It’s only been a few days since the beta version of the newest title in the Modern Warfare series – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 kicked off. With the release, we see some surprising first impressions which may have puzzled the fans – such as an uncustomary high amount of time-to-kill (TTK), and a struggle with player visibility in multiplayer games.
To answer these questions, the developers from the game’s studio, Sledgehammer Games, have shed some light on their upcoming plans to balance the game.
The Reasoning Behind 150 Health Points
As per the developers, increasing the TTK leads to a feeling that some progress is made when you queue repeatedly for a game, and instigating that feeling among the players has been a major focus of the studio. Zach Hodson, the Design Director at Sledgehammer Games told NME:
“One of the big things we focused on was when you play that much, you want to get better. You want to feel like your investment of time is actually yielding some results, otherwise it ends up feeling like a very flat experience. We found that when we increased the TTK, it felt like there was progress being made.”
Based on this belief, Sledgehammer used the trial and error method and ultimately locked in 150 health points for each player. Hudson said, “We tried a lot of different health values, we even tried armor for a little bit, we tried a lot of different things.” He also added that the developers had to tweak the weapons as well as movement to make sure they had the perfect combination.
The Issue With Visibility And Future Plans
One issue that has persisted in the feedback from the beta version is that it’s too difficult to spot players in multiplayer matches. This is because the nametag that hovers above the players has been removed in MW3, making it harder to spot the enemies as well as to distinguish between your teammates and the opponents.
Regarding this, Greg Reisdorf, the Multiplayer Creative Director of the game, said, “For launch we’re going to go deeper into the name tag land, and really address that more.” This means that the developers are reconsidering their choice of removing the player tags, and we may even see its return in the full launch.
Further, Reisdorf acknowledged that there have been some tuning issues with some of the weapons, especially the Striker and the team is working to solve these concerns. Along with this, he mentioned that the delay that is presently slowing down the ‘slide canceling’ mechanism will also be improved in the later updates.
So, the nametags might make a return, weapon balance issues are under fixing, and apparently, the long time to kill is for the greater good. Do you think this transparency from the game developers, and their eagerness to listen to feedback will make Modern Warfare 3 a success?
