Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 beta - Treyarch responds to body armour complaints, frame-rate and balance concerns
The Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 private beta, which was live all weekend, was met with a fair bit of criticism from fans and longtime series devotees.
While some believe Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 doesn't feel enough like a traditional Call of Duty game, others are more concerned with balance problems and what they think are overpowered additions.
If you've been playing the beta, you will have no doubt seen all the talk about body armour - one of various gear pieces you can run with in Black Ops 4. Body armour, by definition, adds a layer on top of the wearer's health. Although it can't regenerate back when damaged, having it equipped is very helpful in your first fight.
On the other hand, having body armour as an option means that the time to kill won't be consistent. The game shows an icon to indicate that your opponent is running body armour, of course, but that doesn't stop it from being annoying, according to players.
In response, developer Treyarch explained on Reddit that while it hears the community's concerns, the data available is not large enough at this stage to make a decision one way or another.
"We want to proceed thoughtfully and carefully here. We’re less than 24 hours into the Beta at this point, and not all content has been earned or had enough time to settle into the meta of the game," Treyarch explained in the post.
"We know that the Gear category is new and has a lot of content that sits above the normal power band of Perks. Because of that, it’s really important that we see the full range of Create-a-Class content in play with a lot of data about player performance with this content before we rush into any changes with it."
The developer said that, based on the available data, there are actually other, more effective pieces of gear you can equip. The developer understands it can be "annoying" to fight against, and they're looking into that aspect.
On the subject of balance, Treyarch has also tuned a few parameters around weapon damage in response to players saying SMGs are too effective at range.
Frame-rate problems were another point raised by players. Treyarch said some of that is attributed to a bug that causes frame-rate to drop dramatically across all maps. The team is working on recreating the bug so it can fix it. Then there's another, separate frame-rate issue on the map Gridlock that Treyarch is aware of and has a fix for.
The first round of the Black Ops 4 beta ends today, but it's going to come back again on Friday, August 10 - which is also when the beta will kick off on PC, and Xbox One.