A new update has arrived for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. The update—which is ready to download now for everyone—is a fairly hefty one, weighing in at 9.4GB. It addresses some of the most annoying things in Black Ops 4 including Ajax, random crashes in Zombies, stupid spawn points (that sometimes had you spawning in next to an enemy) and increased progression speed in the Black Market, as well as a bunch of other balance changes.
Call of Duty players have been calling for a nerf for Ajax since release; the two main points of concern were his 9-Bang and his Shield ability. The effectiveness of both of these abilities has been reduced – you can see the full Ajax change log below:
- Reduced 9-Bang’s flash effect duration by 25 per cent, the Tactical Mask now also counters the 9-Bang, Concussion Grenade, and Razor Wire more effectively.
- Bullet spread increased by 25% when in fortify stance while using the Ballistic Shield.
- Ajax’s turn speed is now properly slowed when he’s hit by a Concussion Grenade while using the Ballistic Shield.
- A bug that prevented Ajax being hit from behind from certain angles has been fixed.
- Added a third-person sound effect for charges two and three of the 9-Bang.
As well as the Ajax nerf, spawn points have also been updated in Multiplayer across several maps, including Arsenal, Summit and Payload. Whether these spawn changes will be effective or not is yet to be seen; Treyarch has tried to fix the spawn points before with little success.
With regards to Blackout, the Bowie Knife has been added and Zombies will now be found in Nuketown (only on the PS4 version at present). Speaking of Nuketown, this update also brings the much-loved Nuketown map to the PS4 map rotation in multiplayer.
We recently criticised Treyarch for making the Black Market tiers too difficult to unlock, and we doubted that it was even possible to unlock all of the tiers in the Black Market within the time allocation without having to spend real money. This update brings the ability to skip one tier per day, which, of course, speeds up the unlock rate and makes getting to the final tier that much more achievable. In order to unlock your daily tier skip you will need to either win one multiplayer match OR earn yourself a Merit in Blackout. Blackjack’s shop is also live now on the PS4, and it will be coming to other platforms next week.
And finally, CWL (Call of Duty World League) custom game modes have been added to the game. These include official CWL variants of Hardpoint, Control, and Search & Destroy; these game modes are available in custom games only and have the following adaptations:
- Barricade deals no damage, but still slows.
- Barricade has reduced health.
- Razor Wire deals no damage, but still slows.
- Razor Wire has reduced health.
- Sensor Dart only lasts 3 seconds, enough for 1 ping.
- Tac-Deploy has a maximum of 4 spawns before it is destroyed.
- Tac-Deploy has a reduced duration.
- Reactor Core deals reduced damage.
- Hellion Salvo rockets deal reduced splash damage to players.
- Mesh Mines deal non-lethal damage.
There were also some gun balancing changes in the update (far too many to list), but there were no stand out changes. You can read the full patch notes here.
So far, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is shaping up to be the best Call of Duty game in a long time (in our opinion). Let’s hope that these positive changes continue and they don’t backtrack on them in the next COD game.
Leave a Reply