Summary
Treyarch has revealed theCall of Duty: Black Ops 6Season 2 patch notes before the new update launches on Tuesday, January 28. The update is one of the biggest yet forCall of Duty: Black Ops 6with new maps, weapons, multiplayer modes, and so much more for the start of Season 2.
TheBlack Ops 6Season 2 trailerconfirmed that the new Bounty, Dealership, and Lifeline multiplayer maps will be available as soon as the update is made available to all players. The new Overdrive mode will be available as an updated version of Team Deathmatch, and the beloved Gun Game mode will also make its return. Moreover, the fan-favorite PPSh-41 SMG will be introduced as a Season 2 Battle Pass reward alongside the Cypher 091 Assault Rifle, Feng 82 LMG, and TR2 Marksman Rifle. A slew of rewards will be available from limited-time events launching in Season 2, including new attachments, the War Machine Scorestreak, and Slipstream - Enforcer Perk. Season 2 also brings the new Zombies map “The Tomb,” which features the returning Death Perception Perk-A-Cola and Staff of Ice Wonder Weapon.
TheBlack Ops 6Season 2 patch notes outline many content additions for the January 28 update, including new operators that will be available at launch and later in the season. The Vortex BlackCell and Nocturne Battle Pass operators will be available at launch, andBlack Ops 6is crossing over withThe Terminatorfor a new Tracer Pack this February. There will also be a limited-timeTerminatorevent that will take place from February 6 to 20, and the Shadow Hunt event will be held from February 13 to 20. By getting kills and completing challenges during these events, players can earn new rewards such as weapon blueprints, calling cards, and emblems. Security measures for multiplayer will also be ramped up, as Treyarch confirmed Ricochet Anti-Cheat will receive major upgrades this season and inBlack Ops 6Season 3.
TheJanuary 28Black Ops 6Season 2 updatewill bring many bug fixes to Prestige mode in order to ensure progression isn’t blocked or glitches don’t occur while ranking up. Challenges will receive a number of quality of life improvements as well, including the ability to manually up to 10 camo challenges and 10 calling card challenges at once. The quality of life changes should make it easier for players to keep track of challenges that they’ve made substantial progress through.
Moreover, several weapons will receive damage range buffs in Season 2, including the Goblin Mk2 Assault Rifle and Marine SP and Maelstrom Shotguns. The LW3A1 Frostline, SVD, and LR 7.62 Sniper Rifles also receive damage buffs, and multiple issues involving ADS and Sprint-to-Fire timing for the Sirin 9mm Special Weapon will be fixed.
Lastly, the update brings many bug fixes tothe Citadelle des Morts Zombies map inBlack Ops 6. The bug fixes directly address instability problems and invulnerability exploits on the map.Black Ops 6Directed Mode will receive some changes as well, including Automatic Exfil now beginning after the current round ends.
New Zombies Map: The Tomb
Following the events at Citadelle des Morts, Weaver, Maya, Carver, and Grey must take the amulet secured at the Citadel to a cursed dig site and the ancient catacombs within. Professor Krafft indicated that the elusive Sentinel Artifact may be found in the tunnels below. Reports of paranormal phenomena go back centuries, possibly related to the presence of the artifact. If the team can secure it, there may yet be hope in releasing Samantha Maxis from her imprisonment in the Dark Aether.
GLOBAL
Ricochet Anti-Cheat
As previously discussed in our recent Community Update blog, we are ramping up our fight against cheaters across both Multiplayer and Warzone with new security measures deploying throughout the coming seasons. Updates include enhanced detection models for behaviors like aim botting, stricter account trust and hardware identification to target repeat offenders, and new tools to combat dishonest behavior such as playing with cheaters or attempting to spam report innocent players. We are also focusing on more precise tools, including major upgrades to the kernel-level anti-cheat driver and server-side systems starting this season and continuing into Season 03. These measures, combined with ongoing improvements and legal actions against cheat sellers, aim to deliver a more secure and enjoyable experience for everyone.
For more information on Ricochet Anti-Cheat, check out our recentCommunity Update.
Battle Pass
The Season 02 Battle Pass includes over 110 pieces of unlockable content (excluding BlackCell) including three new Base Weapons, an Underbarrel Crossbow Attachment, new Operator Skins and Weapon Blueprints, and a whole lot more. Read on for more BlackCell intel and stay tuned for a deeper dive with the BlackCell, Battle Pass and Store Bundles blog prior to Season 02 launch for a deep dive into the massive offering.
