The recent release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has predictably garnered huge amounts of attention, with the game reaching huge sales milestones already. Like most CoD titles, a lot of the discourse surrounding the game is centered around its main multiplayer mode, which sees a few ambitious changes being made to the pre-existing franchise formula.
One of the main unique elements of the multiplayer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the ability for players to tune their weapons to a significant degree of specialization. While this may outwardly seem like a positive step in the series attempting to provide a more curated core online experience for players, the wide range of weapon dynamics that this fosters may lead to some serious issues regarding weapon balance in the future.
Modern Warfare 2's Gunsmith and Weapon Tuning
While the Call of Duty franchise has long been known for the level of customization that it affords players in weapon builds, it can be said that Modern Warfare 2 offers the most in-depth and comprehensive level of customization avenues. The core unique element of MW2's weapon customization lies in its improved Gunsmith, a bold new system that changes the pre-established franchise norms of weapon progression and unlocks.
Within the Gunsmith system, attachment unlocks for MW2's weapons are shared across all guns of a similar classification, with different things like muzzles and stocks now being able to completely transform how a weapon operates, turning an assault rifle into more of an SMG, for example. Each form of weapon classification possesses its own "weapon platform" set of universal attachments, creating a plethora of new potential metas regarding weapons being significantly transformed from their base-level counterparts.
Another bold new element of the Gunsmith system involves weapon tuning. Once a player maxes a weapon's level, a detailed "tuning" system becomes unlocked for that gun, allowing players to fine-tune certain attachments between two opposing characteristics. With players able to tune between things like length and weight of certain attachments, the weapon tuning system affords a huge amount of specialized tweaking to loadouts that could prove detrimental when it comes to game balancing.
Weapon Tuning and Balancing in Modern Warfare 2
Like most competitive online shooters, Modern Warfare 2 is predictably going to introduce many balancing changes over the course of its life cycle, with the highly successful Beta for MW2 already precipitating an array of changes. With such a huge array of weapons being available to players, finding the correct balance and ensuring that some weapons do not disproportionately overpower others is something that needs to be constantly evaluated and implemented.
However, the aforementioned weapon tuning mechanics of MW2's Gunsmith may make this a much harder task to achieve. Weapon tuning allows for certain weapon and attachment combinations to be amplified even further in efficiency than what would have previously been possible, opening up the potential for massively overpowered weapon builds that could threaten to dominate Modern Warfare 2's core online gameplay.
While it is difficult enough for Activision to keep track of weapon builds that are overpowering online gameplay, the further level of fine-tuning that is offered by the new Gunsmith system will only make certain metas all the more difficult to track and mitigate via balancing changes. Of course, Modern Warfare 2's weapon tuning can also offer a beneficial level of personalization to players in building a weapon that truly fits their play style, but the potential for powerful metas to go relatively unchecked may make this new system more of a hindrance that a perk in the future.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
