Multiplayer betas like the ones Infinity Ward has conducted the past couple of weekends are all but necessary for franchises with massive followings like Call of Duty. Contrary to popular belief, betas aren't just about stress testing servers as they often provide developers with valuable feedback that directly results in palpable changes come launch time.
That's precisely what Infinity Ward is doing with the data it gathered from its recent Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare beta.
The studio has published a lengthy changelog to the Infinite Warfare subreddit outlining changes that gamers can expect heading into this week's launch. Specifically, they're making changes to shotguns, snipers, launchers and SMGs in addition to tweaks of the in-game economy, health regeneration, spawning and perks.
Matchmaking in Infinite Warfare is also being improved with the studio relaxing potential player requirements, fixing geographic categorizations and speeding up the process of cleaning dead lobbies. Infinity Ward said it'll also take less time to join a session in progress.
Significant infrastructure changes were made with regard to load balancing across dedicated servers and how the game selects which datacenter to use. Tweaks were made between the first and second beta that were able to dramatically improve server utilization, the dev said.
One would like to hope that Infinity Ward is ready for the massive load of traffic heading its way this week but if the past is any indication, it's almost a given that the servers won't hold up under the load.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare arrives on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC on November 4.