The Black Ops 6 beta has been a lot of fun. I’ve put in about 8-10 hours, maxed rank days ago, and am still playing just for fun. It feels like a successor to Cold War and Treyarch’s classic Black Ops games while having the boldest movement changes to a Call of Duty since Advanced Warfare. It’s a fresh experience with traditional Treyarch multiplayer sensibilities, and it’s easily the most excited I’ve felt for a Call of Duty multiplayer mode in a long time.
I am not a Multiplayer expert by any means. There aren’t enough enemies of the undead variety in MP for that. I’d usually put myself in the tier above a casual player, but when it’s time for a Treyarch game, I typically play a lot more MP than I would otherwise. I enjoy the slightly longer TTK and Treyarch’s “guns always up” mentality.
Below is some feedback and an overview of my time playing the beta. I hope it can be helpful to someone! As a bit of an MP simpleton, I blame anything that doesn’t make sense on my aetherium-induced delusions.
Movement
- Tactical Sprint. I’m admittedly not a fan of tactical Sprint after first experiencing it in MW 2019. It’s a good tool for covering large distances in Warzone, but it doesn’t fit with traditional multiplayer. In my opinion, it hinders omnimovement more than it helps.
- I want to sprint as much as possible without worrying about locking into a tactical sprint. Although you aren’t locked into the animation for long, sprinting forward doesn’t feel as fluid as sprinting to either side or backwards does because of this.
- Having two different states of sprint alongside omnimovement goes against the fluidity that omnimovement promises. The number of times I’ve ended up tac-sprinting by accident, only to get caught out by an enemy due to the longer sprint-out time of tac-sprint, is slightly frustrating.
- I’d like to see how the game feels with only one sprint state.
- I played about with the auto sprint options but could not tune it to a place where I felt comfortable.
- I don’t think tac-sprint has to be removed entirely, but an optional setting to turn it off would be great. If that isn’t possible, I’d willingly sacrifice a perk slot to remove it, like MWIII’s All-Terrain Boots perk that completely removed tactical sprint in exchange for a slight speed increase.
- Apart from Tac Sprint, Omnimovement is as enjoyable as expected! It’s a breath of fresh air after some of the modern Call of Duty titles, and when you’re in the flow state of moving and gunning, it reminds me of playing classic CODs.
- Some elements of the environment I expected to be able to vault over using the low-auto mantle option came to a halt. A few of Rewind’s railings and shop windows felt like they should be auto-mantleable, but they seemed inconsistent.
Gameplay
- Shooting in water. I’m disappointed we can’t use any weapons underwater except pistols. I have always enjoyed this in past Black Ops titles, and I was frustrated that MW only allowed pistols to be used in water. Skyline seems made for a bit of water combat.
- I was worried about the TTK changes mentioned during NEXT, but after experiencing omnimovement, I can understand the decision. That said, the TTK does feel extremely short for a Treyarch COD during traditional one-on-one encounters.
- The RC-XD is very challenging to control, particularly compared to previous games. There’s little forgiveness if you collide with a wall or debris.
- There’s also a delay in the team marker appearing when using the RC-XD. I’ve detonated it next to a teammate quite a few times, thinking it was an enemy. Conversely, I’ve had my RC-XD shot after hesitating around an enemy, waiting to see if it’s an ally.
- I was initially excited at the premise of the melee slot, but I haven’t used it much, and I think that’s because of how you pull it out. I’d prefer to hold Y to bring my knife out (similar to how Destiny controls power weapons)
- I’ve experienced frustrating packet burst/rubber banding issues when playing on Wi-Fi. I played a game of MWIII between beta matches to see if it was my connection, but the MWIII match was perfect. This has improved during my sessions on Sunday, but it still happened in a few games.
- Attachments with fewer adverse effects have allowed me to experiment with different builds. Previously, I only looked for attachments that didn’t destroy my weapon’s ADS speed.
- Weapon Inspect requires two button presses, which is a bit clunky. I don’t mind having to do multiple presses for sprays and gestures, but I use Weapon Inspect more than I select my weapon’s fire mode.
UI/UX
- I like the customisable HUD. It would be great to see further customization options added throughout Black Ops 6’s life, such as changing the size of the mini-map/icons, etc. Even new presets would be nice.
- The Gunsmith and Menu system feels a lot better than previous CODs because of the mix of vertical and horizontal menus.
- I’m delighted that many attachment names explain what the attachment will do before hovering over it. MWII and MWIII’s gunsmith was a bloated mess of fake brand names. It might be exciting for an enthusiast, but I want to know precisely what the attachment will do to my weapon ASAP.
- The subtitles aren’t always in line. Occasionally, they break into new lines randomly, and sometimes, they’re off-centre.
- Weapon, perk, and attachment descriptions don’t display much text before scrolling. It takes longer to wait to see the entire text than to read it all in one go.
- The ability to vote on a Random map is always appreciated.
Maps
- Skyline is an obvious highlight. I love maps with secret lanes. It reminds me of the air vent from Arsenal in BO4.
- The head glitch on the satellite dish in Scud is pretty powerful.
- The sniping spot on top of Freedom Fried Chicken in Rewind is quite difficult to challenge. It’d be good to access the roof from the other side of the building to make it more difficult for the sniper to defend it. Currently, if you spawn around Flag C, your only two options are to take out the sniper from a long distance or flank them (which is a long way away).
- Both Face-Off maps are fun, but 6v6 is too chaotic for me. It’s good to have the option for people who like playing frantic modes like Shipment 24/7, but I’m more interested in smaller 3v3 or 4v4 modes on those maps. Face Off was one of my highlights in Cold War MP, so I’m glad it’s back!
- I prefer Small-to-Medium maps in COD, so I am thrilled with the current map pool. It’d be good to see a few maps on the bigger side. Something to the scale of Apocalypse or The Pines from Cold War.
Weapons
- Jackal PDW…
- The Thermo Grenade seems a bit weak compared to the other lethal options.
- I miss having an ELO-like sight for assault rifles with zero magnification, making it more of an optic for making the iron sights cleaner.
- The LR.672 sniper rifle shakes uncontrollably after firing. It happened commonly on the Vault Edition blueprint I used, but I noticed it on the base version, too.
- All three Assault Rifles felt good, but the reload speeds felt very slow before unlocking additional magazine attachments. Same with the Swat Marksman rifle.
- Given the increased cost of some streaks, I don’t think there would be many issues with looping streaks, even if they were restricted to non-lethal ones like pulse / UAV / counter UAVs.
Misc
- I haven’t received any notification in COD HQ regarding Tier Skips / XP for playing the Beta. I noticed this had been listed as a known problem, though.