Modern Warfare 2 officially removes red dots

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, which will be released on October 28, will maintain controversial design decisions even after its tense beta weekend, says developer Infinity Ward. The long-standing ability to cancel sliding – which allowed players to manipulate sliding into a lightning-fast run – is gone, and in a move that replaced some players’ eyes with hellfire, Infinity Ward decided Minimaps no longer display red dots when players fire their weapons.

“Currently in the MW2 Beta, we only show enemy player points when [an unmanned aerial vehicle] is active,” Infinity Ward wrote in a recent community update blog. “The design reason is that we don’t want to punish players for firing their guns. We also want players to actively search for where a shot is coming from instead of just going straight to where is the point on the minimap.

Call of Duty games have shown where active players have been on the minimap for the past 16 years or so. Silencer or suppressor weapon accessories and subsonic shells would stealthily remove that red dot for a price (you’d have to be closer to do meaningful damage, bullets would fly more sluggishly, etc.).

But the last modern warfare 2 makes these features obsolete. The dots are gone, and Infinity Ward doesn’t seem interested in bringing them back, although it maintains in its blog post that it continues to “gather feedback on how the game is doing in regards to this topic” .

Players are more than happy to provide their collective feedback, but not everyone seems to agree on what it is.

Call of Duty professional Damon “Karma” Barlow wrote on Twitter that removing red dots “turns COD in hide and seek and not a fun arena shooter. This finding, I think, is made all the more accurate by the fact that modern warfare 2 features distinct and strong player steps.

more contentious, Call of Duty news sites CharlieIntel turned to Twitter to assume that Infinity Ward was trying to appeal to entry-level players, people who might be clumsy with their weapons.

“It’s clear there’s better catering for casual gamers with Infinity Ward’s games,” the site writes, “and it’s also clear that they think casual gamers enjoying the game are more important than the hardcore gamer experience.”

Conversely, some players say only a casual would need a red dot to tell them where to go. Gamer on PC writing, for examplethat “if I’m going to get shot in the back, I’d much rather it be the result of stalking them with sound than following a red dot on a map.”

But overall, no one seems to know exactly what they want from the points other than Infinity Ward. And Infinity Ward doesn’t want the points. If you yourself aren’t sure, everyone will soon have a chance to decide—modern warfare 2The open beta of will run on all platforms from September 24-26. Those who pre-ordered the game can play earlierSeptember 22-23.