Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 — My Uncertainty About the Changes

I’ve been a fan of Call of Duty since the intro­duc­tion of Call of Duty: Mod­ern War­fare (the orig­i­nal), so I’ve been trough the ups and downs that this series has come with. With Black Ops 4 on its way, there are changes I’m not so cer­tain about. 

Multiplayer

Spe­cial­ists

Hav­ing nev­er been a fan of Spe­cial­ists, sim­ply because there were always a few that were over­pow­ered, I’m a lit­tle annoyed they have brought them back in Black Ops 4. Instead of mak­ing them com­plete­ly avail­able for play­ers to pick and choose from, now you have to pick at the begin­ning of a match and a team can only have one of each Spe­cial­ist at a time. This has the poten­tial to cause some issues. 

Because Call of Duty is wide­ly known for hav­ing con­nec­tion prob­lems, some play­ers may nev­er get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play a Spe­cial­ist they want. If one play­ers con­nec­tion is bet­ter than the rest, then those play­ers will get first dibs on the Specialists. 

This lim­i­ta­tion would bal­ance the game a bit bet­ter by not allow­ing teams of peo­ple to use the same Spe­cial­ists (exam­ple being Bat­tery or Ruin in Hard­point). How­ev­er, the fact is that play­ers no longer have an actu­al­ly choice, because it’s all based on who gets there first. With­out this abil­i­ty to chose what Spe­cial­ist you want (unless you get there first), you might end up with a huge sup­port role. If you’re a play­er that is heav­i­ly aggres­sive, being stuck in a sup­port role is upset­ting. Mean­while, the guy who got an aggres­sive Spe­cial­ist might end up not doing enough or for­get­ting about their abil­i­ty altogether. 

This is when peo­ple will real­ly see a spit in the player­base. Bet­ter play­ers who can aver­age that great KDR, might nev­er get the choice of an extreme­ly lethal Spe­cial­ist. Although it’s not only about kills, it does help when try­ing to take over objec­tives. Now, most of the COD play­ers are… casu­al, so they don’t always per­form the best. If this type of play­er ends up with the lethal Spe­cial­ist, this could def­i­nite­ly hin­der your team winning. 

5v5

The entire time Call of Duty has had mul­ti­play­er, pub­lic match­es have been 6v6. Now they’re 5v5, which is a bit dis­ap­point­ing. When I heard of this slight change, I though one thing… small maps. I know play­ers have this fas­ci­na­tion with extreme­ly tiny maps, that’s why Nuke­town and Ship­ment were so pop­u­lar, but some­times it’s just too chaotic. 

Most of that chaos comes from the spawns, which you can either get camped on and trapped in, or camp them your­self. I real­ly don’t want this to be the case with every sin­gle map in Black Ops 4. Although, it’s well known among the COD com­mu­ni­ty that Tre­yarch makes some of the bests maps in the series, it does­n’t mean these will be any good. 

Not only does 5v5 mean small­er maps, but it could mean some prob­lems with teams. Play­ers are used to 6v6 teams and for those that play with friends on every Call of Duty, this could be kind of awkward.

Health and Healing

So, over­all health has been increased to 150. The team at Tre­yarch already men­tioned they want­ed a longer TTK (time to kill), but this may not be the best move. Call of Duty: WWΙΙ has a long time to kill and that gets on my nerves. 

Back in the old days of Call of Duty, your accu­ra­cy was prob­a­bly the most lethal weapon in the entire game. Sel­dom did I ever loose a gun­fight in old­er CODs, because accu­ra­cy mat­tered. Now, for exam­ple, in Call of Duty: WWΙΙ, even though I aver­age at 24%, it does­n’t mat­ter. Play­ers can just “spray” side to side or up and down and win the fight, despite my bul­lets hit­ting in upper chest and cen­ter mass. This is all because the TTK is just too long. 

How­ev­er, it was men­tioned that the weapons would be stronger. So hope­ful­ly this will bal­ance out the TTK, although I’m not cer­tain it will. I don’t like bul­let sponge battles. 

Heal­ing

Call of Duty has always allowed play­ers to auto­mat­i­cal­ly heal. Of course, this has it’s own annoy­ances, like play­ers tak­ing mas­sive dam­age then run­ning away to recov­er enough to live. Hav­ing to use a but­ton to heal your­self though? I’m not so sure. 

I can see why it would might use­ful, most­ly for play­ers who haven’t been play­ing as long or play­ers who just don’t have a fast enough reac­tion time. How­ev­er, this is just anoth­er but­ton play­ers will have to be ded­i­cat­ed to remem­ber, so would­n’t that com­plete­ly defeat the point for new play­ers? It just seems like an unnec­es­sary addi­tion that could have been adjust­ed with at slow­er auto­mat­ic heal. 

Blackout (Battle Royal Mode)

Although I’m not a fan of Bat­tle Roy­al games in gen­er­al, I can under­stand why they would add it into Black Ops 4. Main­ly because of pop­u­lar­i­ty. This will be Call of Duty’s first time attempt­ing this type of game. It could be a com­plete dis­as­ter or play­ers will love it. Only the launch will tell. 

My con­cern is they’re over­ly ambi­tious with it. The map is mash up of sev­er­al maps from oth­er Black Ops titles and is the largest map Call of Duty has ever seen. No oth­er bat­tle roy­al game does that. They are always one map, with uni­fied sur­round­ings. It might be odd to see a snow sec­tion imme­di­ate­ly change into a jun­gle sec­tion upon mov­ing through it. They also added sev­er­al types of weapons from pre­vi­ous titles (lets hope the Famas is not one of them). 

Of course, the old con­nec­tion issues that have plagued this series since the dawn of its time, could be a seri­ous prob­lem. Play­ing with 12 play­ers in a lob­by can become a ridicu­lous lag fest, even with com­pen­sa­tion. How are they going to sup­port 100 play­ers, some which are bro­ken up into teams?

In the end, this is just my opin­ion on Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and what­ev­er you feel is you’re own opin­ion. So if you wel­come these changes, that’s great. If not, wel­come to the dark side.