How Important is Your Operator Skin?
I don’t mind buying an occasional bundle from the store in DMZ, although it is often the weapon blueprint that determines my choice. Today I bought Overgrown 2, which includes the Ghillie Monster operator skin, to see if it offered any significant advantage. However, as I am not what you would call a “top tier” player, my subsequent experience and anecdotal evidence is hardly compelling. If you go prone in the desert, a shrubbery or among general herbidacious flora then it does offer a degree of camouflage. However, in suburban areas and the outlying villages of Al Mazrah, you look like a Wookie on a daytrip and I can’t see any advantage. So upon reflection, two questions spring to mind. Firstly, do any of the skins currently available in the game offer any tangible benefits? If not is it just a question of operator skins are 100% cosmetic and just about tickling a players fancy and getting them to put their hand in their pockets.
As to the tangible, practical benefits of specific operator skins, I am not aware of any hard data on the matter. The only observations I can bring to bear on the subject are those born out of common experience. IE What we can all see. As previously mentioned, ghillie suits do offer some camouflage in appropriate areas, depending on their respective colour. Similarly outfits that are predominantly black have benefits in darker areas and at extreme range. Ashika Island with its underground network and closely packed buildings favours darker coloured operator skins. Traditional operator skins featuring regular camouflage military apparel also follow suit. But these minor benefits do not make a player undetectable. A thermal scope on a weapon or a handheld spotter device reveals players regardless.
All the benefits listed above are situational and as DMZ feature a multitude of ecosystems, a green ghillie suit will only be beneficial in a limited amount of regions. It will potentially stand out due to contrast in others. And it is this latter point that may be the Achilles Heel of purely cosmetic operator skins. Especially those operator skins that are excessively colourful, and flamboyant. As Call of Duty frequently licences content from major pop culture franchises, there is currently a Shredder (from teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) operator skin available in the game. Although it is very striking and I can see the appeal, it stands out like a sore thumb in most in-game environments. Another consideration regarding non-standard operator skins is that they are more prone to clipping through walls, which can be fatal.
Overall, I think that the potential benefits of certain operator skins are modest and that as ever, it is the skill of the player that is the greatest factor in their success. I personally like the option to customise the look of my character in any video game I play and have my own particular preferences. Hence I have no objection to a broad selection of operator skins in the in-game store when playing DMZ. I won’t necessarily purchase “novelty” skins such as Rambo, John McClane and RoboCop, which were available in the previous version of Warzone. But I don’t have any “ideological problem” with such content being available in the game. Video games are a leisure activity and therefore they should be fun. The FPS genre has a tendency to attract some players who take it all very seriously, which can be wearisome. A little levity goes a long way.
