Black Ops 6 players can calm down because the devs have confirmed that the ‘Assault Rifle changes have not made headshots less effective’

After weeks of teasing new maps for multiplayer and hinting at new Zombies features, we’ve finally got the full scope of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s season 1 patch notes, and there is a lot to unpack.

Most of the big stuff, like the addition of multiplayer maps Hideout, Heirloom, and Extraction, has already been covered, but players will also get new multiplayer modes alongside these. First up is Ransack, which sees players “looting gold bars from crates dotted around the area of operations on 6v6 maps,” according to the patch notes. After you gather these, you need to secure the loot by bringing it to your team’s stash. Then there’s Prop Hunt, the infamous hide-and-seek mode that players have enjoyed in previous games like Black Ops Cold War and WWII.

Other new additions also include some new operators, weapons, events, and a Zombies directed mode, but otherwise, the rest is mostly just fixes and tweaks. The bug fixes address issues that lead to infrequent game crashes, forced restarts, and a bug that prevents players from completing some missions. In terms of weapons updates, weapon motion while moving has been adjusted to improve aiming and improved weapon depth of field settings when doing a weapon inspect. These changes apply to all weapons, but assault weapons have received a specific update as well.

“We are increasing the damage values for some of our Assault Rifles to ensure that they kill in just one bullet in Hardcore modes,” the patch notes read. “The headshot multiplier changes have either kept the bullets to kill with headshots the same or even improved them at some min damage ranges.” This change applies to the XM4, AMES 85, GPR 91, and the Goblin Mk2.

Each of these has received a damage boost, but despite the clear explanation, some players were apparently worried enough about the changes to damage falloff that Treyarch had to post a subsequent message confirming that nothing was changing for assault rifle headshots: “We want to clarify that tomorrow’s Assault Rifle changes have not made headshots less effective at any range in Multiplayer. Base damage has increased for all of these ARs, which requires adjustments to the headshot multipliers. The changes resulted in the following net buffs to headshots.”

This includes the AMES 85, now requiring only three (down from four) headshots for a faster TTK in its min damage range, and the XM4, AMES 85, and GPR 91 with the CHF barrel all only need two headshots (down from three) for a faster TTK in the min damage range.

Apart from these weapon changes, another interesting tidbit from the patch notes includes a message from Team Ricochet detailing how Treyarch had combated “disruptive behaviour.” This patch will add “enhanced AFK detections to battle against account boosting” and “Adjusting ping thresholds to require players to play matches in their region to cut down on VPN abuse.”

Players will also need to win 50 match-made multiplayer games to qualify for ranked to ensure “that players are experienced with multiplayer before they enter the mode and gives Team Ricochet a historical match history to examine before an account enters ranked play.” This is actually a great way to ensure that players in ranked all have a baseline of experience and skill, but I do feel sorry for the poor souls out there who’ll struggle to get over the 50-win mark.