several questions about Infinite Warfare vs. CoD: WWII (mostly interested in zombies)

[lewosch]

if anybody has played both;

1- which one has the bigger playerbase in public zombie matchmaking?
2- which game is closer to treyarch zombies, in terms of gameplay elements?
3- are the PC optimization of both games similar, which could give me similar framerates?
4- do you think buying the season pass would be waste of money, even with 50% discount?
5- are there a lot of cheaters who mess with players' stats without approval (like in BO3 pubs)?

thanks for reading and answering...

[It's about sending a message]

1- Going out on a limb, WW2. In IW zombies you cannot ready-up manually, you have to wait until the lobby is full. That alone kills off the entire public playerbase. Throughout the past 2 years I did play online a bunch, but finding a ZiS lobby (don't even bother with SP maps) can take anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes if you're in EU/NA. I haven't played WW2 zombies, but I am pretty sure you can ready-up manually, so there's no need for 4 players.

2- IW zombies.

3- Both games run fine, look up YT benchmarks if you want more in-depth numbers. You can play both with 4c4t or 2c4t, but 8 threads or 6 cores is preferred. Only having the former could max out your CPU at times and drop frame rates. BFB in IW zombies also has microstutter issues, at least for me. And SS and Attack both are harder to run than ZiS or Rave.

4- Depends. Rave is a great map, SS is alright, but bad for higher rounds, Attack is so-so and BBF is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. The super EE and its rewards are fun though and there's also boss battle mode, which you can use to practice boss fights or just mess about. I spent most of my time on ZiS. It's a great map with good music playing in the background, but the season pass benefits for being able to use director's cut is cool. You should find some other people with the DLC to make it worth it.

5- No cheaters who modify people's ♥♥♥♥ in zombies, a couple of idiots in MP. Keep in mind Activision doesn't care about IW, unlike BO3, so even if you manually report them there's a good chance they won't get banned. If you encounter a cheater in MP, just stop playing or try to find one of the other few active TDM lobbies.

Also you earn keys in both MP and zombies. So if you don't wanna play MP at all you can still earn keys via playing and doing contracts in zombies and spend them in the zombies shop or in the MP shop for bundles/crates. Weapon levels are also cross-mode, so you get a head start in MP if you played zombies prior and unlocked weapon attachments.

[lewosch]

thanks for the detailed reply.

1- BO3 zombies made me enjoy solo games more than before, so I can't really stand randoms in pubs anymore. actually I have a slight bias towards WW2 zombies, as its theme reminds me of dark, creepy and immersive atmosphere of WaW zombies; while IW zombies apparently doesn't take itself too seriously and puts the gameplay before storyline (probably not a bad thing anyway).

3- I'll find videos and watch them soon. the performance drop for me between Advanced Warfare and BO3 was somewhat big (for my desktop built in 2013); but considering IW and WW2 have the exact same system requirements (except disk space), I suppose they perform very similarly.

4- I think I may skip season pass if I decide to get IW, because WW2 seems to have a bigger community in MP (according to steam charts), so I could also benefit from MP maps, making me feel less overcharged. from what I've seen, IW's MP resembles a lot to BO3's MP; just like MW2 and MW3 feel almost the same thing, in terms of MP gameplay. it may sound silly, but futuristic setting with mechs in shooter games, and movements like wall-running, boost-jumping are instant turn-off for me.

5- it's really good then, if things aren't as severe as BO 2-3. I used to curse like crazy whenever encountering a cheater in online games years ago, but nowadays I'm scared to do it... if provoked enough, they can just decide to reset my stats & progress, or maybe crash my PC by using RCE exploit (in BO2).

[It's about sending a message]

One thing I might also want to add, IW has issues with most anti virus software. Either make an exclusion or disable it while you play. I've personally never had issues, but that's because my anti virus called common sense doesn't mess with IW's files. Windows Defender should be fine too.

[lewosch]

thanks for the info. I'll keep this in mind if a problem occurs, like a crash at launch.