Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Day One Patch Notes Reveal Big Changes Since Beta

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War releases this Friday, courtesy of the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. Ahead of this release, developer Treyarch has revealed the patch notes for the game’s day one update, revealing the new content and changes made since the game’s Beta last month. For now, it remains to be seen how substantial this update will be from a download size perspective, but as you can see via the patch notes below, there’s a lot to it.

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As Treyarch notes, at release there will be new maps, modes, weapons, perks, scorestreaks, challenges, and other features not available in the Beta. Meanwhile, there will also be a new Season Prestige System, plus a slew of updates and improvements Treyarch claims improve everything about the game from its multiplayer to audio.

Below, you can check out the full patch notes, courtesy of Treyarch:

MULTIPLAYER

Modes

Additional Modes

Added modes since Beta:

Search & Destroy
Free-For-All
Hardcore Team Deathmatch
Hardcore Domination
Hardcore Kill Confirmed
Hardcore Search & Destroy
Hardcore Free-For-All

Fireteam: Dirty Bomb

Gameplay

Added Ammo Caches to Ruka and Alpine.
Added rappel lines to Alpine.
Players can now continue sprinting while equipping Armor Plates.
Players will now automatically be air deployed after 15 seconds in the overhead spawn view.
Both the downed player and player reviving will be locked in place during a revive to avoid the revive from failing.
Added the ability to Call for Help while downed.
Added support for bashing a door when beginning to sprint next to a door.
Added support for configurable squad wipe respawn delays based on squad size (squads of 1 have no additional squad wipe respawn delay).
Made adjustments to objective placements.

Dirty Bombs/Radiation

Arming progress will now display on the charge when arming a dirty bomb.
When arming the dirty bomb, lights on the charge will now show how many teammates are assisting in arming.
Improvements made to radiation visuals when in the overhead spawn view.
The line to safety while inside of a radiation zone will no longer point players toward out of bounds.

Loot

Radiation Vest item added to loot pool. This vest will prevent the wearer from taking radiation damage inside of the radiation zones.
Combat Bow, VTOL Escort, Cruise Missile, and Gunship added to loot pool.
Adjusted item spawn rates to reduce higher end Scorestreak frequency.

Vehicles

Reduced frequency of Hind spawn.
Adjusted vehicle drop timing to reduce the frequency of Hind, Tank, and FAV spawns.
Directional damage indicators now point toward the vehicle when taking explosive damage from a Hind or Chopper Gunner.

Ping

Added the ability to Ping while downed.
Added the ability to Ping from vehicles.
Added the ability to Ping downed teammates.
Added the ability to Ping Field Upgrades and thrown C4 explosives.
Added a center dot while freefalling and parachuting for more accurate pinging.

Miscellaneous

Made adjustments to the fireteam intro scene to better highlight the fireteam.
Added an in-game outro scene that highlights the winning fireteam.
Killcams and Best Plays will now prioritize downs instead of clean-ups.

Bug Fixes

Addressed an issue that would prevent objective waypoints from displaying in the overhead spawn view.
Addressed an issue where players could be killed as soon as they deployed via air.
Addressed a number of issues that would cause a player to spawn away from their intended teammate on the ground from the overhead spawn view.
Addressed an issue where players could not deposit Uranium into a dirty bomb.
Addressed an issue where the player could be considered out of bounds when deploying from the infil plane.

VIP Escort

Players can now quick-deploy parachute in Crossroads and Armada in VIP Escort.
The VIP is now taken into the helicopter by a winch operator upon exfil completion.
The exfil notification is now triggered when the VIP gets near an exfil helicopter in order to give the defending team more time to react.

Upon getting near the exfil site, the helicopter will begin lowering the fast rope, and all players in the match will be notified that the exfil process has begun.
Once the fast rope is lowered, the VIP can interact with the rope to hook up for exfil.

Combined Arms

Players can now quick-deploy parachute in Combined Arms game modes (where applicable).

Weapons / Gunsmith

New Weapons

Added new weapons in multiple categories:

FFAR 1 assault rifle
Bullfrog SMG
M60 LMG
DMR 14 tactical rifle
M79 special launcher
+ more

Weapon Balance

Assault Rifles

Tuned general assault rifle performance closer to Krig 6 and XM4 Beta performance for better balance across the class.
Increased AK-47 recoil.

Submachine Guns

Reduced SMG effectiveness at longer ranges to counter the dominance of the class seen in the Beta.

Light Machine Guns

Increased LMG damage output to improve the effectiveness of the class.
Increased LMG ADS times.

Sniper Rifles

Adjusted aim assist to feel smoother yet require more skill and precision.
Slightly increased sniper rifle ADS times.
Sniper scope glint will now display more regularly.

Pistols

Decreased burst-fire pistol hip-fire accuracy.
Reduced burst-fire pistol max damage range.

Shotguns

Reduced semi-auto shotgun fire rate.

Launchers

Slightly increased inner damage of launcher rockets to allow for lethal damage when placed precisely.

Melee

Slightly reduced sprinting speed with the Knife equipped.

Recoil and Sight Alignment

Cleaned up issues with bullet direction and recoil to feel more intuitive and responsive.

In the Beta, the location of the player’s bullet was always based on the direction of their weapon, which could have a slight deviation to their eye-view perspective through the sights. These should now line up better across all iron sights and optics, providing more precision when ADS-firing.

