Snipers in Black Ops Cold War alpha intentionally overpowered to test balance

Treyarch’s Designer Tony Flame has stated on Twitter that the team intentionally overpowered the sniper rifles in the alpha.

One of the first thing many players have noticed in the Black Ops Cold War Alpha is that Snipers are quite strong compared to past Treyarch games.

Now, Flame says that this was intentional in the alpha testing period. As the alpha was only on PS4, with no crossplay, they wanted to test the power of the sniper with players to gather data to fine tune it for the Beta.

Flame says “we buffed snipers to evaluate their performance in this Alpha.”

Ok let's talk Sniping in Cold War.

Crossplay is coming, but we knew it wouldn't be in Alpha. We buffed Snipers to evaluate their performance in this Alpha specifically. Sniper Rifles WILL have balance changes for the upcoming Beta based on our analytics data this weekend.

— Tony Flame (@Tony_Flame) September 18, 2020

The team plans to take all the data from weapons in the alpha to fine tune the upcoming Beta, which is set to begin on October 8 on PS4.

Stay tuned for more information.