Modern Warfare 3, Skill Based Damage?!

[@pitchatan]

I can just share my own perspective on this, being a former professional player (the various quake games, cod1/cod4 and halo3, F.E.A.R and a bunch of other titles), and manages to rank up very high in every game i play despite being a dinosaur in terms of being "competitive" (i am 38, still managed to get radiant in valorant, just shy of reaching predator on apex, been in the top5-10 in quake even today despite being out of practice)... and is someone that can flatout say when i am just playing badly (which happens quite frequently.. what i am going to describe below is not this). I am now a game/backend developer today focusing on all things netcode (interpolation, lag comp, extrapolation, compression etc), so i have some specific insight on this if needed. MW2019 was weird for a lack of a better word...mw2 and mw3 on the other hand has been extremely egregious with, to me, very blatant manipulation going on (not just in terms of damage or matchmaking). Just a "recap" of my mw2/3 journey.. i go from completely rolling lobbies, to taking upwards of 8 hits to kill someone literally AFK and going negative KD against players who quite rankly can't aim for shit but somehow manages to kill you within 150ms regardless of what you do and regardless of how badly they aim (i counted frame by frame to confirm this... that ttk should not even be possible in mw3 but is happening constantly from one match to the other). Manipilation: In the case of MW3 i got fed up with the network inconsistency and have been keeping track of where my packets are going (ip/ip subsets, area, region etc).. and found that 9/10 matches i am playing i am connecting to the same data center (i.e the same city/area and subsets of ips just on different ports)...... the weird thing is that my ping is jumping from 18ms upwards of 80ms... on the same server (meanwhile my team mates are getting low ping, the next game they get high ping etc). The people i play with have been having the same experience but have assumed that they are getting thrown into other servers in other regions (hint: we weren't). The result is that we are randomly all getting different pings to the same data center, in every single instance it's resulting in people getting a ton of hitmarkers on people (and doing confirmed damage) but having an INSANELY hard time actually killing anyone. All this is followed by i/them having a good game before this, EVERY TIME (and to be clear, 4 of them live in close proximity of each other, literally within a mile of each other in the same city, they are all on the same isp on different lines which in this case is 250/250mbit fiber... their ping jumping 50ms from each one match to the other is so unlikely that it borders on impossibility... especially when it's literally happening to people ON THE SAME CONNECTION as they live together... i.e two people on the same connection are getting wildly different pings on match to the other). As for skill based damage, we have had at least two games where we are completely rolling the opposite team despite every single one of us finding it extremely weird having to put in upwards of 8hitmarkers on people at short to midrange fights (while firing guns that usually/and should take 3-4). We have had instances of literally going into to clear an area, 2 of us die but manage to hit them a bunch before.. the third runs back with a killstreak ready to drop (i.e an airstrike) that lands right on their heads (literally, the deathcam they kill us and then get a freaking cruise missile RIGHT ON TOP OF THEM) and they still don't die despite being absolute. We have had instances against the same people getting a kill on us with 2 bullets being fired (he sprayed a wall in a panic, missed everything.. had two bullets left and killed us.. he had not taken damage at all)... with it reporting that they hit him for 5 shots.... they didn't hit anything as they were literally shooting an empty wall with the victim to the left behind cover. I have literally been one shot by several different snipers (i.e different kinds of snipers, some of which do not kill in one hit), most of which are hitting in the legs... and it reporting 3+ hits from a single shot weapon. At the same time we have games where the best player out of all of us (someone with a 15kd in cold war, 8 in mw2019 etc) all of a sudden can't kill anyone.. and the worst of us is all of a sudden kill leader with the entire teams kills to his name (who has spent the entire session at the bottom barely getting 4 kills and dying over and over). It's quite frankly ridiculous. Nothing about this is due to netcode or server imbalance (unless they have intentionally implemented it in this way), nothing about this makes any sense.

[@TheCodPreacher]

Wow! Thank you for your perspective on this. I agree and have experienced so much of what you’re saying. I feel everything “skill based” is completely ramped in MW3.. I guess the coming weeks/months will tell the full story!

[@MCPowerThrust]

Well put sir. I felt this on a spiritual level

[@mentalbreak]

I knew something felt off about mw2 last year. I haven't played cod in a while - but ive never been bad at fps games. I was hoping mw3 would be better, but i guess not. I'm not buying another cod until they take this shit out of the game. We deserve an explanation from activision about this weird ssbm and skilled based damage shit!

[@elchinuoficial]

Many modern FPS are implementing this "clutch mechanics", not just COD. However COD devs are really the most incompetent ones as they are not even being subtle about it along with their useless anticheat.

[@GrabbaBeer]

Spot on! If you ever don’t want to feel alone. I upload daily clips of this happening as proof

[@yournotdatguypal]

This shit game has been “I see them first, I shoot them first and I die first” hits are connecting but the math isn’t mathing.

