Modern Warfare 2

[Ritterin Sophia]

Does MW2 have something similar to MW's hardcore MP mode? I used to love playing that on Live.

Yes it does.

[RogueIce]

I really enjoyed the spec ops missions. I think I'll be running through them again on veteran in the near future. As an aside, I would love to have the scrapyard and airport levels from spec ops as part of the regular Mp experience.

The Spec Ops missions are fun. I love that one where you have to sneak through the winter forest. Although you can kill the mooks, me and my friend decided to do that on Veteran, without firing a shot. It was pretty tense at times, and there are some WTF moments (you'd think they'd have seen us, but they didn't) but in the end we did it. The only shots happened because he was on the slide about a second before me so some of the guards got a shot at me.

The other is the snowy airfield where you place bombs. So much fun for me going into that shed and killing the mooks (one of the first bombs to place) without killing the guards outside. And then it led to a moment of badass and me and my buddy dual knifed a couple mooks standing next to each other successfully. That fucking rocked.

I am rather ticked there's no co-op split screen campaign though. World at War did it, so it just feels like a step back here (and I don't give a fuck if a second PC would 'ruin' the story; I'm sure they could have found a way).

[CaptHawkeye]

Hurgh. Peak suck has been achieved.

Double shotgun fuckers are abundant.

It figures, as usual, after a month everyone has figured out the best combos and they're now 99.9% of what most guys run. To be honest, akimbo is comically accurate with every gun. Even with the double UMPs I was wasting guys 10m away frequently. This might not be so bad if the reload wasn't 2 seconds.

[Edward Yee]

There are indeed hardcore modes.

Did the uninstall program say what folders were being dealt with?

FWIW, from Robert Bowling's Twitter, the PS3 version has gotten a fix for the Prestige hack, a fix for the public "private" match, and "Akimbo 1887s re-balancing." Supposedly the 360 version of the patch is just waiting for a go-ahead on the release, while the PC version will get these patches plus "plus fix for hacked textures & altered IWDs," but no ETA on the Javelin glitch, or the infinite ammo glitch that as of December 16th was being worked on.

[Edward Yee]

Ghetto edit: never mind, the Javelin glitch supposedly has gone out already.

[Ritterin Sophia]

It figures, as usual, after a month everyone has figured out the best combos and they're now 99.9% of what most guys run. To be honest, akimbo is comically accurate with every gun. Even with the double UMPs I was wasting guys 10m away frequently. This might not be so bad if the reload wasn't 2 seconds.

Don't forget the TacKnife, just a half a second of lag is enough for him to already be in your face with a blade in your gut and you not even knowing it.

Speaking of Akimbo and TacKnife, I though I was playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, not CoD: Gang warfare.

[Edward Yee]

It figures, as usual, after a month everyone has figured out the best combos and they're now 99.9% of what most guys run. To be honest, akimbo is comically accurate with every gun. Even with the double UMPs I was wasting guys 10m away frequently. This might not be so bad if the reload wasn't 2 seconds.

Not to mention if "reduced accuracy" was an actual disadvantage to using akimbo weapons, as opposed to being simply unable to aim down the sights and thus make use of optical attachments.

Funny thought... I vaguely recall an early reaction to complaints about the Akimbo 1887s being that as soon as it was nerfed, someone would complain that a different weapon setup wasn't nerfed instead.

[Vanas]

I've started playing the hardcore modes with a stealthy build and I've not seen that many Akimbo Ghillie Bastards around, which is a major plus. My best solution so far has been a 'Fuck You' claymore drop as soon as I see one barrelling towards me. Sure I die, but they often go down too.

[Steel]

Good lord the grenade launcher shouldn't be part of this game. I've tried it out personally now, something I refused to do on principle in CoD4 and it is just stupid. You are guaranteed a 2:1 kill ratio as you start with 2 grenades and you'll always kill 2 people with them. Other absurd weapons include the double shotguns, killcam footage reveals they do actually kill you while you're not on their screen.

Its pretty inexcusable in a game where if you see an enemy first 90% of the time you will be able to kill them before they can turn around to have such poor netcode and server structure. The default ping display gives no information whatsoever (the default is for each of those bars to represent 100ms, so 4 bars = 0-100, 3 bars 100-200 etc) and this has got to be deliberate as they must know how bad their numbers were and wanted a way to cover it up. Given that in 100ms you can hit a guy twice and thats enough to kill them outright its ludicrous to think that this difference is not going to make the game horribly unbalanced. 100ms is long enough for you to kill them before they can pull the trigger (especially with the shitty weapons like the double shotguns, grenade launcher, or sprint+commando).

There is a way to see actual ping information:

Find config_mp.cfg file for mw2 (should be in the steam/steamapps/common/call of duty modern warfare 2/players folder) and then (make a backup) and in notepad edit the numbers following

seta cg_ScoresPing_MaxBars
seta cg_ScoresPing_Interval

so if you set them to 10 and 30 you get bars for 30ms intervals 30 up to 300 ms.

Looking at that you see how silly the situation really is. It also allows you to see who the host is, as they'll be the only one (99% of the time) with all 10 bars. When the game has had me hosting its just absurd the difference. My kill ratio shoots up to about 5:1, people fire at you as you strafe along and you can see them missing 3 feet to your side where you were half a second ago and you can just run circles round your opponents. Every game released in the last decade (barring Delta Force, which as always never included any technology in the game) has had better netcode than this.

[adam_grif]

I was amused that IW actively removed a feature they already had in their last PC iteration by forcing non-dedicated servers on PC gamers. Host advantage is quite frustrating.

