Call of Duty League set to implement changes for SnD and Domination
Call of Duty League will reportedly receive changes for Search & Destroy and Domination modes in the official Modern Warfare competitive ruleset, which will affect official competitions as well as CDL playlist.
On Friday, February 14, Call of Duty League announced a handful of changes will be implemented into the official CDL ruleset, in a bid to fix some issues and make the competitive Call of Duty scene more exciting and more enjoyable for the players. The changes will include decreased round time limits for both Search & Destroy (SnD) and Domination.
As revealed, SnD rounds will be 30 seconds shorter, meaning they will go down from 2:00 minutes to 1:30, while Domination rounds will go down from six minutes to five, meaning that a game of Domination will no longer be longer than 10 minutes.
The said changes will go into effect Monday, February 17 and will apply to every game that uses competitive ruleset, including CDL, Challengers circuit, online GameBattles tournaments and the newly added feature to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which allows players to play games with the competitive ruleset. The first time we will get to see the new ruleset on the CDL and Challengers stage will be in Atlanta FaZe's home tournament, which is set to be kick off on February 22, at Gateway Center Arena.
Being that the ruleset will go into effect on Monday, the pro teams will have only five days to practise with the new rules ahead of the Atlanta tournament, and while it may be considered as a huge change with very short further notice, it will still provide all CDL and Challengers team with the level playing field, given they will all have the same amout of time to adapt to the changes.
It's safe to assume no team or player will get any advantage from that, unlike the controversial major update that was implemented into Call of Duty: MW ahead of the Launch Week, which was greeted with a great deal of dissatisfaction from some players, namely Ian "C6" Porter.
That said, the significant change in the timing could result in major shifts in strategies teams will use in their games. The 30 seconds change in SnD and one minute in Domination is not something to take lightly, yet only time will tell how players will adapt and overcome the new rules.
As of today, CDL have not revealed why they decided to implement the said changes, yet there is a reason to believe it may have something to do with the most recent London tournament ended. At the said event, some matches lasted longer than expected, which resulted in the tournament tuning later than initially planned, which became an issue because the venue was booked for a certain amount of time. That resulted in no official trophy ceremony or proper conclusion to the event, which was rather unfortunate to see, considering it was the first official CDL tournament, besides the Launch Week.
While our speculations are not confirmed yet, it's safe to assume the incident ushered CDL to make the needed changes to its ruleset in a bid to avoid similar situations in further events.
The Atlanta CDL event will run from February 22-23 and it will feature eight teams competing for CDL points. Present at the event will be Atlanta FaZe, Chicago Huntsmen, Florida Mutineers, London Royal Ravens, Minnesota RØKKR, OpTic Gaming Los Angeles, Paris Legion and Toronto Ultra.
Current standings in 2020 Call of Duty League:
1st CHI Huntsmen 70 pts – 2 events
2nd PAR Legion 40 pts – 2 events
3rd DAL Empire 30 pts – 2 events
4th LDN Royal Ravens 30 pts – 2 events
5th ATL FaZe 20 pts – 1 event
6th MIN RØKKR 20 pts – 1 event
7th FLA Mutineers 10 pts – 1 event
8th LA Guerrillas 10 pts – 2 events
9th NY Subliners 10 pts – 2 events
10th SEA Surge 10 pts – 2 events
11th TOR Ultra 10 pts – 2 events
12th OpTic Gaming LA 0 pts – 1 event