[@TheCodPreacher]

2 + 2 isn’t equalling 4 😂

[@yournotdatguypal]

@@TheCodPreacher factual! 🤣

[@Nuschler22]

Activision has an active patent that has the game change accuracy and damage modules mid game. It's not a secret. Look it up.

[@GrabbaBeer]

Skill based damage is 100% real. There’s a patent with Activision on it. I upload proof of it daily

[@HYPERVENTILATIONZ]

Your account is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen… you’re not a “top player” you are average and just can’t accept it. Stop blaming the game for your poor performance

[@sakya1337]

biggest cope ever 😂, It thought it was a joke when people accused everyone of cheating now we have “skill based damage”

[@GrabbaBeer]

@@sakya1337 actually it’s a part of basic game design. It’s a handicap system. Most older games had handicap systems in them that you could adjust when playing offline with friends. This game simply does the same in real time on the fly online. I rank 10 in the world in another title and am a recruiter pro fps player. I can assure you 100% that it’s real and other games do it too. Mostly micro-transaction centered games like warthunder etc

[@sakya1337]

@@GrabbaBeer you’re a below average player lmao, I barley play cod and play better than you

[@GrabbaBeer]

@@sakya1337 right, cause being ranked 10 in the world and being recruited by a pro team means I’m so bad. Bet you $500 dollars you’re wrong and I’ll take your money. You’re trash if you don’t see the system at work cause it means you’re in the protected bracket.

[@JeepLife92]

Been playing cod since Call of Duty Finest Hour on ps2. Never seen anything like this before. Not the best player anymore, I will admit since I play on and off unlike I used to like 10 years ago. MW2 had its sweaty moments but I could at least get triple kills in with one mag. The time to kill is awful as I trade a kill for a death because I need to reload and another guy appears. They say Cold War had the longest but I was dropping people in that game. In MW3 I am losing so many gunfights I should have won. I want to know how many shots are registering on their end when I hit them cause I can get 5 hit markers and put 3 shots in first and they still win the fight.

[@TheCodPreacher]

Yes! It’s extremely frustrating!

[@yournotdatguypal]

You hit the nail on the head unnecessary gun fight losses have been super weird and frustrating.

[@d3parturee]

100% truth. I was destroying people on Cold War effortlessly but this game feels wildly inconsistent

[@pvg103103]

game is rigged and full of implented cheats like: - skill based damage - skill based lag - skill based aim - skill based spawns - skill based bots in mp to manupilate score outcome - skill based visibility (enemie will pop-up later on ur screen when doing to well)\ - buying a store bundle gives u some easier lobbies after as a player, u dont know ur real skill/progression. game and stats are fake and manupilated! this is so wrong and abusive. game should be removed from stores! its not a game anymore! ur skill doesnt matter.

[@TheCodPreacher]

It’s looks like they may be manipulating gameplay for whatever makes them the most profit!

[@sakya1337]

cod players need to get diagnosed with schizophrenia

[@terrancecollins2696]

I knew this game felt weird … I thought it was maybe my internet connection but I absolutely have noticed some shots simply are not registering on opponents even when getting the jump on them

[@sergeantb708]

Certain game modes I can put someone down with a few shots, others it takes almost the entire magazine? Several games I'm dead 7 times in a row within half a second of spawning. I do not understand what the game wants me to do. I either mow through everyone or I can't even spawn...

[@TimothytheTooth]

I often get hit markers on one shot kill sniper rifle headshots. So that either needs to be addressed as a bug and fixed OR skill based damage is irrefutably real.

[@lemmylemz7394]

Unless you reverse boost, the times where you were having fun RUINING the kids Christmas is OVER. The 8 k/d ratiodays at the expense of noobs and kids are OVER. THE NUKES at the expense of mzntally challenged people are OVER Welcome to the SBMM times, the times of COMPETITION.

[@CrrzyFox]

Guess we should make it that way for everything then right? Oh, that's right. That's not how it works in real life. You get shit on by everything unless you know what you are doing. SBMM isn't even it bud. It's so beyond that. But if you choose not to believe it. That's fine. But any of us that claim otherwise have been playing fps for a LONG time. Long time.. It's called in game sense and actually we record the shenanigans too ya know? Re watch frame by frame. It's real. Patents back up the claims. This shit was deployed for sure.

[@P12ooF]

Worst part of duty is when people run around jumping with snipers or shotguns and somehow they beat you even know you have the angle. Infuriating

[@TheCodPreacher]

Yes, it can extremely frustrating.

[@P12ooF]

@@TheCodPreacher mid air, 360 heads hot for the win. My bad I was just holding an angle on bomb site. Super real....

[@stevenjimenez8779]

I deleted the game cuz it was too frustrating. So inconsistent.

[@TheCodPreacher]

I hate that!