[wautd]

This may have been mentioned before but why the fuck couldn't the navy wait a few more minutes with bombing the prison with some of their men still inside?

[Steel]

This may have been mentioned before but why the fuck couldn't the navy wait a few more minutes with bombing the prison with some of their men still inside?

Two possiblities:

First, the plot is crap.

Second, Sheppard wanted them to be killed in there?

May be one, the other or both.

[CaptHawkeye]

This may have been mentioned before but why the fuck couldn't the navy wait a few more minutes with bombing the prison with some of their men still inside?

Vengeance over the invasion of the mainland US. Of course it makes even less sense, since that means...

A. The US Navy still exists.

B. The US Navy is somehow doing absolutely nothing to prevent the landing and supply of Russian troops on the mainland.

C. What the fuck?

[Nephtys]

This may have been mentioned before but why the fuck couldn't the navy wait a few more minutes with bombing the prison with some of their men still inside?

Vengeance over the invasion of the mainland US. Of course it makes even less sense, since that means...

A. The US Navy still exists.

B. The US Navy is somehow doing absolutely nothing to prevent the landing and supply of Russian troops on the mainland.

C. What the fuck?

But don't you see? This is a cautionary, topical tale of why America must guard all of it's small box modems that contain all the codes for all the defenses and radars and everything from evil russians. So yeah, apparently there's a wireless 'Radar on/off' box that everything runs on. Thus, Red Dawn II.

[Abacus]

I'll just add in that the multi-player game-play is freaking awesome. I like the different game types you can play. I'm very appreciative towards the developers for that and many other aspects of this great game.

[[R_H]]

I wonder when the CoD developers will implement a better cover system (perhaps something à la Gears)? Being able to fire around corners/cover (blindly and aimed) would be nice IMO.

[Stark]

Probably never; it's not that kind of game and a lot of people hate cover systems.

[[R_H]]

Probably never; it's not that kind of game and a lot of people hate cover systems.

Not that kind of game, CoD being like an action movie? People hate cover systems?

[RogueIce]

I wonder when the CoD developers will implement a better cover system (perhaps something à la Gears)? Being able to fire around corners/cover (blindly and aimed) would be nice IMO.

That's something I really liked from Rainbow Six Vegas 2. It was a shame CoD4MW2 didn't have it. Although prone is always a good thing. One day, maybe, there'll be a blend of the two...

Probably never; it's not that kind of game and a lot of people hate cover systems.

...or not?

Why do people hate them? I like the one from R6V2 and it seems to not be broken (or at least, I didn't have major issues). So why would people hate them (explaining as if to somebody who hardly ever plays multiplayer FPS)?

[Stark]

Gears (probably the most popular or successful cover game) is lampooned as 'sit and shoot', the whole idea is characterised by slow progress, static gunfights, etc. Some people really, really hate it to the point where they refuse to play any game with this kind of defensive play. This is probably why MW2 has a much more accessible Quake style of gameplay, because circlestrafing and jumping nine feet in the air is the 'twitch' style of play which many prefer. Frankly, watching MW2 videos often looks like CounterStrike; it's arguable that a cover system would totally change the way the game is played (or be useless given the fast pace).

I like both, but any game with modern trappings that doesn't have cover is just dumb. But 'dumb' sums MW series up, so what can you do?

You have to remember that for cover systems to make sense (gamewise) you need slow movement. There's no point having cover in UT3, because people can run backwards and sideways without penalty. Cover is required in Gears, because you're slow, turn slow, strafe slowly, and need to accelerate to run. In MW2 you can just pop around corners and back again already, and a lot of people hate static fights.

[CaptHawkeye]

Their are ways around the "cover" system to create a highly defensive action game atmosphere. America's Army used a system of "suppression" where in your soldier's ability to aim and perform was quickly degraded by the mere presence of bullets flying within your vicinity.

The "suppression" system still allows a game to be played in a CS manner though. It just encourages players to be more careful and less twitchy. Hitting the target isn't as important as finding it and pinning it down. Gears' doesn't encourage people to avoid being shot at. But it highly encourages you don't get hit even once. I guess the difference between these two systems could be explained by the difference between Cause and Effect. Do you want to Cause the gamer to play defensively, or create an effect which compels him to?

Personally I think it's too bad most developers are too scared to try using some kind of system to at least try to break up the ancient Counter Strike gameplay archetype. But Stark knows better than me, conservative nerds are the biggest obstacle between the industry dreaming of, and then trying new things.

[Sea Skimmer]

A cover system would be worthless with anything even close to Modern Warfare game play. You’d just end of flashed and stuck on a wall for the eighth of a second you have left to live from some guy who jumped off a twenty story building with no damage. Also since that people can shoot through most cover in the game anyway, why would you ever want to be binded too it? If you need cover then you need to lie down.

[Stark]

In any high-speed game, Vietcong 'contextual crouch' makes more sense. Set the crouch height to just lower than the nearby cover, when aiming pop up, etc.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah that would be ideal, I’ve wondered many times why games haven’t wildly implemented it, I tend to assume its because they just don’t want to bother with more animation. That time could be spent adding more worthless blinding shitastic HDR lighting effects instead.

[aieeegrunt]

Yeah that would be ideal, I’ve wondered many times why games haven’t wildly implemented it, I tend to assume its because they just don’t want to bother with more animation. That time could be spent adding more worthless blinding shitastic HDR lighting effects instead.

You could just be lazy and have a majority of the cover locations in the game be just a little taller than crouch height. This is more or less what Gears does with all those convenient "chest high walls".

I mean people would whine about you being a camper if you crouched behind stuff and then popped up and nailed them, but any MP play not involving friends list only is going to be full of whining no matter what you do.