Aim Assist Tuning

Adjusted a number of aim assist parameters to provide a more expected feel across weapon classes.

Aiming Down Sights (ADS)

Adjusted ADS transitions to make them smoother and more fluid.
Adjusted ADS sway to provide more dramatic feel while reducing weapon rotation.
Adjusted weapon pushback when firing in ADS to address cases where optic models could get too close to the player camera.

Attachments

Additional Attachments

Added more attachments to equip in the Gunsmith.

Attachment Balance

Updated balance for roughly half of the attachments across all weapons to increase viability across the board.
Reworked bonuses and penalties on Barrel attachments to better reflect relationship between ranges, muzzle velocities, and barrel length.
There are now Barrel attachments that offer shorter Barrel length for increased strafe speed movement, either when hip-firing or ADS-firing. This provides players with greater options for leaning into movement as a kit option.
Increased enemy reveal range when using the mounted light attachment.

Attachment Descriptions

Updated names, descriptions, and statistics categories for weapons to provide a clearer picture of functionality and authenticity.

Dual Wield

Added the ability to dual-wield pistols.

Weapon Levels

Increased primary weapon levels from 40 to 55.

Stationary Turrets

Increased use radius of stationary turrets.

Movement

Sliding

Shortened slide length.
Reduced slide speed.

Sliding is intended as an escape mechanic or quick entrance into crouch or cover. It’s not intended to be over-used during engagements, or to be too advantageous in close quarters. We’ve shortened the slide length and reduced its speed to address these goals.

Ending a sprint to fire is now faster than sliding to fire.

In the Beta, it was faster to fire your weapon from a sprint by sliding than by simply ending your sprint to fire. This has been fixed so that ending a sprint to fire is the faster way to get your gun up, and sliding to fire is no longer faster.

Mantling

Increased speeds for all mantles.

Scorestreaks

Additional Scorestreaks

Added new Scorestreaks since Beta:

Combat Bow
Armor
Care Package
Cruise Missile
VTOL Escort
Gunship

Earn Rate

Improved score event tuning and Scorestreak earn potential across all modes.
Increased score bonus thresholds at 10-kill and 15-kill streaks to make high streaks feel more rewarding, and to help boost score to higher-end Scorestreaks.

In the Beta, Scorestreaks were being earned more often than intended in several game modes, so we’ve made tuning adjustments to bring the overall earn rate down. On the other hand, because even top players were having a hard time getting to the highest Scorestreaks, we’ve increased the score bonus thresholds for higher kill streaks.

Scorestreak Tuning

Attack Helicopter

Increased Attack Helicopter damage from 5-hit kill to 3-hit kill.

Chopper Gunner

Slightly reduced Chopper Gunner duration and damage.

Costs

Balance adjustment to all Scorestreak costs.

Added a numerical display showing remaining score required to earn your equipped Scorestreaks, which appears briefly on respawn and after closing the Scoreboard.
Improved Scorestreak tablet cursor speed.
Improved visibility of Scorestreak tablet red dots for indoor enemies.

Cooldowns

Added variation to Scorestreak cooldowns to allow for more interesting player choices and strategy, while also reducing low-end Scorestreak spam.

Miscellaneous

Updated default Scorestreak selection.
Updated Scorestreak descriptions with more detail on new functionality.
Improved rumble/camera shake on Scorestreak events.

Spawns

General spawn adjustments across all modes.
Enemies in Gunboats will now properly cancel spawns within their line of sight.

Perks

Flak Jacket

Flak Jacket damage reduction reduced by 5%.

Paranoia

Updated the sound for when an enemy is aiming at you with Paranoia equipped.

Equipment

Frag

Improved Frag throwback speed.

Stim Shot

Cooldown increased from 8 seconds to 11 seconds.

Decoy

Duration reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
Decoy will now play a static sound effect every few seconds, so attentive players can discern fake footsteps from real ones.

Field Upgrades

Field Mic

Field Mic listening radius reduced by 10%.
Field Mic cooldown increased to from 3:00 to 3:30.

Features

Added Military Ranks up to 55 in standard player progression.
Added Seasonal Prestige player progression system, beginning at launch after completing Military Rank 55.
Added Challenges for Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies.
Added unlockable Weapon Camos.
Player and weapon customization now available.
Added Combat Record.
Added Theater support.
Added Multiplayer bot support.
Added Finishing Move support.
Added Weapon Inspect support.

AUDIO

Game Audio

General
- Polished volumes and sound falloffs for weapons, foley audio, ambient systems, and map transitions.
- Additional map sound design improvements.
Gameplay Audio
- Improved weapon and footstep sounds.
- Improved hit marker sounds.
- Improved player damage feedback sounds.
Acoustics
- Polished acoustics systems that simulate how sounds travel through/around geometry.
  - Since the Beta, we’ve created new reverbs for multiple areas, polished filter values so full occlusion now sounds more natural, and tweaked the way interior and exterior sounds blend as you move through spaces.
- Tuned acoustics of every map.
  - This affects how the map geometry influences every sound, from reverb (how sounds bounce and echo) to occlusion (how objects block sound waves). Map acoustics are based on physical simulations of sound waves travelling through the map. As a result, all sounds should feel even more immersive and realistic, with a high level of fidelity.
Music Player
- Added Music Player, allowing players to listen to music tracks unlocked by playing the game.
- Players can select tracks as their menu music or in-game music.