Today’s patch adding a pair of new maps, Hardpoint, and a slew of tweaks and fixes is now live in a 10.5GB download on Xbox One. The full patch notes were posted on Reddit this morning. Below, I’m going to touch on a few of the more significant changes.
Weapon mounting gets nerfed slightly. Infinity Ward is adding a “slight increase to recoil while mounting.” That’s a start I guess, but player visibility is another big issue with mounting. Call of Duty has always had a problem with ‘head glitching.’ That is when only a piece of player’s head can be seen over cover, but they have clear visibility of you. Weapon mounting makes this even more prevalent as most corners offer the same advantage.
Lighting updated to improve player visibility in dark windows and dark areas. Finally. This was a huge issue when standing in a bright area and looking towards a dark area. Players in dark windows were damn near invisible in these scenarios.
Battle chatter won’t give your position away anymore. Your character will still scream out enemy positions, but the other team won’t hear it anymore. The devs also tweaked the cone enemy callouts are triggered in so you should need to see a little more than a shoelace before screaming ‘enemy spotted.’ Infinity Ward says they’ll keep tweaking it in the future, but not having the enemy team hear callouts solves the biggest problem with the system.
Footstep audio gets a small tweak. The volume at a distance has been adjusted, but we’ll have to wait for the next update for changes when crouched or ADS. Until then, keep spamming Dead Silence every time you have it.
Claymores shouldn’t be 360 degrees of death anymore. From the patch notes: Detonating an enemy claymore with bullets is now non-lethal when at full health. We’ve also reduced the trigger and damage radius and also reduced the damage width to better match the trigger width.
Removing them completely would be better, but this is a start. A small delay between the trigger and the explosion is also needed. We should be able to use tactical sprint to get around a claymore.
Weapon tweaks across the board. Everyone’s favorite 725/M4 combo is getting a reduced damage range. Plus, the M4 is getting a recoil increase. Assault Rifles, in general, will be slightly weaker thanks to an increase in hip spread at close range and less damage at long range for full auto 5.56 rifles. SMGs are getting better thanks to increased move speed, ADS move speed, and quicker aim from sprint.
We’ll see how big these changes affect the current meta. I don’t see folks dropping the 725 shotgun or M4 right away. I’m more interested in the SMG changes. The MP5 was already a strong weapon, and I can see myself using it even more now.
Those are some of the bigger changes in the patch notes that jump out at me. There are plenty more in today’s update, including reverting Sprint and Tactical Sprint speeds back to the beta and crash fixes. Hopefully, the changes don’t add any new issues.
Now, let’s see if Shoot House is a good map or not…