Sledgehammer Games is wasting no time gathering beta feedback and implementing fixes. We know they are already looking into the spawn system (those changes are coming at launch). As the second beta weekend goes live, so does the first patch. Let’s take a look at a few of the changes.
Ground War
Vehicles driven by the player no longer have limited fuel.
It’s an easy change and the right one. In the first weekend, tanks quickly ran out of fuel and turned into mobile spawn points until they were blown up. Tanks quickly became a non-factor as the matches dragged on.
Popov Power (Ground War)
Added collision near Reactor Beta to prevent players from accessing an unintended location.
It didn’t take long for players to figure out a way to get into areas where they could shoot players but couldn’t take damage. At least Sledgehammer Games is quick with the fixes.
Guardian-SC (Killstreak)
Decreased health from 550 to 400 (-27%)
Decreased lifetime from 120s to 60s (-50%)
Another good change from the developers. Guardians were littered throughout the maps in the first beta weekend. The health changes, and especially how long they last, should make this killstreak less of a headache. Increasing the level cap to 30 will also get folks trying other killstreaks.
UIX
Enemy Operators will now display a red nameplate above their head.
The devs talked about addressing operator visibility and their leaning toward making enemy operators pop more.
Striker (Submachine Gun)
Decreased near-medium damage from 39 to 36.
Decreased near-medium damage range from 24m to 19m (-21%).
Decreased medium damage range from 30m to 25m (-17%).
Decreased far-medium damage from 28 to 27.
Decreased minimum damage from 23 to 21.
Increased headshot damage multiplier from 1.2x to 1.3x.
Increased lower-arm damage multiplier from 1x to 1.1x.
The devs touched on how they believed the Striker was outperforming Assault Rifles. And there was enough data to show the Striker was way too strong since it’s the only weapon getting changes in this patch.
And finally, we are seeing a decrease in the slide to sprint delay by 200ms. With slide canceling returning in Modern Warfare 3, many players thought the delay between the slide and spriting again was too much. We’ll see if this 200ms is enough to get slide canceling to feel more like it did in the Modern Warfare 2019.
The second beta weekend is now live for all PlayStation players and those who pre-ordered on Xbox/PC. The beta opens up for everyone on Saturday, October 14.
