The first season of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has been a rough one for the development teams behind the massive first-person shooter franchise. Player feedback has been overwhelmingly negative during Season 1 due in part to anti-cheat mitigation efforts falling flat and match instability. A new community update, penned by Activision, Treyarch Studios, Team RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, Raven Software, Beenox, and Demonware finally addresses some concerns highlighted by players in recent works.
The blog post from the Call of Duty team detailed new layers of protection and security against cheaters in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone, as well as updates designed to protect what the team calls "the competitive integrity of the game." In addition to today's latest security update, the team has also shared additional information on detection methods. Team RICOCHET is typically opaque about detection methods used in Call of Duty titles in an effort to prevent would-be developers of cheating software from thwarting planned mitigation tactics.
The COD team also issued a warning that its attempt to stop cheating in Call of Duty isn't just limited to software updates, stating Activision intends to continue taking legal action against cheat sellers. Activision was previously awarded more than $14 million in compensation after suing EngineOwning for damages caused by the company's spoofing software.
New security measures live now in Call of Duty
The Call of Duty team has issued new security and cheat mitigation protections that are now live in Ranked Play playlists. These protections include updated detection models used to sniff out serial cheaters, enhanced cross-examination tools that reduce the time between detection and action against suspicious accounts, and new systems to safeguard against malicious reporting.
Malicious reporting, or "spam reporting", is against the Call of Duty Security and Enforcement Policy, and Call of Duty has had a system in place since Modern Warfare 3 to ignore spam reports from one player against another. The Call of Duty team reiterated in its community update that spam reporting is ineffective in Black Ops 6 and Warzone, and that sellers of spam reporting tools are effectively scamming players. The report system prioritizes the first report from one player against another, and then promptly ignores any subsequent reports. Using scripts or other tools to maliciously spam reports against other plays will only result in a ban against your own account.
Team RICOCHET also shared that over 136,000 accounts have been banned for cheating and malicious behavior since the launch of Ranked Play. Additional detection and warning systems have been deployed and are now live that will also initiate a "guilty by association" approach to determine players who repeatedly play on squads with disruptive players and cheaters. The system will detect other accounts regularly partied up with confirmed cheaters, and those players' accounts will also be flagged for investigation. This is an effort to mitigate boosting and other disruptive behaviors.
A common question among the Call of Duty community is why the developers do not deploy IP bans on confirmed and repeat offenders as a tool to mitigation cheating. Team RICOCHET confirmed today that the reasoning behind the avoidance of IP-bans is because the system takes action against large groups, as opposed to one problematic cheater. This would result in players in dorms or entire apartment complexes, for example, possibly being banned by their IP even if they were innocent because of one cheater that may not even live in the building anymore.
Malicious activities, server stability, and disruptive voice
Following the Season 1.5 update, more and more players expressed issues with lobbies that would crash, rubber-banding due to packet loss, and other disconnects. These were prevalent in all modes, but Ranked Play saw more frequent reports. Servers for certain regions with fewer options also seemed to be specifically impacted. After an investigation by Demonware, the team determined the malicious activities by disruptive players were at fault for the stability issues. New improvements to prevent these actions have been deployed to the servers for Black Ops 6 and Warzone.
Along with new server infrastructure to mitigate malicious activity, the Disruptive Behavior Team has also worked to more finely tune the in-game voice chat moderation system. This AI-powered chat mitigation is used to reduce hate speech, harassment, and derogatory language over voice comms. The system is not designed, however, to mitigate player behavior for simple "trash talk", and the team has stated it regularly conducts human-led tuning sessions to ensure that the detection system follows the Code of Conduct for Call of Duty.
Future updates
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Season 2 is expected to launch on January 28, and players can expect additional cheat mitigation tactics to go into effect at that time. The Call of Duty team has also announced some planned changes coming with Season 3, which can be expected approximately 60 days after the start of Season 2.
