News - Target Identification Warzone 2i Needs Work. Beta Feedback
So today we're going to look specifically at what changed here and why this is happening, as well as some recommended fixes for this.
Teammate nametags/dots
And diving right into the first element of this is simply the dots and name tags that appear above enemy heads. I immediately noticed they seemed to be a lot more faded, and the dots themselves also appeared to be a lot smaller.
However, I did want to do a side-by-side comparison here with Modern Warfare 2 to see if this actually is the case, and here's just one example right here, and this isn't a cherry-picked example. Keep in mind that my color settings are identical for both of these games. I haven't changed any settings whatsoever here, and as we can see in Modern Warfare 2, that teammate's name tag and Dot pop up very clearly. Whereas on the right hand side you can see both the dot and the name tag are very faded, it doesn't seem like there's much of a shadow or a stroke behind it either so it doesn't pop from the background nearly as well and to top that off it's also significantly smaller the font is smaller and the dot itself is noticeably smaller as well and this isn't due to the distance that I am away from the teammate that is a consistent size with that dot no matter how close or far away they are and this is something that gets even worse in a brighter situation or if you have something lighter in the background of the text, you can hardly see the dot or the name tag especially when we're talking about the pacing of this game when things are moving really quickly it's very easy to miss that super subtle name tag and Dot which is one of the reasons that I've often found myself shooting at teammates .
Enemy diamonds
On a similar illustrious note, we see the exact same thing with the diamond that appears above enemy heads while we don't get the full name tag, unlike with our teammates, who do get this diamond in both Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3. However, in Modern Warfare 2, that diamond is about 50% larger than the diamond in Modern Warfare 3, and it appears to be a little bit more opeg as well, and it doesn't blend into the background nearly as much as what we're seeing in Modern Warfare 3.
To top this off with that diamond, it seems like you have to be aiming pretty much right at the enemy character model before that diamond will appear, and it does take a little while to fade into view. And that means that you don't really quickly determine that is definitely an enemy at a brief glance; the moment they're somewhat centered on your screen, you have to actually aim at them and get a shot or two off before it's fully faded in, and to a large degree, that sort of defeats the purpose of this diamond, so those are the primary visual aspects that are leading to this issue, and the solutions to these seem fairly simple.
First off, I think they should definitely up the opacity and maybe even the size of both the diamond as well as the dot for teammates name tags as well. I'd like to see them much more along the lines of Modern Warfare 2 with a nice clear shadow or stroke behind them so they pop from the background a lot more than they currently are in the beta, as well as a larger font size that's more along the lines of what we saw in Modern Warfare 2, and then on that note of the diamonds, it would be nice if this was just a little bit more sensitive where if they were somewhat in the middle of your screen, that diamond would start to appear.
So you don't have to aim from character model to character model or glance at your mini map every time you see a character model on your screen in order to really quickly confirm that that's a teammate or an enemy. I think this is especially important with the increased pacing that we're seeing in this game as well. There's a lot more going on at any given time, and in my opinion, at least you should be able to very quickly identify a friend from.
Footstep identification (teammate vs enemy)
Foe And so far, that's just talking about the visual element of this. There's another element that comes into play here that I've been noticing throughout the beta.
Typically, in a Call of Duty game, there is a very clear distinction between either the volume or the pitch of footsteps between enemies and teammates, typically just using your ears alone if somebody's running up behind me. Let's say you don't even have a mini-map counter. In most previous Call of Duty games, you can really easily distinguish between a teammate's footstep and an enemy's footstep.
In the Modern Warfare 3 beta, I haven't been noticing a clear difference between the footstep audio of a teammate and an enemy. In my experience so far, at least it seems like the footsteps are exactly the same between teammates and enemies, and some may argue that's how it should be; it would be more realistic, for instance, that everybody's footsteps sound the same, but that's just not how it typically It works in Call of Duty, and I do find it a little bit jarring having to adapt to that.
Now I don't mind adapting to that if they're really dead set on this, but I do think it is a nice mechanic that just helps increase your general awareness of what's going on around you by having that subtle distinction between teammate footsteps and enemy footsteps.
Bone conduction headset bugged?
Now, in general, this isn't really that big of an issue; however.
I really start to notice this when you put the bone conduction headset on, which is that piece of gear that works kind of like amplify or awareness from older Call of Duty games where it's meant to boost enemy footsteps. It clearly states boost enemy footsteps in the description. However, I'm noticing it's also boosting teammates footsteps, quite a bit kind of like this.
instance. So your teammates are stomping around like elephants, and I've just found that this perk makes me way too paranoid and has me constantly shooting teammates, even more of a hindrance than if I'm not using this perk, and as a result. I find the bone conduction headset to be more of a hindrance than anything, and I honestly don't think it's intended to be working that way, especially based on the description of it.
Final thoughts & feedback
So there we go. When you combine that footstep audio with the reduced visuals of the dots and diamonds and name tags above players heads, this definitely led to a lot of unnecessary and confusing situations that weren't present in previous Call of Duty games, and again. I do want to add to this. The increased mobility of this game does stack on top of this; this probably wouldn't be as big of an issue if the game played slower, but that's clearly not what they're going for with this game; they're clearly trying to speed things up and have a faster PC game than Modern Warfare 2, and as a result.
