Modern Warfare: Are Infinity Ward unintentionally ruining your aim?

A recent finding has uncovered that Infinity Ward may be unintentionally ruining your aim. In a post on Reddit, u/SpiritualBiskit has found that there have been significant alterations to how people aim and react in Modern Warfare, as a result of every patch since Season 1.

It can be frustrating to players that on some days your aim just isn’t sitting right, you're missing key shots and suffering from slow reaction times, however, this recent development has indicated it might not be your fault.

It is a direct impact of the humongous updates that IW release for Modern Warfare. The constant 30gb updates have led the game to have so much junk left within the files that the game ultimately runs much slower. Not only does it pound your hard drive, but it is affecting the gameplay too.

In recent Call of Duty news, a patch was made which included a deadzone slider for people to edit their deadzones which helps with aiming precision. Whilst it is a rather advanced metric, mainly used by professionals, it has identified a key problem which has resulted in players recently feeling like their aim is ‘off’.

The real problem is that since every patch after Season 1, the game has been increasing in input lag for unknown reasons but most likely due to unrefined patches with a lot of junk assets left over which is causing the game to run slower.

Better known as ‘button lag’.

The post indicates that there has been an increase of roughly 300ms to 450ms in input latency, which is how long it takes the game to register the buttons you’re pressing. This development also has nothing to do with an individual’s connection, although will have a snowball effect on those with a poor connection.

Whilst the Reddit post delves into the metrics and dynamics of this effect, it can be put quite simply. Ever since the game was created, the time between pressing your buttons to, for instance, aim, and the time that your game recognises that is what you are pressing has been increasing.

In addition to the button lag, it is reported that the most recent patch has made slight changes to the sensitivity, meaning you may be struggling with the speed of your horizontal and vertical axis, which can take some getting used to. This is a huge inconvenience as most players scarcely change sensitivity settings after becoming comfortable, but you will now have to reconfigure this.

Why is this bad?

This ultimately slows your reaction times, meaning that it will take longer for you to snap on to players and get your first shots off, and mainly affects controller players rather than mouse and keyboard players. Whilst it may not seem much, a couple of milliseconds can be the difference between getting a kill or dying, and in a game where you will engage in hundreds of head-on gunfights, this will severely hinder you.

How bad has it gotten?

From the below, we can see a series of figures that have been recorded by u/SpiritualBiskit. Recorded with a high-powered camera, these results show the difference in how long it takes the game to recognise your action before relaying it in-game. It is evident that with each patch it seems to get significantly worse. Peaking at 400ms after Patch 1.18, it is almost ten times slower than when the game was released.

In the most recent patch 1.20, you can see that the time has decreased slightly, with an average of around 260ms, it comes in nearly six times slower than when Modern Warfare was created.

Click to enlarge

Why has this only just been noticed?

With the most recent patch, the previously mentioned deadzone slider was introduced, which was intended to combat the aiming instability, allowing players to set a low deadzone for precision. It was thought that the deadzone had previously been the reason behind slow aiming and it was introduced eradicate this problem, however, it has only affected this slightly. The difference was almost unnoticeable, hence this recent study coming to light, as the only recognisable reason.

How can this be solved?

This can only be fixed by Infinity Ward and Activision themselves. Although judging by the notes in the Reddit post, communication seems to be flawed. Freeing up some space on this game and removing the junk files would definitely be a step in the right direction from Infinity Wards. This would increase the latency significantly, whilst maintaining the fundamental mechanics to the game, which ultimately is what the players want.

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