Call of Duty: Black Ops 4

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Dev Tracker




28 Mar

Comment

Originally posted by rbfubar09

What happened to the Dart's range? It literally explodes after 5 seconds now.

The team is aware and already on a fix for an upcoming update.


27 Mar

Today’s minor update includes some bug fixes and improvements across all modes, including gameplay and stability fixes related to “Ancient Evil” and the new Zombshell Perk in Zombies. Check out the patch notes below for all the details.

Free MKII Weapon Crate

Live this week on PS4 with other platforms to follow: Get your free Weapon Crate at the Black Market for a guaranteed MKII Weapon that grants +25% bonus XP per kill, plus two additional free Reserve items. This is a limited-time offer, so redeem yours before it’s gone.

https://i.redd.it/trfwooebppo21.jpg

Low-Population Region Blackout Update

For our players in regions with lower player populations including parts of So...

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This should be resolved shortly in our next hotfix. Apologies for the inconvenience.

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Back to your regularly scheduled escalating loadout soon. Should be our next game settings update or “hotfix”. Apologies.


26 Mar

Comment

Originally posted by CrookConflict

Is "Increased Sprint Out Speed" a buff or a nerf?

This is a buff to sprint recovery speed when using these weapons. We've updated the descriptions above to clarify.

Comment

Originally posted by deer-duck-river

u/treyarch_official

Where is the pause for zombies? Both split screen and server pause are still missing

Server Pause and Splitscreen Pause are both planned to launch in early April for Zombies players as part of Operation Grand Heist. Currently in testing!

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Investigating. Thanks.


26 Feb

Comment

Originally posted by basshuffler09

Thanks for the report, we are investigating this issue.


25 Feb

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Perks in MP are color-coded by what Perk slot they occupy. That is a mutually exclusive choice. Perks in WZ are consumables. You can carry as many as you have Inventory room for. They can not be color-coded in the same way because Blackout doesn't have the concept of Create a Class. If you were to try and color code MP perks into some logical way that uses 3 (or even 5) colors you would find yourself hard pressed to find a color scheme that works for everyone equally.

Additionally, the number of, variety of, and game play attributes of each has not allowed them to be categorized by colors. You end up with a a few in a color-coded category that you can explain, but you end up with just as many that can't be and/or end up as only 1 or 2 in a category. It might be "mostly" about stealth or "kinda" about healing and then you have something "largely" about movement, but it also modifies healing mechanics.

In the end, you end up with a rainbow of colors that can make make...

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21 Feb

Comment

Originally posted by sixinchgash

I truly believe that Vonderhaar only tells us what he knows at the time. I don’t think he makes any decisions about micro transactions, loot boxes or how characters are distributed. That’s an Activision thing, not a game designer thing.

edit - that said, he should know Activision better than anyone and shouldn’t be making promises or statements like he did

At the time this interview was conducted, which was previous to shipping the game, that's precisely and exactly how it worked. If I went back in time and re-did this interview, I'd have to answer it the same way I did then.

Things change along the way ... and not all of them are design decisions. Other examples of things that changed since that interview we conducted:

  • Allowing Specialist to be unlocked to anyone without having to quest (based on inputs that players had Cosmetics they had earned, but couldn't use them in Blackout)
  • Add new characters for Season Pass holders (based on inputs to give Season Pass holders more content)

Those two things were not exactly in the design plans at the time. It's a chicken and egg problem. I can tell you what we have done and what we plan on doing, but things change that I can not predict or I didn't know about. Doubly true with the business side of things which have little insight into and even le...

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08 Feb

Comment

Originally posted by RollGata

You literally just went with the “We are smarter than you and you are too dumb to understand what we do” excuse

I feel genuinely sad you feel this way. It legit bums me out that your interpretation of an effort to communicate with you transparently on this very hot topic lead you to that place.

You are wrong. That's not what I said. At all. With that out of the way...

We teased League Play at the reveal. That happened. I take accountability for it. I was the one who said it.

I did it because I believed in our plan and our ability to execute our plan. I've stood on stage before and said "we are doing this" and we did it. I've stood on stage before and said "we are doing this" and then something happened where we couldn't.

I truly and completely understand the frustrations around it. All of us do. I'm so sorry that you feel let down here.

Things happen. Tough decisions on priorities have to made. Things change that are not always totally within our control.

We also can't have it both ways. We can either never talk about anything unti...

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Comment

Originally posted by [deleted]

Just make it so FMJ has pronounced tracer fire which has a slower travel time and massive bullet drop. Or every 5th bullet in the mag has the FMJ capabilities.

Very clever and interesting thinking to use the ballistics feature to de-tune FMJ. It would even make sense and we have the precedent of Suppressors which do something similar.

However, it doesn't solve all the problems I pointed out. I appreciate your simple, easy to read, inspired, and polite (no name-calling) perspective. That matters to me.

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Originally posted by Kongasaurus_Rex

I appreciate this level of communication so much! I am sure you are super busy but I’ll be honest even if you would talk to us about this kind of stuff more often it would help more than you could possibly imagine. These interactions go so far with the people that love your game and just want the best for it. I honestly haven’t had this much fun playing a game in a long time either in solos, duos or quads. What about more powerful attachments taking up multiple slots? Rapid fire could take up under barrel and grip slots, FMJ could take up under barrel and mag slots. Stock 2 that takes up grip and stock. So on and so forth. Also separate helmets would be nice! I could go on and on. Thanks for all you do! Love the game!

Thanks. We are trying to figure it out. We really are. I meet with the social/digital teams all the time.