[@christopherveilleux3760]

I feel like you 100%.. Granted these days I'm more of a casual gamer, I still basically ONLY play COD games and have been playing since COD 2. I've had an above average KD the entire time (nothing crazy but usually between 1.6 - 2.2) then in MW2 I started to get worse and now in MW3 it just seems insane. I have to play VERY strategically it seems to get a decent KD, even in team deathmatch when I'm just trying to have fun.

[@TheCodPreacher]

Yes! I played tonight, and legit felt like a troll, head glitches, hiding etc just to go positive and end up with 10-12 kills!

[@nolanharris8273]

It seems like i always get 149 damage. Every single time. I have fast reaction time and its like they erase us

[@gabrielhartzog4274]

Oh its freaking rampant in warzone 3. Youll have a good game of plunder, the next round, youll shoot first get several hit markers but get melted like you dont even have plates

[@TheCodPreacher]

I’ve started playing warzone, looking to see if the same things are happening as in multiplayer.

[@blacksky3089]

I just got done with a game where i shot a bunny hop sweat point blank with a shotgun and didn't die. I died though

[@flutterboypr6481]

I thought I had skill issues but I'm not as bad as I was before, I spend time training my aim and it takes time to practice precise aim, even that all I can say is that what kills me is the stupid ass SDBMM that was implemented for no reason. We don't want that shit, we just wanna enjoy our game. How HARD is that?

[@GovernorMeows]

theres no trust with cod anymore. i am so glad i refunded. the first match felt so smooth to play, i didnt even do well. every match after had horrible hit reg and lag. sucks that there isnt people hosting private matches to avoid it. thats the best chance a game like this has for being good to play

[@LemonbroMayagido]

Dude there are times am going insane, and rhen right now this day its like i shoot that person so hard and i even shot the first shot. And they stil manage to kill me faster with a gun picked up from the ground that leaves me shocked.

[@TheCodPreacher]

It’s extremely frustrating!

[@LemonbroMayagido]

@@TheCodPreacher it really is.

[@aidanc669]

I’ve been telling people. Something more fishy is going on with this game for years

[@TheCodPreacher]

Yes!

[@DestitutePeople]

I refuse to buy it

[@aidanc669]

Watch the killcams. And I get it all the time “kill cams are what actually happened”. Yea it is. That’s exactly how it happened on their end. Which is way different than my end. That’s not cool at all

[@TheCodPreacher]

It’s totally different! It can’t be explained away!

[@Facemob1941]

People still purchase physical copies from GameStop?

[@TheCodPreacher]

I do! I enjoy going into my local GameStop, great people there!

[@OldSchoolTyler]

I get all my games physically. Just not from gamestop.

[@MorayNZ]

i just get zero AA on controller

[@TheCodPreacher]

The aim assist has been nerfed in this game, I don’t know if it’s intentional.

[@ritwiksnha]

They’re killing the game 😞

[@TheCodPreacher]

Yes unfortunately

[@lemmylemz7394]

Hallucinations. It is just hallucinations. I play with a bad ping and get good results. You will not beat an AR with an SMG from afar unless the opponent is a noob.

[@Alex324]

Strange to say that sbmm might hurt a new player. Its what its there for. Sbmm protects thwm, like it or not but dont argue its difficult for noobs.

[@HYPERVENTILATIONZ]

loads of factors could indicate why this is happening to you, i do it to other players, skill based damage is not a thing bro. Why on earth would a games company make such an obvious advantage to another player? it would have been proven by now anyway. If you're hovering around a 1kd, you're going to get destroyed now and again

[@gabcot926]

To make every match a close game lol

[@TheCodPreacher]

They are going to start putting bots in warzone, so I wouldn’t put anything past them.

[@HYPERVENTILATIONZ]

@@gabcot926 that’s what sbmm is, not one person who’s good at the game (pros, high kd streamers, ranked play players) think that skill based damage exists… think about that

[@yournotdatguypal]

You are clearly delusional

[@Unchartedmarco24CoD]

@@HYPERVENTILATIONZSkill based damage is 100% a thing. Look at all the Patents they put out für SBMM. For every Player they hear more or less Footsteps, need better aim and Damage is also diffrent. All depends on your Skill level. Its all made for that normal players have fun and buy more things out of the Store. All „good“ gamers are fucked.

[@skepticallypissed2074]

Ya ......sbmm.....sucks playing people that are better than you.........."get better man....hit your shots".

[@TheCodPreacher]

What do you call it when you hit your shots and still get erased? Skill based hit damage?

[@skepticallypissed2074]

That is the way I remember cod being in black ops 1,2 for a long time until I was better, then I started turning on people, but I do find it rich when good players rag on worse people and tell them to get better then in their very next breath whine about sbmm. Thats what I call it.

[@zeroday87]

​@@TheCodPreacherthis might sound ridiculous, but I play hardcore to combat that.

[@TheCodPreacher]

@@zeroday87 I’ve been playing some hardcore, it’s been a good experience so far!

[@zeroday87]

@@TheCodPreacher Hardcore has its issues as well but it's def better than core for sure.