In an official post from developers on the Black Ops 4 subreddit, Treyarch outlined some feedback items on the developer’s plate after nearly a week of testing from the PS4 version. Amongst the points made were proposed changes to teamkill looting, and a method to see how much damage Armor has taken.
Here is the full bullet-point list from Treyarch:
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Teamkill Looting: One of the most upvoted requests concerns preventing teamkillers from looting the bodies of teammates they’ve killed. In addition to reporting bad behavior through the “Report Player” function in the Social menu (and continuing to ban players for intentional teamkilling), we agree with this approach and are adding this, or something similar, to our “To Do” list. We have a zero-tolerance policy for intentional teamkillers. Be sure to report them so we can bring the banhammer down.
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Audio Occlusion (AKA: Spatial Audio): We discovered and are fixing a critical bug where a player’s environment does not properly impact in-game sounds. This is why, for example, someone directly above or below the player can sound so much louder than expected. When the game is released, footsteps will be properly impacted by walls, floors, ceilings, and other objects in the world.
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Distinguishing Vehicle vs. Player Hits: We’ve seen requests to make it easier to determine if a player’s shots are hitting a vehicle or an enemy in or near that vehicle. This is already being fixed in time for launch. Players will know the difference based on the color of their hitmarkers.
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Armor Damage Indicator: Several players have asked for a clearer method of showing how much damage their Armor has taken. In the launch version of the game, players will see an Armor Health Bar that appears above their own Health Bar in the HUD when wearing Armor. The Armor icon will continue to break apart as it does now.
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Camera Controls While Downed: We’ve seen requests to allow free-looking camera controls when downed. We intentionally don’t allow this, as players should not have better situational awareness when downed than when they’re on their feet. Nonetheless, we will continue to evaluate the camera position and other tweaks.
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Scoreboard/Teammate Kill Counters: In the long term, we are working on some improvements to the After Action Report that will give players additional information about their team’s performance. We also have planned improvements for seeing performance stats in the game that will measure player Kills, Downs, Kills Confirmed, and Clean Ups, which will be separate from the “Players Left Alive” and “Players Spectating You” HUD details.
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Draws/#1 Place, but Game Over Instead of Victory Screen: Some of you have been surprised to see your match end in a draw. Same here! It’s very possible, but unlikely, that two players could trade kills, and we need to do a better job covering this edge case and others like it. Stay tuned.
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Killcam Details: In Blackout, players cannot access the Killcam until everyone on their team has been eliminated from the game. This is to prevent players from using the replay to give advanced situational knowledge to teammates still alive. After all members in a team have been eliminated, the Killcam button will appear on the Game Over screen.
Additionally, Treyarch also outlined some updates to the beta itself:
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General
- Beta now live on Xbox One and PC, currently with up to 80 maximum players per match
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Miscellaneous:
- Multiple fixes for “Game Session Has Ended” errors. We continue to find and fix these issues on a case-by-case basis.
- Multiple fixes for collision and players getting stuck on the map
- Additional improvements to stats both behind the scenes and for Merits Per Action
- Various Killcam bug fixes
- Fixed a bug that caused multiple players to spawn in the Staging Area in the same spot
- Fixes for players not properly entering the downed state when involved in mid-air helicopter crashes
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Game Tuning:
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Collapse:
- Increased the damage players take inside the collapsed area of the map
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Wingsuit:
- Players can no longer gain altitude at high speed
- Pulling up from a steep dive now takes slightly longer
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Supply Drops:
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Cargo plane now has increased health and cannot be damaged by bullets
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In our time playing Blackout, we’ve had the general impression that the battle royale mode plays like a more polished, first-person version of PUBG. Still, being part of a $60 package will make it difficult to compete with the free-to-play Fortnite. I’d expect more complete impressions from our resident Black Ops 4 enthusiast Tanner Pierce sometime soon.
As Treyarch mentions, the Blackout beta is now available to play on Xbox One and PC, in addition to the ongoing PS4 beta. The full game launches on October 12; pre-order Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 on Amazon at this link.
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