Transparently, this is one of the things we are trying. Social/Digital will find interesting things and point them out to us. Then we have a bit of discretion to figure out if I (or others) want to engage.

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Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

Someone will be upset that I didn't give any details. The only reason I can even say the above is because I already said we were working on this feature. That's not new information.

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Originally posted by ThanosOps

I'm sorry Vahn but Treyarch ask for feedback when we do you either ignore us or put us down, i have seen a shit ton of people asking for the VSAT for example, you straight said on stream "stop asking for it, its not coming" There has been a ton of requests for a no specialists mode since launch, still nothing. The lack of content is a large complain. Nothing has been said on that matter either. Treyarch told us at launch that combat records and leaderboards are coming next week, 4 months later, NOTHING.

Please link me the post/article/place where Treyarch told us at launch that combat records and leaderboards are coming next week?

The only time I've ever commented on leaderboards were to say that at this time we didn't have plans to create global leaderboards but plans are always subject to change. It's somewhere on Reddit. It was a long time ago.

I'm not trying to be snarky here. I don't always see everything Treyarch says and I'm not personally aware of when we said that or where.

We do a lot of things the community asks for. However, asking for it doesn't mean we can, should, or will do it. That would be an unreasonable expectation. Historically, explaining why we won't hasn't improved that relationship. Transparently, I said "no it's not coming". I answered the question that was asked. I don't know how to be transparent with you if you disagree or don't like the answer. It's a catch-22.

-V

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Originally posted by Positivevibes845

Hey,

It's disappointing that part of the community acts the way they do. Constructive criticism isn't common around here, and most people tend to get angry and throw around accusations/ complaints without any solid argument or suggestions. However, there are a few of us here that do take the time to really put thought into our suggestions and aim to help make the game better in anyway we can. I just want to thank you for acknowledging that, you didn't need to post anything, but the fact you did is highly respectable.

Also, a majority of people here have no understanding of how development teams and post development teams function, let alone the relationship and restrictions you have with Activision. I think the game is great, and Blackout is the first BR I've liked and constantly play (rank 81). In fact I've put more hours into this game than most this year, as I usually don't game that much. It could use some work, but what doesn't?

I do have one simple q...

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Not just considering. It's up and running in the dev. environment. This is one of these features we just can't talk about until we have 100% confidence that it will ship with the next major update.

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Originally posted by LackingAGoodName

The detailed insight is appreciated regardless of the outcome. Thank you.

Speaking of Operator Mods, what are your thoughts on bringing those to Blackout?

We have not fully committed to Operator Mods in Blackout just yet. We are making an earnest attempt to get them into the game in the right way. I saw them working in the test map and they are in the production plan. I have not playtested with them.

It's very unlikely that every gun that has an Operator in MP would exist in Blackout. Some of them conflict with other system, features, or even the core combat loop itself.

Real talk right now. This is a good example of something that makes you gun shy to talk about. The whole thing might not work. It might turn out to be a bad idea. The folks working on it may have to put it down for a bit and work on something else.

For anything we make any number of things can go wrong that delay or cut said feature entirely for unexpected reasons that weren't in the design document or production plan. Sometimes, it's also just not good enough or not fun enough.

When this kind of thing happens, people get pretty upset ...

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Comment

Originally posted by Zepex

Can we get FMJ in blackout tho? It counters armor in MP. Make it do so in blackout. Make it a magazine or body attachment and adjust it for blackout.

Currently, we are reviewing the viability of LMGs in Blackout. They are trending under the intended design target. I recently had a conversation about giving LMGs more damage to vehicles. Thus, they would have a type of "built-in" FMJ ... but not necessarily the part of FMJ that destroys player armor. I don't think we can improve the usage of LMGs with tuning alone. I know this isn't what you asked, but I am setting up some context about what we ARE thinking about with FMJ.

Summary

I think your idea has merit on the surface. Just adding a new type of Attachment other than Fast or Extended would be swell ... but

... we aren't ready to go to this specific place yet. I don't think we are done dialing in Armor enough to add a variable or bonus modifier

... and, going to that place isn't as simple as it seems on the surface when you start to unpack that downstream impact. You wouldn't feel you had an Attachment at all without incr...

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I like that you liked League Play but to say it wasn't broken is inaccurate. I chose to accept the word broken in this context as having things in it that didn't work so well.

It had plenty of design defects and it was this community that gave us feedback on those design decisions that we banked both THEN and then again more recently.

We hope to address this topic head-on in more detail in a video developer update soon.

League Play is taking/took longer than we expected, because we are addressing the community feedback on it in advance of launching it. ...thus when it does come out it will more closely match your expectations of what it is and how you think it should work.

We are doing the very things you gave us feedback on that we agreed made sense for the game we now have versus the game we had when I stood on stage and told you League Play was coming back at the MP reveal event.

It's simply a software development realit...

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Originally posted by asukakiss

I actually enjoy playing black ops 4.

Cool. We enjoy making it.

We actively encourage and reward constructive criticism ... but it may not be obvious enough when and how we do that.

So, in the spirit of transparency...

We have a guy on the community/social management team and a part of his daily routine is to find constructive and thoughtful criticism posts/commentary. That doesn't mean he doesn't also see or let us know about less than constructive posts/commentary.

He sends this report to key stakeholders and studio managers, myself included. That's how I know about this post. You won't find many developers in a decision making role browsing around Reddit parsing chaff from wheat. It's hard enough on the day to day satisfy the community's appetite to evolving/fixing/improving/add new content to the game while managing a team.

[Some of the] community doesn't do itself any favors by injecting what might be great or valid feedback with venom. I'm not going to read it and...

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