Competitive Call of Duty fans and pundits were left scratching their heads on more than one occasion during the first Black Ops 4 event of the season as numerous top assault rifle players struggled to keep up with their opponents and teammates.
Some of the most dominant main AR stars in recent years, like 100 Thieves’ Austin ‘SlasheR’ Liddicoat and Red Reserve’s Rhys ‘Rated’ Price, often struggled to take over matches in the way that we’ve become accustomed to at CWL Las Vegas, especially when they had an ICR in their hands.
However, OpTic Gaming’s Ian ‘Crimsix’ Porter believes that there may have been issues with the aim assist and bullet registration for assault rifles during long-range engagements at the LAN event.
He said: “Don’t think anyone has publicly said this yet but there is something severely wrong with bullet reg AND aim assist at distance with the non-stock AR’s on LAN.
“ICR bullet reg feels like a worse version of the AN94 from BO2. You literally have to lead shots.”
Don’t think anyone has publicly said this yet but there is something severely wrong with bullet reg AND aim assist at distance with the non-stock AR’s on LAN. ICR bullet reg feels like a worse version of the AN94 from BO2. You literally have to lead shots.
— Ian (@OpTic_Crimsix) December 11, 2018
Crimsix isn’t alone in his opinion – Lightning Pandas’ Dylan ‘MadCat’ Daly responded to the Twitter post, saying: “At least someone else thought that gun felt majorly different on LAN”
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Crimsix went on to say that he had originally thought the problem was only affecting the ICR – the most popular long-range weapon in the game – but that the same issue was present when he pulled out a Swordfish.
At least someone else thought that gun felt majorly different on LAN
— Dylan Daly (@MadCat) December 11, 2018
Yeup. I thought it was just the ICR but the Swordfish has that same sort of delay
— Ian (@OpTic_Crimsix) December 11, 2018
While nothing has been confirmed, the fact that so many top AR players seemed to perform worse on LAN than they have been online adds some credibility to what the veterans are saying.
If Crimsix is correct, and nothing is done to improve the problems that he has pinpointed, the competitive Call of Duty meta for Black Ops 4 may change entirely with teams moving away from classic long-range AR roles and adopt a different approach to the game.