Treyarch Details Numerous Changes Coming To The Black Ops Cold War Beta

Published: Oct 07, 2020, 10:16 pm Updated: Apr 08, 2021, 8:50 am

The PS4 Beta for Black Ops Cold War is set to kick-off very soon.

This will be the first time players have had the chance to jump into the game since it was in alpha last month.

Since the alpha, Treyarch has spent countless hours fine-tuning the game, and they have detailed all the changes in a new blog post.

Check them out below!

Lessons Learned

The whole idea surrounding an alpha/beta is to test out certain aspects of your game, finding out what works and doesn't to improve the final product come release.

This is exactly what Treyarch has done, as they have detailed an ample amount of changes made between the alpha and now.

You can check out all the changes here or below is a list of all of them!

MOVEMENT

Core Movement

Integrated updated locomotion animations and systems for walking, jogging, and sprinting.
Slightly increased acceleration when moving from a standstill.

Sprinting

Reduced or removed several sprint penalties that could leave the player in a state of reduced sprint speed. This results in more opportunities to use the Sprint Takeoff feature for a quick burst of speed when initiating a sprint.
Increased the time it takes to ramp down from maximum to minimum sprint speed for a smoother change of speed. This also slightly increases the time at which a player sprints at a faster pace.
Slightly adjusted camera bob during sprint to better align with updated movement animations.
Disabled Field of View increase when sprinting. This should provide a smoother in-game view and prevent a “floating camera” feeling when sprinting.

Sliding

Slightly reduced slide speed.
Increased the minimum amount of time a player must sprint before sliding to better align with time to reach max sprint speed. This means a player cannot immediately trigger a slide from a near-standstill.
Addressed an issue that allowed players to cancel a slide without the appropriate slowdown. We will continue to monitor and investigate any slide-cancel exploits.

WEAPONS / GUNSMITH

Gunsmith

Added a more detailed breakdown of statistics for each attachment, explaining in detail how each attachment influences its weapon’s stats.
Moved the Gunsmith UI button closer to the weapon for easier access.

Recoil and Firing Animations

Added new weapon recoil systems and firing animations with a comprehensive tuning pass for a revamped weapon firing feel on every weapon for both hip-fire and ADS.
Reworked and rebalanced all recoil patterns, impacting weapon balance and mastery across the board.
Full touch-up pass on animations across all weapons based on feedback.

Aim Down Sights (ADS)

Added new ADS weapon rendering technology for more realistic ADS perspective.
Smoothed out all ADS in/out transitions.

General Weapon Tuning

Made tuning changes to Alpha weapons that overperformed or underperformed, including increases to AK-74u recoil and ADS time, increasing LMG ammo capacity, and more.

Attachment Tuning

Full attachment balance pass to ensure all attachments stay relevant and balanced.

Sniper Rifles

Added aim assist on snipers for controller users for cross-platform balancing.
Several precision-aiming adjustments to help the sniping experience feel more fluid.
Sniper glint now displays more often and more reliably to help players understand when they are in danger.
Adjusted ADS time on sniper rifles.
Sniper rifles now requires higher hits on the body for one-hit eliminations (for example, upper chest instead of stomach, or upper arm instead of lower arm).

Frag Grenades

Reduced the fuse time on the Frag Grenade for Beta. Throw speed adjustments are targeted for launch.

VISUALS

Graphics

Improved graphical fidelity and performance across the board.

Lighting / Visibility

Adjusted lighting and character visibility throughout the Miami map for better overall visibility based on player feedback.

AUDIO

Weapon Audio

Added bass and punch to all weapon sounds by adjusting master EQ and compression output.
Added 3 presets to Audio Settings (Treyarch Mix, Bass Boost, and High Boost) to suit player preferences.
Redesigned several weapon audio layers, corrected audio decay playback, and added blending for interior/exterior sounds.
Polished reverb audio across all maps.

Footsteps

Crouch-walking now functions as a near-silent movement option available to all players, with or without the Ninja Perk.
ADS crouch-walking now makes the player’s footstep audio even quieter. Enemies should not hear the player when crouching outside of extreme close quarters.
While Ninja is equipped, core movements such as sprinting, jogging, and walking are now greatly reduced in volume and distance by roughly 50% compared to the Alpha.
ADS walking will also provide a significant stealth advantage when using Ninja.

Hit Marker Audio

Added new sounds for fatal and non-fatal hit markers.

Scorestreak Audio

Polished audio for several Scorestreaks.

Spy Plane Audio

Reduced the volume of the Spy Plane’s locational pings.
For the first time in a Black Ops game, Spy Plane pings are directional and locational based on where an enemy is when they are swept by the radar, allowing for pinpoint accuracy. As this is a new mechanic, we will continue to monitor and adjust as necessary.

Bullet Crack

Tweaked the bullet crack system to prevent players from hearing sounds when they shouldn’t, and vice versa.

SCORESTREAK SYSTEM

"We’ve increased the score reward for a number of objective-based game modes and objective score events to further incentive playing the objective in the Beta."

