A little bit ago, I finally reinstalled Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (the reboot released in 2023). I was watching YouTube videos on the game again that encouraged me to pick the game back up. I had originally bought Modern Warfare III (which I will abbreviate as MWIII from now on) after Black Ops 6 had already been out for a month or two. I heard that the game’s core multiplayer mode was surprisingly decent, so I wanted to see what I missed… and yeah! It’s one of the coolest AAA multiplayer experiences I’ve had so far, up there with the extraction shooter spinoff DMZ released in 2022 and even Battlefield 4, still to this day the G.O.A.T. of casual multiplayer gaming in my opinion.
Still, I had to be a little more self-conscious about how and when I played this game now due to the fact that I no longer live alone — I live with multiple roommates who might get annoyed at the click-clacking of my Razer Huntsman Mini (the one thing I don’t like about it lol). However, when I was talking with my roomates trying to confirm if they even had said issues, the feedback was different than I expected. One of my roommates noticed me clicking my mouse multiple times in quick succession when playing certain games, and that annoyed them more than my keyboard.
It took me a while to figure out what it was, but after some self-reflection, I realized what was happening: it was my backup pistol that made me click that way.
Most guns in Call of Duty have automatic fire, meaning that bullets fire out of the gun over and over as long as you are holding down the “trigger” (in this case, my left mouse button). In COD, you usually can only carry two weapons: your main “primary” weapon and your backup “secondary” weapon. Secondary weapons mostly consist of pistols that have semi-automatic fire. These pistols only shoot one bullet when you pull the trigger, so to fire multiple shots, you have to pull the trigger (click the mouse) multiple times, one for each shot.
That explains the pattern that my roommate was observing: since you usually have to fire multiple shots on-target in order to down an opponent in COD, if I had my pistol out, I had to click my mouse multiple times in rapid succession to win the fight. But that might not be the whole story.
This is purely anecdotal experience, but with semi-auto weapons, every shot you fire feels like it has more “weight” to it since you have to deliberately trigger each one. This is actually something the developers at Valve noticed when developing Team Fortress 2: they made most of the weapons in that game semi-automatic on purpose so that players felt like they contributed more to the outcome of each gunfight (I’m too tired tonight to find a good source, but if you really want me to, bug me about it opens in a new tab ). I have a feeling that because I was putting more mental effort into each shot, I also put more physical effort into each shot — increasing the amount of noise each click produced and thus exacerbating the problem for my roommate.
There might have even been a chance that the specific pistol I used contributed to the problem as well. I have been working to unlock cosmetics for the pistols carried forward from the previous game, Modern Warfare II, so I have the P890 pistol on most of my loadouts right now. The P890, like most guns in both games, is based on a real-life weapon but given a fake name to avoid legal trouble. In this case, the P890 is based off of the Sig Sauer P226, a heavy-duty pistol that emphasises the heavy part, both in caliber (.45 ACP) and in weight (its frame is still made out of steel!). In-game, the pistol has a high damage output but a slow rate-of-fire to compensate, which means I have to be even more deliberate with my shots — further emphasizing the mental (and, indrectly, physical) effort I put into my mouse clicks.
A screenshot of the P890 from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. It is a blocky steel-framed pistol with an exposed hammer protruding from the back of the slide. Image originally from PCGamesN: https://www.pcgamesn.com/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2/best-p890-loadout
In the end, I made a personal rule that I will not play COD or other input-intensive games like FPS games in the evening, where my hardcore gamering might disturb my roommates’ other evening activities. Of course, with how hot the weather has been getting lately, that effectively means that I am never allowed to play these games (as a gaming PC running on full blast generates a ton of heat already)… but that may be more of a blessing than a curse if I am being honest with myself.
Oh, before I go, here’s my very general opinion on MWIII: multiplayer is a blast, Modern Warfare Zombies is an insult to both DMZ fans and COD Zombies fans, and I haven’t touched the campaign yet because I’m still trying to finish the prior game’s campaign first. I have a lot more to say (including how I feel about the Gunsmith weapon customization systems in both this game and Black Ops 6)… but that is for another time.
Hope y’all enjoyed this post, as ranty as it is. Since this is more of a “long journal entry” than “short blog post”, here is the obligatory song link opens in a new tab . Cya!