This week’s major game update marks our first big Multiplayer balancing pass since launch, including changes to weapons, Specialists, map spawns, Scorestreaks, Perks, Gear, game modes, and more. In Blackout, we’ve made updates to audio and Armor behavior, unlocked six Specialist character missions to track down and complete, cranked the max player count for Solos up to 100, and more. For Zombies players, we’ve made several gameplay improvements and fixes, including Easter Egg quest fixes and increased XP earn rates for Hardcore and Realistic difficulties.

Our Featured Multiplayer playlists have also been updated with highly-requested new modes, including the glorious debut of Gun Game, Mercenary Deathmatch Moshpit, and Chaos Domination. What makes Chaos Domination so chaotic? Zone capture time is reduced to only 3 seconds, round score limit is 150 (up from 100), and player count is 6v6 (up from 5v5). We’ve had a ton of fun with it, and this addition is just another example of the playlist variants we have planned for weekly rotation in the Featured category.

Before we get into the patch notes, a word from the dev team on our philosophy behind Multiplayer updates:

Spawns: In our ongoing effort to provide safer spawns, we’ve adjusted spawn logic and spawn placement across the board. In addition, spawn logic tuning has been done for enemy spawn weighting on Slums, Summit, Firing Range, Frequency, Arsenal, and Icebreaker. Players should see an immediate improvement in spawn health on the maps and modes listed below after applying this game update.

Weapons: The weapon ecosystem is in a healthy state since launch. We have not seen a standout “best” weapon in each class, and every weapon found a strong player base. We designed Black Ops 4 with Assault Rifles meant to be the default “go-to” weapon class, with other classes meant for specialization. However, we agreed that run-and-gun SMG playstyles were being underrepresented. This update nudges the balance between Assault Rifles and SMGs closer together, while maintaining the integrity of what each weapon does best.

Specialists: Our Specialists have Weapons and Special Issue Equipment that can be game-changing tools if used in the right scenario, but some of these needed to be balanced properly against the others. This balance pass creates more opportunities for counter-play against high-impact Weapons like Ajax’s Ballistic Shield, and tones down some overly-consistent Equipment, such as Recon’s Sensor Dart.