Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Developers Address Time to Kill Criticisms and Tweak Weapons in New Beta Update

Infinity Ward has addressed the state of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's time to kill and tweaked a handful of weapons in a new beta update.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's beta is coming to a close, but Infinity Ward is still updating the hell out of it. The latest update was pushed this morning before the beta officially winds down tomorrow. Per the patch notes, a bunch of weapons have been tuned following feedback from fans, including the ISO Nightshade SMG, which got a slight buff with damage improvements. The PPSH, Krait P68, Han 86, and Hyeon Burst all got various buffs as well, with the latter's headshot damage multiplier increasing from 1 to 1.1.

A handful of weapons got nerfed, but the most notable hit was taken by the M4 Hurricane variant, which had its damage decreased. Infinity Ward also used the update as an opportunity to address the game's time to kill, which was divisive in the first beta weekend for being far too fast. Following some adjustments, MW4's TTK is more in line with where Infinity Ward wants it to be.

"Over the weekend, we've been reviewing your gameplay and feedback carefully," said the studio. "We feel that TTK on average is much closer to where we wanted it to be after Weekend 1, but there's always room to refine individual weapons to make sure they're balanced across the board. These changes provide tuning for each class to do well at its role."

Being responsive to feedback is a big part of Infinity Ward's mission this year. Fans were frustrated with Modern Warfare 2 (2022) because it felt like Infinity Ward ignored or brushed off critiques about major aspects such as gameplay pacing, mini-map functionality, and SBMM. With Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward is trying to be more receptive.

"I think in MW2, we definitely didn't communicate as well as we should have," said Studio Multiplayer Creative Director Joe Cecot in an exclusive interview with IGN. "I think we've remedied that in crazy ways with this project. Even with the amount of stuff that I get sent to my desk to review like, "Hey, we want to respond to this." And then I review copy or I'm writing something, it's a huge shift. That's going to continue into live support and I think you see it at our studio head level. [Infinity Ward co-studio head] Mark Grigsby is posting, the Infinity Word account is posting, the Call of Duty account is posting, and they're all in unison posting. They're not separate from each other. I think it's really powerful and it feels really good to us."

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.