Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — All the Changes Coming to Multiplayer for Launch Based on Feedback to the Beta

Activision has announced all the changes coming to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Multiplayer based on feedback to the recent beta.

Black Ops 6, due out October 25, has Multiplayer developed by Treyarch, with the Campaign developed by Warzone developer Raven.

Treyarch outlined the various changes to Multiplayer that will be made in time for Black Ops 6’s release date. The developer also addressed the ongoing community debate about the size of the multiplayer maps after the beta maps revolved around very small, often chaotic close quarters gameplay. Treyarch insisted the majority of Black Ops 6’s 12 core 6v6 maps at launch are medium-sized, and that the eight maps in the beta “trended smaller in size” and included some Strike maps (playable 2v2 up to 6v6).

Elsewhere, there are changes to weapon balance, movement, spawns, improvements to performance, and even tweaks to headshot damage. The Winner’s Circle, which lets the top three players show off via emotes at the end of a match, has been toned down, with a shorter overall duration and “mitigated emote spam.” The Winner’s Circle had become a talking point after the beta, with some players saying it lasted too long and held up getting into another Multiplayer match.

It’s worth digging into the detail of the headshot damage change, too. Treyarch said it agreed with feedback that low headshot damage reduced the impact of skillful play and made it difficult to challenge certain power positions, and had worked on adjustments to many weapons to reward players who land multiple headshots during an engagement.

“That said, we do not want hit location multipliers to significantly affect the consistency of time to kill in Black Ops 6, so we will continue to monitor the effectiveness of headshots during launch and beyond,” Treyarch continued.

Black Ops 6 has a new Body Shield feature, a new Omnimovement feature, and various features returning from Treyarch’s 2020 game, Black Ops Cold War. Check out IGN’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Multiplayer Review in Progress to find out what we thought of the beta.

Black Ops 6 is the first mainline Call of Duty game to launch straight into Xbox subscription service Game Pass (Microsoft acquired Call of Duty as part of its $69 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard last year).

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Multiplayer changes coming out of the beta:

MAPS

While our selection of 8 total maps in the Beta trended smaller in size and included some of our Strike maps (playable 2v2 up to 6v6), we recently shared that the majority of our 12 Core 6v6 maps at launch are medium-sized.

We’re excited about the map variety we’ve got this year, and we always take competitive play into consideration for Multiplayer. We’re looking forward to unveiling our map selections for CDL and Ranked Play (arriving Season 1) in Black Ops 6 in the coming months. Map size and game flow are critically important to us, and we look forward to seeing you all jump into all 16 maps at launch, with many more to follow in our live seasons.

We’re also evaluating some changes to cover placement across multiple maps, including some of our Beta maps, which we’ll be able to share more details on closer to launch.

SPAWNS

As a key companion to maps, we want to update you on the spawn system. One of the most important reasons we have a public Beta is gathering spawn data from our players. Now that we have two weeks’ worth of player data, we’ve already made big strides in dialing in our spawn logic and identifying and resolving issues within the spawn system across the game for launch.

Players may have noticed improvements to spawn logic throughout Weekend 2 of the Beta, and as new content comes into the game and we generate even more spawn data, we’re always assessing our spawn system and will continue to make necessary updates to it through launch and beyond.

PERFORMANCE

Our Beta was immensely helpful in identifying and resolving some performance related issues. Over the course of the Beta, we identified several areas that were impacting in-game performance. Some areas where we’ve made progress on performance include resolving general script errors, addressing issues related to our in-game user interface as well as overall improvements and fixes to our asset streaming.

A smooth game performance is paramount to the player experience, and we’ve been able to chase down sources of in-game “hitching” and deploy major fixes since the close of the Beta. We will continue working with experts across all disciplines to improve overall performance for launch and into the live seasons.

WEAPONS

Headshot Damage

We were so excited to see our new weapons in the hands of players throughout the Beta and are grateful to have plenty of data and feedback to process as we look to balance updates for launch. A common piece of feedback we saw was that low headshot damage reduced the impact of skillful play and made it difficult to challenge certain power positions. We agree with these points and are working on adjustments to many weapons to reward players who land multiple headshots during an engagement. That said, we do not want hit location multipliers to significantly affect the consistency of time to kill in Black Ops 6, so we will continue to monitor the effectiveness of headshots during launch and beyond.

