The second and final week of the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 beta goes live later today, and a new game update has arrived ahead of time. The patch notes reveal several major adjustments, including changes to weapon movement speed and a nerf to last weekend’s overpowered Jackal PDW submachine gun.
This second weekend raises the level cap from 20 to 30, so players will have access to more of Black Ops 6’s weapons, scorestreaks, perks, and equipment. This includes popular perks, such as Ninja, Cold-Blooded, and Fast Hands.
A change is coming to the swap speeds for all weapons. The weapon-drop time was reduced for sniper rifles by 100ms, while weapons in all other classes were reduced by 50ms. Treyarch says players looking for an even quicker weapon swap should try out the Fast Hands strategist perk.
The movement speeds of weapon classes are also adjusted for week two. The developer explains that these are small adjustments to baseline movement speeds on all weapon classes to “make sure they are sitting in a good spot relative to one another.” These movement adjustments include move speeds and ADS move speeds, which come into play during combat engagements.
However, Treyarch says it’s being mindful of speeding the game up too much and will continue to monitor and assess game data and player feedback.
Another movement change comes from an adjustment to speed up the melee sprint speeds. The developer says it wants players to feel incentivized to pull out their dedicated melee weapon as a means of map traversal and ensure that melee users can catch up to other players who are sprinting with ranged weapons.
The first weekend of the beta was dominated by the Jackal PDW submachine gun, but Treyarch confirmed it was overperforming at medium ranges. The nerf includes an increase to the damage falloff, a reduced damage range, and a slight increase to recoil. Additionally, week two gives players access to the new Tanto .22 submachine gun, so players will have another option for submachine guns to try out.
Spawns are also adjusted based on the feedback from week one. Treyarch has adjusted the game’s general spawn logic to enable additional valid spawns, and also changed the spawn logic across several maps with the goal of reducing a high frequency of spawn flipping.
The full patch notes can be seen below, as shared by Activision.
Here are some recommended Black Ops 6 settings to try for the beta. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 releases on October 25.
GameSpot went hands-on with Black Ops 6 multiplayer and the upcoming Area 99 Warzone map, and here are our first impressions of the game’s new movement system.