Season 2 and 3 planned updates include:
- Season 02:
- New and improved client and server-side detections and systems
- Major kernel-level driver update
- Improvements to driver security
- Reinforced encryption process
- New tampering detection system
- Season 03 and beyond:
- A multitude of new tech including a brand-new system to authenticate legit players and target cheaters
Additional updates are also planned for Season 2, and the team has yet to announce new maps and modes that will be coming with the next battle pass. However, the following quality of life improvements have been announced:
Future Black Ops 6 updates:
- Global
- Challenge Tracker (up to 10 manually tracked Challenges or 10 nearest completion)
- Separate HUD Preset settings for MP and Zombies
- Reduced collision with teammates to improve maneuverability around tight spaces and doorways with nearby teammates
- Multiplayer
- Gameplay & quality of life updates:
- Weapon balance pass
- Bullet penetration updates
- Further reducing weapon motion when jumping, sliding, and diving with the Dexterity Perk equipped
- Improving player visibility in Kill Confirmed by reducing the height of dog tags
- Simplifying/expanding requirements for several Prestige Calling Card Challenges
- Later in Season 02, an icon over an opponent’s head will proc when you shoot them if they have War Cry active, so you know they’ve got faster health regen. This should clear up confusion in firefights where you didn’t know why an enemy with more health was able to survive an engagement.
- Playlist changes:
- Expanding the number of Featured Playlist slots
- Bringing Gunfight back to Featured Playlists
- Keeping Stakeout 24/7 in Featured Playlists and/or Quick Play
- Planning a “Small Maps Moshpit” shortly after season launch for camo grinders
- High-profile bug fixes:
- Gearhead will now properly increase the charge rate of Field Upgrades
- Free for All will accurately calculate the scoreboard by kills and the Winner's Circle will accurately showcase the Top 3 FFA players
- Ninja will no longer be able to reset between respawns or round transitions in certain game modes
- Fixes and tuning updates for a large number of Calling Card Challenges
- Gameplay & quality of life updates:
- Ranked Play
- In Season 02, Treyarch is enabling the ability to disable cross-play for console players who want to compete only against other console players.
- This is currently in testing and is planned to go live for both Black Ops 6 Ranked Play and Warzone Ranked Play during S02.
- The Vote to Forfeit feature is coming at Season 02 launch, which allows players to vote with their team to end a match early if the team is getting blown out, or you’ve lost a teammate. Forfeited matches count as a standard loss and do not result in SR penalties or suspensions.
- The ability to rejoin Ranked Play matches is also planned for later in Season 02, which should help to ensure fuller teams in matches if players experience a disconnect.
- New S02 Ranked Play Rewards will include:
- Camos for Gold Rank and up
- Jackal PDW Blueprint for 10 wins
- Large Decal for 100 wins
- In Season 02, Treyarch is enabling the ability to disable cross-play for console players who want to compete only against other console players.
- Zombies
- As mentioned in Treyarch’s 115 Day celebration, players will be able to jump into The Tomb, the newest Zombies map at the start of Season 02
- The team remains committed to putting player fun first, squashing leftover bugs, and keeping new Zombies content coming throughout the post-launch seasons
- In addition to challenge tracking and per-mode HUD Preset settings, upcoming Zombies QoL updates include:
- Co-op Pause: In matches where everyone is in the same party, the host will now be able to pause the game
- AFK kick loadout recovery: If a player is kicked for going AFK in a co-op game, they’ll now have their loadout, Essence, and Salvage restored when rejoining
Future Warzone Updates:
As a live service game, Call of Duty: Warzone upkeep is unsurprisingly demanding for the development teams. In order to approach the high volume of priority quality of life improvements the game needs, the team has decided to delay the launch of original content planned for Season 2 to focus on bugs and addressing player feedback.
Not all adjustments will be available immediately, but some changes players can expect during Season 2 include:
- Weapons
- Reload speeds are faster for all weapons, anywhere from 5% to 20% depending on weapon class.
- Reduced penalty when sprint-to-fire jumping from 35% to 10% and increased jump ADS speeds by 25% – the intent is to find that middle ground of being able to pull off jump shots, without it being the meta movement strategy.
- Adjusted bullet penetration across most materials resulting in a more consistent experience for thicker walls in particular.
- Weapon swap speed increased by 10%, effectively replicating the effect of the Quick Grip Gloves Perk from Modern Warfare.
- Removed burst and semi-auto rifles and low rarity pistols from ground loot - allowing for more confidence in knowing how your weapon will fire when you pick it up.
- Movement
- Increased both jump speed and successive jump height with one unmodified successive jump.
- Increased the speed of the parachute cut animation, making cutting a parachute and readying your weapon significantly faster.
- Increased player velocity when landing from a cut parachute land, for smoother transition into full sprint.
- Audio
- Reducing reverb effects to improve directionality of movement audio produced by other players (footstep, ascenders, parachutes).
