like this convoluted mess is what we're going to be stuck with the foreseeable future?

 

[TriangularDuck]

I don't play new CODs/Warzone solely because the installation sizes and structures. Hopefully they can figure it out, since Warzone seems pretty fun, but I'm not giving over a third of my PS5's drive to it.

 

[Aswitch]

Whew it's even more horrible trying to play just multiplayer as of late. I thiink a huge part of the issue is that you no longer need certain packs(which is still available to download in the store) with no blatant way to identify that you don't need to download it. There's like 3 multiplayer data packs 1,2, and 3 which no way to discern which is the latest one(i think the newer ones are smaller file size, but they don't explicitly tell you this in the store until after you download the damn thing. It is a fucking nightmare. Then there are the resolution packs for upgraded versions on top of that. Literally just deleted everything and started fresh and still ran into issues(certain maps wouldn't load and MW would crash). Figured it out, but overall a hot, convoluted mess.

 

[Iztok]

It's horrible, and they even had a gamebreaking bug with the installation process earlier in the year, which made it so you couldn't ever load into some MP maps.
They didn't even offer up a solution in months, having to rely on community workarounds which didn't always work.

It was a total disaster and only one of the ways this game failed in my eyes.

I think they did better with the separate install stuff on CW, it pretty much works the way you expect it to now, not sure why they couldn't backport the solution to MW.

 

[Azubah]

The entire stupid process turned me off of CoD entirely.