The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 beta has begun, and it’s been a rather rocky start for PC players. You’ll frequently hear COD players moan that the multiplayer game feels too skewed towards controller users with its aim assist settings, although that sentiment naturally varies from game to game. Activision and Infinity Ward have promised that MW4 “is built with a renewed focus on the PC community” – yet in the first few hours in the beta, reports have started flying in from players regarding performance frustrations and apparent delayed inputs on mouse and keyboard.
In response, the official Call of Duty account shares that Beenox, the studio working on the PC version of Modern Warfare 4, “has been hard at work refining the PC experience and fidelity for players.” It explains that the team has been implementing “tons of customizable game settings, optimized by default for your specific hardware,” and that it’s placing “a continued focus on mouse input and responsiveness.” It also promises the ability to preload shaders before launch, and avoid those game restarts during startup of recent years.
There have also been frustrations for some regarding Modern Warfare 4’s demands for Secure Boot and TPM 2.0. While the pairing has become quite common as stronger standards to protect against cheating, some players are reporting that the game still won’t recognize their presence after install. It’s worth noting that if it’s been a while since you completed the required BIOS updates to implement these security measures for past games, you might need to update to a newer version for the more modern demands of MW4.
Additionally, as the first day of the MW4 beta draws towards its close, Infinity Ward notes that it’s “already cooking our first update for tomorrow, with footstep audio tuning, map voting turned on, weapon balance adjustments, bug fixes, and more.” It even teases that new content will be rolled out alongside this – stay tuned for the full details when the patch drops.
At the time of writing, the Modern Warfare 4 beta on Steam is rated at just 53% positive by those who have submitted their thoughts. It’s still early days, but that’s not a promising sign. The complaints go beyond PC-specific frustrations, with players bemoaning the combination of fast movement and a short time-to-kill, as well as the small map sizes in the starting selection that lead to awkward spawns. Hopefully IW is able to take on feedback and adjust accordingly as the test progresses.