Modern Warfare 2 gunsmith attachments are confusing players

The Modern Warfare 2 gunsmith attachments are confusing players of the latest Call of Duty FPS game with their vague descriptions and an overload of poorly explained terminology. While the Infinity Ward multiplayer game is already proving hugely popular on Steam, Battlenet, and consoles alike, players are finding building the best Modern Warfare 2 guns to be a taxing endeavour as they struggle to understand what attachments actually do.

While previous entries Call of Duty Vanguard and Call of Duty Cold War both offered a full statistical breakdown for your weapons, MW2 does away with this system and simply offers a vague plus or minus to each stat when looking at attachment effects. You can get a bit more of an impression of how much difference each one makes by looking at the change in your bars – but an overcomplication of the terminology makes even that difficult to parse.

“Why is there now recoil control, recoil smoothness, recoil stabilisation, recoil steadiness, vertical recoil control, and horizontal recoil control,” asks one user on the MW2 Reddit, “Can we convolute it any more? This is absolutely unnecessary, and just tries to lead to an illusion of complexity so they can add more attachments.” Others in response point out that some of the terms are, in fact, synonyms. Seemingly all of them feed into an overall ‘recoil control’ bar, but that only serves to further muddy the numbers.

Another player humorously points out that the Cronen Zero-P Optic scope, described as an ‘Advanced 4x optic,’ bizarrely offers players ‘5.0x magnification’ among its benefits. They simply ask, “So which is it?”

One commenter remarks that in 2019’s Call of Duty Modern Warfare, ‘recoil control’ applies to vertical recoil, while ‘stabilisation’ refers to horizontal recoil. They say, “I assume that’s the same now, but then why have vertical and horizontal control mentioned as well? And what does steadiness do? Visual recoil, if I had to guess, or maybe sway while firing?” It’s certainly a lot to try and comprehend.

Personally, I’ve really been enjoying my time with the Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer so far, but its gunsmith system is certainly the thing that has clicked with me least. There are so many attachments now, and with such a vague, convoluted blend of positives and negatives for each one, that I find it overwhelming to try and figure out what’s ‘best’ to use.

Fortunately, PCGamesN is full of people much more attuned to these systems than myself, and they’ve got you covered on the best loadouts no matter which gun you favour. Be sure to check out our best loadouts for the MW2 M4, Lachmann-556, 556 Icarus, FSS Hurricane, FTAC Recon, and much more so you don’t have to pore over all those numbers yourself.

We’ve also got you covered on all the killstreaks, scorestreaks, and unlock tiers in our Modern Warfare 2 killstreaks guide. If you need an explainer for the new perk package system, check out our Modern Warfare 2 perks guide. You can also find out how the Modern Warfare 2 Prestige system works, and how to earn Modern Warfare 2 Twitch Drops by watching Call of Duty streamers in action.