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There is an absolute carkfest of a headline to be written here involving the words “head” “not” “enough” and “giving”, but I am a journalist of grace and discretion, and will resist. Treyarch, Raven Software and Activision have popped up a note-to-players covering a range of improvements they’re making to Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 in the aftermath of August’s beta. Specifically, they’re tweaking the damage from bullets to the cranium, while trying to ensure that bullets to the cranium don’t “significantly affect the consistency of time to kill”.
“A common piece of feedback we saw was that low headshot damage reduced the impact of skillful play and made it difficult to challenge certain power positions,” comments the Steam post in question. “We agree with these points and are working on adjustments to many weapons to reward players who land multiple headshots during an engagement. That said, we do not want hit location multipliers to significantly affect the consistency of time to kill in Black Ops 6, so we will continue to monitor the effectiveness of headshots during launch and beyond.”
I know little and wish to know little about the real-life efficacy of headshots. I know slightly more about the concept of time-to-kill in shooters. It’s a deceptively simple-sounding metric that can transform your FPS entirely. Stretch out the seconds a player can last under fire and you’ve got a relatively sedate, borderline-RPG experience, in which duellists have leisure to dart and circle and get to know each other between bursts. Shrink them back down, and (if you’re a terrible player, like me), you’ve got an extremely fast Game-Over montage, with the occasional hint of a pointed rifle in the scarlet haze of your peripheral vision.
COD has historically been a low TTK shooter, and it doesn’t feel like you’re all that spongier in Black Ops 6, but then again, I rarely land a headshot. I wish Treyarch and Raven Software the best of luck cooking the books, because it’s the kind of thing the fans have extensive, unpunctuated opinions about.
Here’s a non-exhaustive round-up of other stuff they’re pruning and polishing, siphoned from that Steam post:
– “Bullet Penetration is another system that we will be improving for launch. In general players should notice fewer extreme cases of bullets doing far too much damage through certain surfaces (AKA Wall Bang), while also not penetrating as expected through others (e.g., those pesky snipers behind the radar dish on Scud).”
– “We’re also evaluating some changes to cover placement across multiple maps, including some of our Beta maps, which we’ll be able to share more details on closer to launch.”
– “Players may have noticed improvements to spawn logic throughout Weekend 2 of the Beta, and as new content comes into the game and we generate even more spawn data, we’re always assessing our spawn system and will continue to make necessary updates to it through launch and beyond.”
– “Over the course of the Beta, we identified several areas that were impacting in-game performance. Some areas where we’ve made progress on performance include resolving general script errors, addressing issues related to our in-game user interface as well as overall improvements and fixes to our asset streaming. A smooth game performance is paramount to the player experience, and we’ve been able to chase down sources of in-game “hitching” and deploy major fixes since the close of the Beta.”
– “We identified several areas for improvement to our 3rd-Person animation fidelity across slide, dive, jump and supine prone. Our goal is that what you see in 1st Person is representative of what others see in 3rd Person in order to maintain immersion and predictability.”
They’re also trying to pin down a “nice middle ground” for “the time before you could enter supine during a slide”, while reducing the minimum time before you can slide while sprinting. This latter twist is designed to reduce the odds of a “dead slide”, wherein you accidentally crouch instead of sliding. Truly, performing a dead slide is an abysmal faux pas of Austenian dimensions, much like referencing sex acts in headlines or singing “just the two of us” when you’re a meatshield.
Circle-strafing back to the angst over headshots – what’s your preferred blend of TTK and hit location multiplier? I always think it’s quite jolly when players scurry about with arrows and whatnot sticking out of their ears. Blops 6 is out 25th October. In other news, unionised workers at Raven Software are pursuing a complaint against Activision Blizzard and Microsoft, alleging “bad faith bargaining”.