Objective score rewards have been increased in Domination, Kill Confirmed, and Hardpoint. These changes will reward any objective player and do not require or reward objective streaking.
Adjusted Scorestreak rewards to reduce Scorestreak spam and make Scorestreaks more rewarding. Players will need to go on higher streaks in a single life to earn top-tier Scorestreaks. The curve has been flattened out on the low end, and ramps up quickly as the player earns higher kill-streak numbers.
Reduced Scorestreak cooldowns to offset these changes and allow players to cycle through Scorestreaks more often.

SPAWNS

Miami

Full spawn pass for Team Deathmatch and Kill Confirmed modes on Miami with the goal of reducing the time to engagement and increasing the overall pace of 6v6 game modes.
Spawns at the ends of the map have been pulled in closer.
Added new spawns to get players back into the fight faster.
Adjusted the spawn logic to reduce the distance at which an enemy player will influence the enemy team’s spawn points.

Moscow

Added spawns across several modes to allow for more safe spawns in relation to enemy player locations at the time of a respawn.

Armada

Reduced how often players can be spawned at the rear of their home ship to reduce travel time back to engagements.

Crossroads

Adjusted Combined Arms: Domination spawn logic and spawn placement to keep players spawning closer to their owned objectives, reducing time to engagement and getting players back into the action faster.

Satellite

Adjusted spawn logic to allow for slightly easier spawn-flipping in certain modes instead of a team becoming spawn-trapped for an extended period.

VEHICLES

Vehicle Damage Tuning

Reworked the bullet damage mitigation model for Tanks to provide a more consistent experience across weapon classes. This fixes issues where some guns seemed inordinately more powerful against vehicles than others.
Adjusted the “Cavalry Lancer” weapon attachment to be more consistent across weapons, especially on LMGs. We will continue to keep a close eye on tuning this for launch.

Tanks

Reduced Tank health to make launchers and C4 more effective counters.
Reduced the deadliness of the Tank shell’s splash damage.

BUG FIXES

Character Models

Addressed an issue where a player disconnecting from the match during the loading sequence could result in that player’s character displaying an unnatural pose at the start of the game.

AK-74u

The AK-74u’s reload animations will no longer appear to skip.

RC-XD

Called in the Fun Police to address an issue that allowed players to ride around on a teammate’s RC-XD. Sorry.

Gunboat and Wakerunner

Fixed an issue where Wakerunners being deployed from a ship’s davits could cause the Gunboat to be flung into the ocean.

Motion Blur

Addressed an issue where the Motion Blur setting would not properly retain its settings.

Moscow Window

Addressed an issue where a player could become stuck when sliding through a window in Moscow.

Mantling

Tuned mantling at tall heights to ensure they are performed at a more natural speed.
Where necessary, map designs will be updated to restrict areas where mantling is not intended.

Moving Before Match Start

Addressed an issue that could allow players to begin moving before the match countdown timer had ended.

Invisible” Weapons

Addressed an issue that could display an invisible third weapon when exiting a vehicle, preventing the player from being able to use any of their weapons.

After Action Report

Addressed an issue that would show incorrect Scoreboards in the After Action Report.

Stability

Addressed various stability issues encountered during the Alpha.

ADDITIONAL UPDATES / FEATURES

Ping System

Added locational Ping system across all MP modes, allowing players to ping objectives, loot, locations, and enemies for teammates during a match using D-pad left on controllers or Z on keyboards by default.
Alternate button layouts, like Bumper Ping and Bumper Ping Tactical, can be selected in the Gameplay Settings menu.

FOV Slider on All Platforms

Added Field of View (FOV) slider on all platforms to define the height and width of the player’s view in Settings.

HUD Visual Toggles

Added the ability to toggle visuals for the compass, enemy and ally health bars, hit markers, crosshairs, player names, and button hints in Settings.

Name Plates

Adjusted the ruleset around when friendly player names would show to reduce instances where friendly name plates would appear over enemies in certain situations.

Deadzones / Minimum Input Threshold

Expanded the options to reduce minimum stick input threshold (or “deadzone”) to 0.
NOTE: Setting this to 0 is only recommended for advanced users. Depending on controller hardware, setting this to low values can cause “stick drift”, which can engage the stick even when no input is given.

Kill Confirmed Score Limit

Our data from Alpha showed that Kill Confirmed was ending on time limit too frequently in the Alpha, so we’ve reduced the score limit to 65 for the Beta.

Start Spawn “Soft Freeze”

We’ve enabled the ability for players to rotate their Operator, swap weapons, ADS, and changes stances during the pre-round timer.

Progression

We’ll be introducing a deep progression system synchronized across Multiplayer, Zombies, and Warzone that deserves its own time in the spotlight, and we’ll have more details in a dedicated blog as we get closer to launch.
While players won’t see this full progression system in the Beta, you’ll be able to rank up to certain levels to unlock additional content throughout both Beta weekends.

What do you think of all the changes coming to the Black Ops Cold War beta? There sure is a lot to take in!