Modern Warfare 2 developers address footstep audio, visibility, and disbanding lobbies

Ryan Lemay
MW2 characters

The Modern Warfare 2 Open Beta concluded on September 26, and the developers issued a response to player feedback on topics like footstep audio and visibility.

Modern Warfare 2’s Open Beta gave players their first hands-on experience with the game. Two weekends of playtesting polarized the community, but players uniformly agreed on a few features that need to change.

The hot-button complaints include Dead Silence, SBMM, mini-map, and footstep audio. Infinity Ward responded after the Beta’s first weekend and discussed changes to visibility, footstep audio, and the new perk system.

However, the developers doubled down on their decision to remove red dots from the mini-map; “The design reason for this is that we do not want to punish players for firing their weapons.” The decision outraged players, but the developers are not changing their stance.

Out of the four previously mentioned major complaints, the team only addressed footstep audio in their latest blog post, among a few other issues.

Modern Warfare 2 sprint
The Modern Warfare 2 Open Beta ended on September 26.

Infinity Ward responds to Modern Warfare 2 Open Beta feedback

Infinity Ward shared changes coming to Modern Warfare 2 based on community suggestions.

The developers said, “we have seen your continued feedback on the volume of footsteps and will continue to balance enemy/friendly footstep audio ahead of launch.”

Players reported major visibility issues during the first weekend of the Beta caused by the removal of nameplates and powerful visual recoil. Infinity Ward stated, “we’ll look to tweak increased enemy visibility to allow for better visual tracking of opponents that is not solely the traditional nameplate.”

One welcome change is addressing disbanding lobbies. The last few CoD iterations have disbanded lobbies after matches, but Modern Warfare 2 is bringing back the ability to stay in lobbies.

Other changes include weapon balancing, refining camera shoulder swapping in third-person mode, and fixing Ground War bugs.

The Open Beta left players with more questions than answers, and the latest blog post will surely keep eyebrows raised until the full game releases on October 28.

About The Author

Ryan is a former games writer for Dexerto. Ryan graduated from Ithaca College in 2021 with a sports media degree and a journalism minor. He gained experience as a writer for the Morning Times newspaper before joining Dexerto as a games writer. He mainly writes about first-person shooters, including Call of Duty and Battlefield, but he is also a big FIFA fan.