Call of Duty Zombies has received a direct nerf to Directed Mode, which aims to make it much more difficult to farm camouflages and play the mode in a way that isn’t just about doing a straight run through the egg Easter.
The task for Zombie camouflages is long. You will have to fight your way through thousands and thousands of zombies on each weapon to progress.
If you want the Nebula camouflage, the reward for unlocking all the Zombies camouflage challenges, it’s going to take a while. So rather than using other glitches like the Terminus boat bug that gives you a consistent farming location, some players choose to use directed mode and take advantage of the tower capping.
Although working for normal multiplayer weapon camos was made easier in Season 1, the latest patch now makes camo challenges on the Zombies side much more difficult.
Significantly nerfed directed mode for farming
Directed mode was originally designed to make traversing zombie Easter eggs a little easier, and it seems like Treyarch wants to make that its sole focus.
This is ultimately a good addition considering the inaccessibility of the Zombies story in previous CoD entries. For those who don’t want to spend hours researching what to do, a guided experience is much more relaxed.
The same goes for agricultural camouflage. Directed mode ends at lap 15, keeping things relatively simple and relaxed compared to the lap counter increasing as you continue the job.
If you’re even the slightest bit experienced, you’re not going to die in Round 15, and it will be much easier to maintain powerful weapons that can easily end rounds.
ActivisionHowever, a nerf introduced in Black Ops 6’s January 3 patch made this process much more difficult. The nerf reads:
- Increased time between turns and delay between zombie spawns after five looped turns at the turn cap in directed mode.
How long is this extension? This is an increased delay of approximately 30 seconds between rounds. Rounds already have a delay of around 20 seconds, so it will take almost a minute to move from one round to the next once you hit this artificially imposed cap.
Considering how late in the game it would have to happen for this to start triggering, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a directly targeted nerf to the mode. Gamers on Reddit were not happy.
“You will play the game the way we want you to play it,” one Reddit user remarked.
“All the people talking about ‘just play the game’ are only saying that because they already put Nebula in directed mode,” said another.
“Lmao must love people who chime in to tell f**king how other people should enjoy their game. Jesus guys, if you don’t like the idea of directed mode, DON’T PLAY. Some people like to grind this way and that’s okay, not everyone needs to enjoy things the way you do,” explained one user who likes the casual grinding experience.
This is a problem that could be alleviated by simply shortening the duration of Zombie camouflages but, for now, players will have to find other ways to overcome all of these challenges.
However, not everything is bad about this patch. Certain bugs preventing the completion of Citadel of the Dead motivated the developers to extend the time limit for obtaining rewards for completing the mode without the help of directed mode. Now players can practice in Directed and try the full Easter Egg.
