ESP draws information about other players on top of your game: where they are, how far away, whether they can see you and how much armour they have left. In Modern Warfare 4 it works the same way it did in earlier Call of Duty games, with one big change. Ricochet's new server culling means the game only receives the positions of players you could reasonably know about, so ESP can only draw those.
What ESP shows in MW4
Each element can be turned on or off on its own. These are the ones in our Call of Duty build, from the Call of Duty ESP page:
- Player box outlines each enemy, so you pick them out at range or through smoke.
- Skeleton shows how a player is standing: crouched, prone or leaning out of cover.
- Snaplines draw a line from your screen to each enemy, which pulls your eye to a new threat.
- Distance tells you how far away each player is, so you pick the right weapon before you commit.
- Shield shows armour on top of health. In Warzone this matters most: you know if a squad is fresh or one plate from going down.
- Visibility check marks who actually has line of sight on you.
- Show team separates teammates from enemies.
- Visible only and maximum distance hide players behind full cover or too far away to matter.
What server culling changes
Ricochet now withholds the location of opponents your PC should not have access to, on every launch map including DMZ and Combat Outpost, and on new Multiplayer, DMZ and Warzone maps from Season 1 (Worthplaying, 2 October). If the server does not send a player's position, no ESP can draw it, because the information is simply not on your PC.
Activision has not published the exact rules, but in practice expect ESP to show fewer players than in older Call of Duty games, mostly the ones close to having a line on you. That is still the information that decides most fights: who is about to peek, how much armour they have and whether they have seen you. For the rest of launch week, our post on what changed in Ricochet covers DMA detections, TPM 2.0 and hardware bans.
How to set up a clean ESP overlay
Start with less
Turn on box, distance and shield first. Add skeleton when you want to read stances, and snaplines only if you keep missing new threats. A busy overlay is harder to read in a fight than a clean one.
Use visible only for close fights
Visible only hides players behind full cover, so in Multiplayer you see who you can actually shoot. In Warzone, turn it off and lean on distance and shield instead, since knowing what sits behind a wall is the point there.
Set a maximum distance
Capping the range keeps the far edge of the map off your screen. In Multiplayer a short range is plenty; in Warzone push it out to cover the next circle.
ESP, wallhack and radar: the difference
A wallhack is ESP drawn through walls. Radar puts the same information on a small overhead map instead of on players. They read from the same data, so server culling limits all three the same way. Our ESP feature guide compares how it works across games.
Getting ESP for MW4
ESP is part of the Call of Duty build, alongside the aimbot, and one key covers MW4 multiplayer and Warzone. See the full feature list on the MW4 cheat page and plan lengths on the pricing page. No cheat is risk free and Call of Duty bans are permanent, so check the live status page before every session.