Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Private Beta — Treyarch’s Day 2 Update

In a new post shared on Reddit, similar to yesterday, Treyarch has outlined what they are aware of and what they are looking into based on feedback from Day 2 of the Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Private Beta.

Today’s update not only brought in S&D, there was also weapon changes, equipment updates, and general bug fixes.

• Weapons Tuning:
  • Auger DMR – The Auger is performing pretty well, but it could use a little help filling out its mid-long-range precision role, so we improved its ADS sway stability for tighter long-range engagements.
  • ABR 223 – The ABR provided too large of a power-spike across the board, so we’re toning it down a tad by making the following modifications:
    • Slightly reduced damage so that it requires 3 headshots to kill instead of 2.
    • Slightly reduced hipfire accuracy so that it is not overly effective in close quarters.
    • Reduced ammo count to encourage more tactical use and placement of shots.
    • Increased ammo gains from Extended Mags to compensate for overall reduced ammo count.
  • Titan – The Titan needs some love to reach its potential as a high-capacity suppressive weapon. We improved ADS recoil so that long-range gunfire is more effective staying on target. Additionally, we improved hipfire accuracy for a slightly better chance to defend in close quarters.
  • MOG 12 – Players are still unlocking attachments and adapting to the new playstyle of shotguns in Black Ops 4. That said, we’re seeing low performance and can give the MOG a boost to make it more competitive. Today, we improved damage for enhanced “clean up” ability to finish off players.
  • GKS – The GKS is intended to be a longer range, accurate submachine gun. We’ve improved the recoil to let it blossom more into that role. We’re keeping a close eye on this one and may adjust it again in the near future. Today, we improved ADS recoil for more precision on medium-range targets.
  • Cordite / Spitfire / SAUG 9mm – We identified trends that were showing SMGs overall being too effective at longer ranges. Today, we reduced damage dealt on targets at the weapon’s farthest distance range.
  • MX-9 – Out of the gate, we wanted to make sure players had a solid SMG to play with. It may have been a bit too solid, so we’ve adjusted accordingly. We reduced close-range damage so that it doesn’t have such dominant TTK over other weapons. We also reduced far-range damage to bring it in line with other SMGs.

• Equipment Tuning
  • Barricade – We decreased the angle of the microwave area of effect for a tighter cone of damage to focus in its role of directional area denial.
  • Ballistic Shield – Increased the shield movement speed to provide players more defensive capability when using this equipment.
  • 9-Bang – Increased the stun radius to affect a larger overall area of detonation.
  • Combat Axe – Reduced the cooldown time so that players can earn this faster.

• Bug Fixes
  • General Stability – Made many under-the-hood fixes to reduce disconnect errors, resolve a number of issues causing hitching during gameplay, and fix some UI errors that would occur in the front end menus.
  • Maps – Made several performance optimizations to improve framerate in Gridlock. This was an initial pass for the live update, but more significant optimizations are happening across all maps for our big week 2 update.

Treyarch also provided some explanations for Search & Destroy. We mentioned earlier that there was a glitch causing Seraph’s tac beacon to be deployed, but Treyarch says that was not a bug or a glitch:

While it’s true that S&D has traditionally been a single elimination game mode, we shouldn’t be afraid to challenge conventions – what would be the fun in always playing it safe? For Black Ops 4, there a couple of things about game modes that are important to us: first, that all Specialists are viable and fun to use in all game modes; and second, that the gameplay content and systems that we’ve designed provide opportunities to introduce some new twists on old favorites.

With that in mind, we’ve allowed Seraph (and only Seraph) to respawn on her Tac-Deploy ONCE per game. That gives players who choose Seraph an important strategic decision to make with a risk/reward associated with it. Because any change will inevitably be controversial, we did not take this lightly. A lot of thought and play time went into it with the team at Treyarch, many of whom are S&D traditionalists. The specific tuning is designed such that Seraph won’t earn the Tac-Deploy until roughly the 4th or 5th round (although a bug slipped through the cracks that did not set cooldowns on any equipment at round start, to be fixed shortly). Once used, it cannot be used again that game. The announcer notifies both teams when a Tac-Deploy has been placed so that everyone knows when it’s in play, and enemy players with the Engineer perk equipped can easily hunt it down and destroy it. So, while this sounds like a big change to a staple mode, in reality, it’s no more powerful than any other piece of equipment and gives a new piece of strategy to add to the mode’s depth.

We also are aware that there is a bug with switching Specialists in S&D that kills the player, preventing them from playing in that round. We’re implementing a fix as we speak, and it should be in for next week’s big game update.

Finally, Treyarch has provided an update on the long load times and lobby waiting screens, stating that they are working to fine tune that for launch:

One last thing: the lobby timer (time between matches) is long. We know. This is something that we’re still working to dial in, but we’ve added map pre-loading to lobbies, which means that the time you normally spend watching a static load screen is now front-loaded to lobbies where players can do stuff like edit classes, change Scorestreaks, and check out stats in the After Action Report. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s something we’re working to improve for launch.

SOURCE: r/BlackOps4