Modern Warfare 2 beta players are unhappy with the Dead Silence perk. Fans show how this gameplay element defeats the purpose of what would otherwise be a stealthy takedown of the enemy team in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Upon the beta’s second weekend, the Call of Duty community has voiced concerns around certain issues pertaining to the game, which is part of what a beta is for. Some of these concerns include a Modern Warfare 2 bug that fills the screen with smoke, hacking problems, and favoring campers. Among these issues is a gameplay mechanic that may have been created intentionally regarding the Dead Silence perk, but upon further examination does the opposite of what the perk is intended to do.
The game implements a new system for its perks called field upgrades. Certain Modern Warfare 2 perks that are added to a player’s custom class can only be activated at specific times in the match. The field upgrade is accompanied by an animation that triggers it, while also activating an alarm noise that can be heard by the enemy team if they are within the players' vicinity. This is where the problem lies regarding Dead Silence, a perk that is supposed to make players silent.
In previous entries, Dead Silence removes the sound of footsteps so that players can easily traverse the map without being heard by the enemy. With a combined strategic class of weapons and perks, this can lead to stealth oriented gameplay that would suit a player's playing style. However, because of the alarm noise that accompanies the Dead Silence activation as a field upgrade, the perk no longer works towards a player's advantage, seeing as how it now alerts the enemy team. Field upgrades were criticized in Vanguard, the past Call of Duty entry, but in the current beta for Modern Warfare 2 it is a new issue entirely.
Luckily, because it is a beta, the developers of the Modern Warfare 2 reboot can fix these and other potential issues with changes to field upgrade elements that may have been overlooked. So far, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is fixing lobby disconnects, and footstep audio issues based on beta feedback, so if the developers see this as a game breaking mechanic then it is not outside the realm of possibility that the team fixes the Dead Silence issue before launch.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is available on October 28, 2022, on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.