Modern Warfare 4 Devs Couldn’t Beat Players at Their Own Mobility Course

Infinity Ward’s developers became so competitive with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s new mobility course that they were recording their screens and going frame-by-frame to improve their times. Then the players got their hands on it and quickly beat them.

The mobility course was created during the development of Modern Warfare 4 as a way for the team to test and refine the game’s new movement systems. Rather than simply serving as a development tool, however, the course became a competitive challenge within the studio.

According to multiplayer technical designer Jack Hoppus, developers started looking for every possible way to shave time off their runs.

“We got competitive with it at the studio,” Hoppus said. “We had devs that were recording their screens and going back frame by frame trying to find how to get improving times.”

That competition ultimately led to the team putting the mobility course into the game itself, allowing players to test their movement skills.

Modern Warfare 4 Players Outperformed The Devs

It didn’t take long for the players to beat the developers.

“And when we gave it to the players, they beat our times pretty quickly,” Hoppus said.

What impressed the development team wasn’t necessarily that players discovered completely different routes through the course. Instead, players began finding tiny optimizations that could save fractions of a second.

Hoppus gave one example of players combining actions while moving through the course.

“They’re micro optimizations and they’re like, okay, I’m going to jump and if I already have to jump to get down this ladder, I’m going to reload while I’m doing it,” Hoppus said.

Those small discoveries became valuable feedback for the developers because they showed how players were interacting with Modern Warfare 4’s movement system in ways the team hadn’t necessarily anticipated.

“It’s all these new ways to play that really excited us back at the studio,” Hoppus said.

The mobility course is part of Infinity Ward’s broader effort to make Modern Warfare 4’s movement more fluid while still giving mechanically skilled players room to master the system. Hoppus explained that the team wanted players who value movement and mechanical skill to be able to push the system, while still allowing players who prefer more tactical gunfights and map mastery to succeed.

That balance has been one of the challenges of developing Modern Warfare 4, particularly as the team looks to make movement feel powerful without turning the game into something overly arcade-like. For Infinity Ward, however, seeing players beat the developers at their own challenge appears to have been a positive sign.

The developers designed the course to push Modern Warfare 4’s movement to its limits. Players then pushed it even further.

What are your thoughts on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s movement system and how it felt in the beta? Leave your thoughts down in the comments and in the official Insider Gaming Discord.

In other news, read about DOOM: The Dark Ages Revelations facing the “worst crunch” in franchise history. And for even more Insider Gaming delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.