Bullet Penetration

Bullet Penetration is another system that we will be improving for launch. In general players should notice fewer extreme cases of bullets doing far too much damage through certain surfaces (AKA Wall Bang), while also not penetrating as expected through others (e.g., those pesky snipers behind the radar dish on Scud).

More to Come

And of course, we continue to review data and feedback regarding general weapon feel and tuning, and we’re always keeping tabs on overall weapon class balance in the context of our entire map pool.

Some specific changes coming at launch include:

• Improvements to fluidity of sniper ADS
• Improved fluidity when swapping weapons during sprint and tactical sprint. We’re excited about this one!
• Reduction of weapon motion during crouch transitions
• Small lift to shotguns and targeted adjustments across all weapons to keep SMGs from over-performing relative to other classes

Weapon balance is an ongoing process and something we’re working towards at every point in our live seasons. We’ll be sharing specific details about balancing in our launch Patch Notes.

MOVEMENT

We were blown away by all your Beta gameplay clips and Omnimovement highlights, including the awesome action hero moments you were all able to pull off! We are currently working to dial-in some additional updates to improve fluidity and allow players to tune their sprint behavior to their individual playstyle.

Movement Updates

• Continued improvements to animation fluidity and fidelity throughout

o We identified several areas for improvement to our 3rd Person animation fidelity across slide, dive, jump and supine prone. Our goal is that what you see in 1st Person is representative of what others see in 3rd Person in order to maintain immersion and predictability.

• Adjustments to slide for improved predictability and fluidity

o During Weekend 2 of the Beta, we increased the time before you could enter supine during a slide. After further assessment based on your feedback, we’ve reduced that time to find a nice middle ground between where we were in Beta Weekend 1 and Weekend 2.

o Reduced the minimum time to slide after sprinting to prevent accidentally crouching when intending to slide, also known as a “dead slide”

o Slight increase to initial slide speed and slight reduction to maximum slide duration.

• Intelligent Movement updates

o As a reminder, you can find our suite of Intelligent Movement settings in the Movement tab under the Controller or Keyboard & Mouse settings. These settings are broken down by Sprint Assist, Mantle Assist and Crouch Assist with the intention of letting you fine-tune your experience with the result of requiring drastically fewer inputs with basic movement and Omnimovement in Black Ops 6.

o We identified an issue in Beta with the additional settings for Mantle Assist that allows for further tuning of directional mantles. These have been resolved and should now behave as expected.

AND A FEW MORE…

While we’ll be sharing a more comprehensive list in our launch Patch Notes, we wanted to give you a quick taste of a few changes coming at launch based on community feedback:

Winner’s Circle

• Shortened overall duration of Winner’s Circle
• Mitigated emote spam
• Improved usability of emote wheel
• Improvements to fidelity and lighting

Kill Counter

• By popular demand, we’ve added a Kill Counter on your HUD that will track your progress toward Killstreak Medals, including those who are chasing the coveted Nuclear Medal and Nuke Scorestreak.

Camera Motion

• We’re reducing overall camera motion on sprint, tac sprint, and slide

Kill Order

• Increased ‘Kills as HVT’ team score to 3
• Reduced ‘HVT Survival’ score to 20
• Increased Score Limit to 150
• HVT will no longer drop their pistol when they are eliminated
• Improved notifications when player is selected as HVT

Sleeper Agent

• Removed the time added when earning Eliminations while Sleeper Agent is active

Equipment

• Stim Shot has been changed from Inventory Based to Cooldown Based by default.

o Quartermaster (Strategist) will decrease the cooldown time.

• Resolved an issue where the Combat Axe would not deal lethal damage at round start. It wouldn’t be a Black Ops game if you can’t hit those cross-maps at match start!

Perks

• After assessing Perk data from our time with the Beta, we’ve made a few updates to ensure compelling decisions are being made:
• Assassin (Enforcer) and Bruiser (Enforcer) moved from Perk 1 to Perk 2
• Dexterity (Enforcer) and Gung Ho (Enforcer) moved from Perk 2 to Perk 1

RC-XD Controls

• Updated to classic BO view-based control by default, with an option to switch to gas/brake; on controller, detonate swapped from R2 to R1 so accidental mistakes aren’t made.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.