Last week, several reports emerged regarding altered aiming in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare & Warzone. A former world champion joined the discussion and pointed out the significant adjustments, especially for the many controller players.
What exactly is this about? Comfortable controls are a crucial foundation for fast-paced shooters like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the battle royale Warzone, allowing many players to handle the games well.
The longer you play a specific control scheme or settings, the more the reactions and movements become ingrained in your muscle memory, allowing you to execute the corresponding moves even faster and more accurately. This applies to aiming, but also to quick movements.
Frequent changes could disrupt these trained routines for some players. However, it seems that Call of Duty does this regularly and now to such an extent that a former world champion has joined the discussion. Specifically, it concerns:
- The horizontal aim assist
- Input delay of the entire control system
Pro discovers hidden changes in aim assist – But there’s more
Which world champion is speaking? Christopher “Parasite” Duarte was able to win the world championship title in “Black Ops 2” with his team “Fariko Impact” in 2013. The 25-year-old is still actively competing in tournaments and is part of the CoD esports scene, but does not participate in the official “Call of Duty League”.
What changes have occurred in the aim assist? On Twitter, the prominent player showcased significant changes in the aim assist and proved it with a rather conclusive video:
The horizontal aim assist seems to have been nearly completely removed from the game. Normally, controller players experience what is called “aim slowdown” when they sweep across a certain part of an enemy’s hitbox with their crosshair, temporarily reducing the aim sensitivity so they can stay better on the hitbox.
However, the effect appears to have remained normal for vertical movements from top to bottom and vice versa. Here’s everything about aim assist in CoD MW:
How does this affect the game? The problem with such changes are the effects on the players’ muscle memory. Many thousands of controller players have become accustomed to the peculiarities of the aim assist over a long period, and some may suddenly feel insecure about aiming for no apparent reason.
Overall, the aiming accuracy of controller players is likely to decrease, and mouse & keyboard will become even stronger compared to controllers. The two input devices come with different advantages and disadvantages and the controller thus loses one of its strongest advantages against the more precise mouse control.
Suddenly, it’s also about input delay
What else has come up? “Parasite” posted two tweets yesterday (May 17) about altered aiming in Call of Duty:
While he had no issues at a tournament, he felt a change in sensitivity after resetting his console. His sensitivity settings for the controller sticks were at 6-6, but it felt to him more sensitive, more like the settings were at 8-8. He changed the settings of his deadzone and felt better with that, but he would like to know if anyone else is experiencing a similar issue.
What could have changed here? Subsequently, a player came forward who may have an explanation. “@FletcherDK2” referred to a reddit thread that appeared a few days ago (May 11), in which an engaged player highlighted changes regarding input delay (via reddit).
He tested the changes after every major update and found that nearly every patch since the introduction of Season 1 involved an adjustment of the delay. According to his records, the delay has risen from 45 to 50 ms to 200 – 300 ms since release. According to the thread creator “SpiritualBiskit”, the value increased step by step.
How does this affect the game? Aiming feels different, which can also lead to uncertainties among players. If you notice a certain change or uncertainty after a patch, it could be due to these delay adjustments.
Since the time-to-kill (TTK) in CoD 2019 is quite low and players go down in a fraction of a second, a 300 ms input lag represents a significant disruption to gameplay. Together with reaction time and the calculated TTK, the input delay constitutes a substantial part of the actual TTK.
Furthermore, “SpiritualBiskit” claims that these delays only affect controller players, which would be another marked disadvantage compared to players with mouse & keyboard.
Will this stay like this? So far, there has been no official statement from the developers regarding the findings, neither about aim assist nor about input delay.
Due to crossplay, many players using different input devices come together in Modern Warfare 2019 and Warzone, and such significant changes should at least be communicated by the developers. Have you noticed anything or felt that something changes regularly?
If you want to improve your aim, check out the Warzone training of a CoD expert. Even with high input lag, you can secure hits with enough practice.
