Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 hasn’t even been released yet and the game is already facing a wave of criticism. Fans immediately noted huge changes in the open beta, but they may not be sticking around for the final game.
Now, if you seek out what feedback fans are giving to Infinity Ward, you might be overwhelmed by all the little details that are being brought up. To keep things simple, here are the basics changes they have made to 6v6 matches:
- Only four perks equipped. Two activate after you earn the requisite number of points
- Players do not show up on the minimap when they shoot or sprint
- No name tags on enemies when you aim at them
- Infinity Ward is trying to remove slide canceling
As you can imagine, these are conventions that Call of Duty players were used to for years. They had worked out their gameplay styles and team tactics around them, and to see these changes means having to readjust how they play. I think it’s fair to say that people might not even feel they are playing Call of Duty anymore.
We have used CharlieIntel as a source for some of our prior Call of Duty coverage. In this tweet shared on Reddit, he airs his grievances on the changes to the minimap, pointing out that it had been part of the game for fifteen years.
Now, some fans have pointed out a little remembered tweet from two years ago. Sledgehammer Games co-founder Michael Condrey was asked about the lack of a ranked play mode. He tweeted out in response that some game design decisions were not made by the developers themselves. Activision’s central technology and production teams, who looked at metrics like analytics, matchmaking, dedicated servers, monetization, etc, focused on these metrics and setting company goals, over the needs and desires of the actual community itself.
Condrey is a veteran of the industry and worked on five of those Call of Duty games, released between 2010 and 2017, in his capacity as Sledgehammer’s studio head. He would have significant credibility, not only in knowing the ins and outs at Activision, but also in making the games, as well as in working to understand the franchise’s community. While what he described then may no longer be the complete story for the company and franchise today, it is a fitting explanation for why these games would start having changes that fans would not welcome.
In the bigger picture, Call of Duty is certainly one of the foundations of modern AAA gaming, but the franchise has not stayed at the top of the mountain in its particular niche in the game industry. Its publisher Activision made over $ 1 billion on the combined sales of Destiny and Hearthstone in 2015. A battle royale game, PUBG, made over $ 1.5 billion in 2017. These free online games like PUBG and Fortnite have already outdone Call of Duty in terms of number of players and the amount of revenue they have generated, despite being comparatively newer games.
While part of the reaction from Activision has been to make their own free-to-play and battle royale versions of Call of Duty, the mainline series itself also needs to adjust to make its own changes to meet newer players halfway, players who may be coming from other games but could be enticed into this game. While Activision has to balance its desire to win over these newer players to keeping older players, their games may go through these sudden, random mutations. But then again, since this has all come up in the beta, it may no longer be relevant if they’re removed in the final game. We will find out soon enough.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will release for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on both Steam and Battle.net on October 28, 2022.
Source: PCGamer
