In case you didn’t know, Infinity Ward officially announced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 yesterday. While Modern Warfare 2019 gave us a new game engine alongside other new stuff for the franchise’s multiplayer mode, it wasn’t exactly perfect. Old school Call of Duty fans lamented the game’s slower (campier) focus, as well as some new additions that didn’t exactly help make the multiplayer component better.
We know it’s early days, but we’ve compiled the top 10 things we want to see (and don’t want to see) in Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer (in no particular order).
Top 10 Things We Want to See (and Not See) in Modern Warfare Multiplayer:
Lose the Damn Doors!
While most Call of Duty vets found Modern Warfare to be a slower multiplayer affair, one thing that added to that slowness was the doors. Not only did these doors promote camping by hiding behind ’em, but they were indestructible, too!
Infinity Ward, please don’t put doors in every part of the map in Modern Warfare 2! Or at least make them breakable?
Bring Back the Classic Prestige System
You know the saying about not fixing things that aren’t broken? That applies exactly with how Infinity Ward changed Modern Warfare’s Prestige system, but not for the better.
Just bring back the classic Prestige system. Let us unlock one item permanently from prestiging, give us a new emblem, calling card and whatnot, and call it a day. No one will complain about it if you do, Infinity Ward.
Feature a Proper Firing Range
While Modern Warfare 2019 featured the Gunsmith and a ton of ways to customize your weapons, players couldn’t test them out unless they jump into a match. Given how attachments affected from aim down sight speed, hip fire spread and the like, it’s important for gamers to be able to test these out in practice before using them in the wild.
Hopefully, we’ll get a proper firing range in Modern Warfare 2, as this feature has been around in past Call of Duty games.
Fix the Spawns!
If there’s one thing Modern Warfare 2019 was notoriously bad at, it was spawns. There were instances where we’d spawn right in front of someone, and for the most part, spawns were super easy to predict, that spawn camping was pretty easy to do in certain maps.
Good and Proper Maps (Three-Lane or Otherwise)
While some Call of Duty fans might not like Treyarch’s tried-and-true formula of three-lane maps, that’s way better than getting another Azhur Caves, or Picadilly.
Infinity Ward should make sure that players are easily visible in maps, and give us balance experience regardless where you spawn.
Let’s hope we get a few proper three-lane maps, as well as ones that might not offer it, but give a balanced experience.
Stop Doing Stealth Changes and Hiding Tweaks
While we almost always get patch notes for every title update released by Infinity Ward, Modern Warfare 2019 is probably the first Call of Duty game I remember where devs did stealth changes (read: unannounced changes) in every patch. I mean, why? Why hide the weapon, perk changes from players? We’ll know about it anyway, and it’s just a baffling move that should not happen again.
Lower the Space Needed for the Game’s Files
This is an odd thing to include here, but it must part of it just for the sake of our HDD’s! Modern Warfare 2019 was one of the worst when it came to downloading updates, as each one made the game files more bloated than it already is! For some odd reason, Modern Warfare patches consisted of 20GB or even 30GB monsters that made the game eat up more than half of a console’s storage space. It got so bad that some people even had to choose between keeping Modern Warfare installed, or have 3-5 games in its place.
We’ve seen Infinity Ward lower the disk space needed for Warzone, and how the devs now let players choose which part of the game they want to keep installed (single-player, Spec Ops, multiplayer). Let’s hope that for Modern Warfare 2, we won’t need to download gargantuan file sizes for patches, and that it won’t eat up a ton of storage space on our gaming platforms.
Have Streaks Loop
You remember those old Call of Duty games where you did so well that your ‘streaks looped? You can earn your fourth streak, and then earn enough points or kill enough enemies that you’ll earn your first one again and so on? Yeah, that wasn’t allowed in Modern Warafre. While I have a hunch that Infinity Ward did that to make sure noobs don’t get stomped in multiplayer, it kind of made trying to stay alive after getting the third streak pointless. Heck, one can argue that after getting your third streak and not respawning is kind of handicapping your team. Outside of emblems and player cards, there was no point in staying alive after getting your third streak. That needs to change, please.
Let good gamers get their streaks again. If they can pull it off, why not let them? It doesn’t make any sense not to, outside of protecting the “newbies” of course.
Bring Back the Old Radar/Mini Map
Possibly one of the biggest design decisions that up to this day I am not a fan of is how Infinity Ward changed the mini map/radar to NOT show players firing weapons without suppressors. This has been a multiplayer shooter staple for almost every game. Firing unsilenced weapons made you appear as a red dot, while configuring your weapon with a suppressor meant you downed enemies slower (there is always a drawback for using it), but you went by undetected.
Truth be told, I don’t expect this to change given how Infinity Ward seems to cater to the lowest common denominator (read: less skilled) when designing multiplayer, which will lead us to the last and possibly most glaring thing we want changed…
Less Campy Focus
Regardless if you liked Modern Warfare 2019 or not, it’s hard to argue how the game’s multiplayer is a camper’s paradise. It gave players unlimited claymores, doors to hide behind, maps that offered good vantage points for campers, weapons that you don’t need to silence that are great for camping, and so on.
If you’re wondering why this was the case, Infinity Ward themselves admitted that Modern Warfare was made to be slower for newbies. Heck, it even used “endless placs to hide” as a selling point, which meant the studio knew that it was slowing the game down considerably so. While I learned to play through it (and even use it to my advantage), I got to admit, it wasn’t as fun. Going 45-3 in a match didn’t really mean I was skillful, but rather, I knew the best places to hide, and how to exploit players who wanted to run and gun.
Perhaps we can find a good compromise in Modern Warfare 2? One can hope. What do you want (and don’t want) to see in Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer? Share your thoughts down in the comments.
