No one will deny that Warzone has its problems, but usually, Operators aren’t the main focus of bad design. Season 6 dropped with a lot of new goodies to sort through, including new weapons, new skins, and balancing changes that promise to shake up the META.
Sadly, one of the new Operator skins ‘Gaia’ has since dominated Warzone with its very chameleon-like blending, hiding in plain sight. And this has been far from a plus for the game and wider community.
Warzone 2’s Most OP Skin Nerfed
Operator Gaia was the single worst thing to come out of the new Season. Its unforgiving ability to blend into the surroundings and cause problems to a player’s tracking gives such a large advantage to the user of this skin that it’s quite literally game breaking. The wood texture and the many transparent holes in the body of this Operator skin provided it with an incredible advantage that has catapulted it to the position of being the best skin in Warzone.
Activision decided to increase the VFX around the skin in an attempt to remedy this, putting it more in line with the Blackcell version. The intent was to increase visibility around the skin and separate it from the environment, making it easier to spot and less of an unfair advantage.
However, adding a slight glow around the main body hardly solved the problems in this skin. Large transparent holes in the cosmetic allow the background to bleed through while the muted tones still blend into almost any backdrop, and it’s still impossible to determine the shape of the Operator.
I have had the displeasure of facing this skin in a gunfight on more occasions than I would care to admit. In each fight, I either lose track of the enemy or I never it standing in plain sight. I’m swiftly sent to the Gulag only to face another equipped with the skin and the cycle repeats itself. A skin that gives any competitive advantage at all is simply a blemish on the game’s integrity, and given the nerf had no effect, it should simply be removed entirely.
How Does the Community Feel?
But don’t just take my word for it. The community has been in uproar since the release of this new skin in Season 6, which prompted many posts on Reddit begging for the skin to be nerfed. One Reddit user, qwazimoda99, posted a video of them being taken down by a Gaia-skinned enemy hiding in plain sight. After watching it myself, I still cannot see the tree, even when I know exactly where it is.
It shouldn’t be crazy to think that an enemy lying down in broad daylight would be very visible, and yet the Gaia skin allows you to completely blend in with the surroundings. The Gulag is hard enough with horrible sound and annoying capture-the-flag objective, but now we have to be terrified of every dark corner?
Even after the nerfs, users report that the changes hardly make a difference. If that doesn’t speak to how overpowered this supposedly inconsequential aesthetic skin is, I don’t know what will.
For now, the skin is still available for all who purchased the base Battle Pass and is not disabled in Ranked, still giving users the advantage. The Gaia’s base design is too problematic for Warzone, and surprisingly, Activision still gave this abomination the greenlight and shipped it to players.
It is hard to believe that any changes other than its complete removal will be enough to bring it in line with the integrity of Warzone. Sadly, it’s not known whether this skin will be fixed before or after Modern Warfare 3 drops, and that is a worrying thought. As such, we will just have to look to the future and wait for Activision to fix this oversight.
Be sure to check out our content on all things Call of Duty as we move toward Modern Warfare 3.
