While the Modern Warfare 2 Beta isn’t exactly perfect, Scump is optimistic that with just a few key changes, Infinity Ward could turn this year’s release into a “really good” Call of Duty title.
As the second week of the Modern Warfare 2 Beta gets underway, everyone is now chiming in with their hot takes.
For some, early impressions are positive in light of specific changes in this year’s iteration. For others, missing features and a few questionable design choices have left room for improvement.
For the King of CoD himself, Scump is more in the latter camp. Although he’s not onboard with every decision just yet, he believes Modern Warfare 2 could be “really good” with just a handful of tweaks.
It boils down to the following: time-to-kill (TTK) being too quick, the Dead Silence issue, and the contentious state of the mini-map.
Kicking off the discussion in the latest OpTic podcast, Shotzzy asked for “higher TTK and Dead Silence [as a Perk].” As for why the noise cancelling effect isn’t already a Perk, as it has been in many previous CoD’s, Scump claims it’s due to the popularity of Warzone.
“They want Call of Duty [multiplayer] to play like Warzone, but why give a f**k? Separate the two. This is multiplayer and this is Warzone,” he said before yelling “give us [Dead Silence] holy sh*t.”
In its current form, with Dead Silence functioning as a Field Upgrade, players have to wait for the ability to come off cooldown. As a result, footstep audio can be heard from all players throughout a vast majority of the match. It’s only in brief intervals with this effect active that players can sneak around on flanks and make bold plays.
“Modern Warfare 2019 was the worst S&D experience I’ve ever had,” Shotzzy chimed in, casting the blame on the lack of Dead Silence. “We had to call a [strategy] once we had Dead Silence.”
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If Infinity Ward was to revert this shift and lump Dead Silence back in as a Perk, Scump and Shotzzy agreed the game be one step closer to a more enjoyable competitive experience.
As for TTK, Scump joked that he might need to load into multiplayer matches with an Armor Plate from Warzone just to survive. Rapid TTK has been a common complaint since the Beta went live, so with near-unanimous criticism, there’s a fair chance we see a slight improvement here when the full game arrives.
Last but not least comes the issue of the mini-map. While Scump only briefly mentioned this particular aspect, he argued public games are more enjoyable with red dots enabled for gunfire.
Currently in Modern Warfare 2, all weapons are essentially silenced by default. Firing your gun does not reveal your position on the radar. While many were quick to voice their displeasure with this change in the first week of the Beta, Infinity Ward soon doubled down and “refused” to acknowledge the community demand. So in this regard, we might not see any changes as devs “do not want to punish players for firing their weapons.”
The Modern Warfare 2 discussion begins at the 12:00 mark below.
Overall though, Scump is confident the game can shape up well in time for the full release.
“I really like the maps,” he said, and “gunplay felt good.” So with a few adjustments to the aforementioned areas, perhaps we’ll be in for a good year ahead.