Having received plenty of player feedback over the past couple of weeks following the game’s two multiplayer betas, developer Treyarch has taken to Reddit to update eager fans on the more significant Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 changes they can expect to see in response to their suggestions when the game releases on the 10th of September.
Fair warning, there’s quite a lot to get through.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Changes – Body Armour
We’ll begin with the big one: the game’s controversial new body armour.
Introduced as part of Treyarch’s overarching goal to increase the game’s depth, body armour came in for plenty of criticism for its negative effects on Black Ops 4’s average time to kill. Something which many believed contradicted Call of Duty’s traditionally fast-paced and frenetic gunplay.
So, in an effort to re-balance this controversial piece of kit, Treyarch has made a number of changes.
For starters, armour now decrease damage received rather than neutralising it entirely and can be shredded by explosives. While every kill recorded against someone wearing body armour yields an additional 25 points towards that player’s scorestreak.
In other words, coming face-to-face with an armour-clad enemy should be a far less annoying experience in the full game.
Fog of War
Fog of War has undergone various balancing tweaks too. Quite a few, in fact, listed in bullet form for your convenience:
- The full reveal circle is no longer the default layout
- In addition, the standard reveal area will be a cone that reflects the player’s field of view and thus one that will always be blocked by solid objects so it can never be used to see through walls
- Said full reveal circle has been added to the Team Link perk. This means players will need to spend a point in Create-a-Class to gain access to it (giving Team Link a more significant role in the finished article)
- An additional HUD indicator has been introduced. Lets players know when they’re visible to enemy players in the minimap
- Red dots that appear in the minimap when firing your gun will fade faster. Gives players so more time to evade after each engagement
- Those same red dots will no longer reveal nearby teammates
Tac Deploy and Spawning
Elsewhere, Treyarch has acknowledged Tac Deploy was a mite over-powered in the recent betas. Likewise, certain aspects of the spawning system failed to meet the team’s expectations.
With that in mind, Treyarch has decided to decrease the window during which a Tac Deploy is active, as well as lengthening its cooldown time, increasing the deploy radius, and limiting the number of spawns to ten.
Additionally, there will also be a new notification on the deathcam that informs players when a Tac Deploy is active and what the current danger level is in that location.
Additional Black Ops 4 Changes
Finally, Treyarch is working on a few minor UI tweaks and quality of life improvements ahead of the game’s release next month.
This includes adding D-pad functionality to Black Ops 4’s various menu screens for those that aren’t as comfortable with free cursor navigation. And the ability to see an enemy player’s loadout in the killcam.
That’s about it for the latest swathe of Black Ops 4 changes. Stay tuned to PSU for more Call of Duty news, reviews, and videos over the coming weeks.