- Perks
- Combat Scout pings replaced with an outline that is not visible through walls.
- Added new default Perks:
- Dexterity (the weapon component) has been increased in effectiveness and made default for all Warzone Players
- As mentioned above, we’ve replicated the effect of Quick Grip Gloves and Fast Reload via weapon adjustments.
- Mountaineer returns as a Perk in slot 1, replacing Dexterity. We’ve increased the fall damage reduction substantially from what is currently in live with Dexterity, though not quite the powerhouse it was during Modern Warfare III.
- Veteran now significantly reduces the damage ticks of Gas Grenades.
- Equipment & Killstreaks
- Munitions Satchel now only provides 1 additional item, down from 2, to address overstocking and spamming equipment.
- Maximum deployed tacticals and lethals reduced to 2 each, down from 3, to make more purposeful trap plays.
- Gas Grenade radius, duration, and movement penalties reduced to bring in-line with the vision of a zoning tactical and less of a lethal crutch.
- Spy Camera's outline effect no longer renders through walls.
- Advanced UAVs will now show elevation arrows.
- Miscellaneous
- Body Shield functionality limited:
- No longer automatically releases players in free fall.
- No longer provides an outline of the victims' teammates through walls.
- Removed manual release of players, keeping them alive – must end with an execution.
- The flares that fire out of Buy Stations when a player is bought back can now be pinged to increase visibility on redeployments.
- Match stat tracker font adjusted for better readability at lower resolutions.
- Body Shield functionality limited:
- Bug Fixes
- The team acknowledges player frustration with insufficient messaging of bug fixes in patch notes and through social channels. "Prioritization of fixes is fluid and shifts as new issues appear or as ground is paved on existing ones," the team writes.
- Map & Gameplay Issues
- Addressed visibility of dark areas and characters on Rebirth Island.
- Addressed players being forced to stand up while reviving downed squad members.
- Addressed exploits allowing players to access unintended areas of the map.
- Addressed parachutes deploying when jumping off ladders.
- Weapons & Equipment
- Addressed weapons becoming inaccessible near interactable areas.
- Addressed weapons falling through Buy Station models.
- Addressed weapon tooltips appearing as common when dropped to the ground.
- Perks & Contracts
- Addressed Ghost persisting through the prematch lobby into the match.
- Addressed Cold Blooded not properly countering Tracker.
- Addressed Quick Fix health regen not properly activating while plating.
- Addressed Survivor preventing players from reviving downed squad members.
- Addressed Most Wanted contracts not overriding respawn timers as intended.
- Operators
- Addressed Operator selection appearance issues in menu.
- Ranked Play
- In addition to incoming cross-play options for console players, Ranked Play in Season 02 will see a refinement to the amount of SR required and adjustments to deployment fees. These updates aim to soften the on-ramp into accessing Ranked Play and make the top end truly competitive.
One step forward, two steps back: the future of Call of Duty
Call of Duty faces a unique challenge: The game is one of the most popular in the world and rakes in billions of dollars annually, but gameplay frequently needs to change, or it risks becoming stale and losing players. The introduction of new content both annually and monthly is a tall order, even for the dozen or so studios currently undertaking the task. Blending the premium Call of Duty title with Warzone is logical, at least on paper, but it may not be the most practical method of development.
The problem comes with the continued "changing of the guard", so to speak. With each new premium Call of Duty title, the respective development team becomes the lead development studio that drives the creative direction of both Warzone and the annual premium COD title. Rather than having a clean slate to develop an idea from, each team has to find a way to blend what the teams before it has done creatively with what they want from their own COD franchise. There have been efforts to simplify story timelines and plots, but if Black Ops 6 has proven anything, it's that keeping up with Warzone is nigh impossible.
The early days of Warzone 1 would see a complete map overhaul to match the current premium title's progression, but Warzone 2.0 has been a different story. The primary Warzone map changed during the Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 shift, but Treyarch took a different path for Black Ops 6. Instead of changing the Warzone map, the team opted instead to roll back 6 seasons of content to return the map Urzikstan to its pre-season state from the fall of 2023.
The decision left a lot of the community scratching their head as to why Call of Duty developers continue to take one step forward and two steps back when it comes to the game's evolution. And if that is what is getting us in the sort of predicaments that we're seeing in Season 1, what can the team even do to solve the issue going forward?
