Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare made its multiplayer premier at Call of Duty XP. Players got a first look at the mode, stepping into its mechanical rigs and customizing their playstyles with new abilities. These additions kept the gameplay lively as ever, but after our hands-on time with the mode, we couldn’t help notice some slight changes. The jumps weren’t as high, the slides weren’t as low – everything was a touch more grounded.
“It’s a very conscious decision to just dial it down a little bit,” Senior Producer Jack O’Hara told us. “One of the biggest problems we identify is people getting outside of the field of view.” Too much mobility, especially in competitive faceoffs, can give players a too much verticality for comfort.
“If the majority of engagements is somebody looking down on you, and you can’t see them, then it ends up being a very frustrating experience to die from these lone angles.”
Toning down the action, according to O’Hara, “helps the engagements stay more focused, more concentrated, and kind of leads to a more satisfying experience.”
Slight but impactful changes like these are key to fine-tuning for Infinity Ward. “At some point during Ghosts,” O’Hara shared, “we had a much shorter respawn timer. So every time you got killed, you would watch yourself die for 0.5 seconds, and we did work to shorten that duration.”
At this speed, he said, there wasn’t enough time for the player’s brain to register what had happened. Raising the respawn time to just 0.75 seconds seemed to give players a significant break. “The game feels better,” he said. Even when you don’t consciously notice split second adjustments, your brain will.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare releases Nov. 4 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
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