A huge, scary, bearded man just kicked in my door. His face and shoulders are covered in tactical Dorito fabric. His eyes are heavily redacted. He has assault rifles and comparison screenshots sticking out of his ribcage, making an absolute mess of the plaster in the hallway. He says he’s Call Of Duty Man, and he’s here to update me on Black Ops 6’s day one patch. The new Activision FPS releases tomorrow, October 25, I understand. Call Of Duty Man only speaks in three-syllable bursts and rolling bombardments, but I think if I listen closely I can make out the high points. Here’s what that patch entails, in nickel-plated bullet point form.
– They’re messing around with the aiming aids. During the Black Ops 6 beta, developers Treyarch tried to disable aim assist when shooting at close range, but players found this disorienting. “While this was a change in the right direction, we found this to be a bit jarring when crossing the close range threshold, so we adjusted our approach to linearly interpolate the aim assist strength,” Call Of Duty Man roars in my ear . “This means that the aim assist will be much weaker at short distances and will increase smoothly in power at short distances. We will of course continue to monitor and assess data and player feedback.”
GOOD THINGS. They’ve also speeded up the speeds for pistol switching/specific melee attacks and melee attacks with weapon thrusts, while making “adjustments to the swinging, bobbing, and general weapon movements to improve aiming when entering ADS.” There are also some new movement options, such as the ability to change how long you have to hold a button when doing prone or gliding dives.
– They made surreptitious adjustments to the card furniture. In particular, a huge amount of time and effort has gone into the hot tub area on Skyline: the platform behind it has been lowered, a number of extra steps have been added, and the old balcony loungers have been replaced with relatively relaxing loungers. At a glance, the only thing they’ve forgotten is the ability to fill the hot tub and sit in it, which I personally would consider optimal escapism.
Additionally, Skyline now has a concierge, as evidenced by the cleaning cart that has appeared in one hallway. I was a janitor once and I can tell you, if someone had tried to hide behind my trolley with an AK, I would have drenched them in mop water. Less dramatically, local hooligans have been tampering with the crates and barrels at Scud, and whoever left the pickup in the handicapped parking lot at Rewind has finally returned to pick it up.
– They have strengthened the antiheat. “TeamRICOCHET measures are live in Black Ops 6 multiplayer, including Damage Shield, Disarm, Splat and more,” Call Of Duty Man shouts, slapping me on the shoulders. “Machine learning behavioral systems are used to increase detection speed,” he continues, crying uncontrollably. “Added machine-learning detection models to analyze gameplay fighting target bots.” Hold on, I’ll pour him a savory, restorative cherryade. There, Call Of Duty Man, I’m sure the aimbots won’t mind if you sit there for five minutes.
– They take a new approach to visualizing changes in weapons balance. I’m actually quite interested in this, albeit more as a starting point for musings on the culture of game balance at a young age. “In the past, our patch notes used a number of terms to describe the damage values at different levels, which could cause some mild confusion for some players,” admits Call Of Duty Man, who is now hiding under my desk (I think he misheard “cherryade” as “grenade”). That’s why the developers have created a new kind of weapon damage customization table for future Blops 6 (and Call Of Duty: Warzone) patch notes.
It’s nothing of note in itself – just a few columns labeled “before patch” and “after patch”, with rows for damage at different levels. But one thought it inspires is that the discussion about balancing in multiplayer shooters can be quite patch-to-patch, with minimal sense of a timeline. I wonder if there is room for something beautiful, big graphs here, Treyarch. Show me how today’s C9 SMG has evolved from its distant ancestor, the C9 SMG of six months ago.
There are third-party tools for that, I’m sure, but it would be helpful if players and journalists could easily assess the overall evolution of a game’s balance without visiting, I don’t know, IsCODNerfed.com. Maybe it would create less toxicity in the community? Maybe with less toxicity, Call Of Duty Man will stop chewing on my ankle?
(Find the full patch notes here.)