Challenges
Challenge Tracker & Near Completion
We know our Challenge chasers have been asking for the ability to track Challenges, and we’ve been hard at work to add that functionality with Season 02. The Challenge Tracker makes it easy for players to manually track up to 10 Camo and 10 Calling Card Challenges they’re actively working toward, but there’s another element of this system that we think players will find useful on the journey to Dark Matter, Nebula, and 100 Percenter: Near Completion. Players who don’t manually fill their Tracked Challenge lists will see Challenges auto-populate that they are close to completing, making it easy to discover Challenges you might not be aware of yet or give you a goal to go after in your next match. Your top Tracked or Near Complete Camo and Calling Card Challenge can be seen in the Lobby by cycling the Daily Challenge widget (via Right Thumbstick on console, or the “R” key on PC). From this view, players can enter each Challenge type’s Tracked & Near Complete list to see the full list of Tracked & Near Complete Challenges. We’re hopeful the Challenge Tracker & Near Complete system will help shortcut players to their Challenges and make it easier to keep tabs on the Challenges you’re pursuing, both in-and-out of game.
Camos & Camo Challenges
We’ve seen feedback from players about how the 250+ unique Special Camos in Black Ops 6 are underutilized because of the current equip requirement, and we feel the same way. Currently, we see a very limited window of time where Special Camos get equipped: after all of one mode’s Military Camos have been unlocked, but before players have unlocked Gold Camo (or beyond).
In Season 02, we’ll be changing this equip requirement to give players the ability to equip their unlocked Special Camos earlier in each Weapon’s Camo journey, while still preserving a short “on-ramp” of first needing to unlock 5 Military Camos that we feel is important to the new Weapon journey. In MP, this means that Specials can now be accessed after 30 Headshots instead of 100, but getting to 5 Military Camos unlocked can also be done across all 3 modes if desired.
Weapons
All Weapons
We have a few global changes landing with the start of Season 02 that will affect all weapons. The first is an improvement to the weapon motion reduction on the Dexterity Perk, which will make weapons feel even more stable while jumping, sliding, and diving. The second is a response to feedback that the weapon animations on respawn can get in the way of combat. These animations are now immediately interruptible when firing, aiming down sights, sprinting, or performing other gameplay actions.
Lastly, we are tuning down bullet penetration significantly, as we have continued to see cases where bullets are passing through too much cover. Our first step in addressing this is to decrease the maximum depth that bullets can pass through for all materials. We have longer-term plans to make bullet penetration more intuitive and consistent, and will be introducing further improvements in future updates.
Magazine Attachment Changes
Another large-scale change we are making is speeding up Fast Mag reload times. Our goal is for every magazine attachment to have a role across the many playstyles in Call of Duty, but we recognize that it can feel hard to trade away the larger mag sizes. We want to avoid adding more penalties to Extended Mags, so we are instead focusing on improvements to Fast Mags to make the selection more enticing. We’re starting with reload time adjustments, but we’ll continue to assess magazines to make sure players have more interesting choices and build potential with this node.
The following magazine attachments have had their ammo add times updated to match the intended timings. The overall reload times and interrupt times remain the same.
Assault Rifles
Goblin Mk2
The Goblin Mk2 may be the most divisive weapon out there in the community. Some players absolutely love it, and a lot of players… strongly prefer other weapons. We’re making a number of small improvements to help overall usability and consistency without affecting the weapon’s identity. In particular, the maximum damage range increase will help with mid-range engagements, and we’re giving it a bit more inflicted flinch than the average Assault Rifle to reward players who land that first hit.
SMGs
Kompakt 92
Our design intent for the 3-Round Burst Mod on the Kompakt 92 is to give the weapon an alternate playstyle that trades some raw upfront power for more consistent mid-range performance. The upside wasn’t as strong as we wanted it to be, so we’ve adjusted the range slightly and made some significant recoil reductions.
Shotguns
With this update, we are improving ranges and Sprint to Fire speeds on all Shotguns. We know that some of these adjustments may look inconsequential, but Shotgun balance in particular tends to live on a knife’s edge. We want Shotguns to play a greater role outside of our very smallest maps, and we’ll keep adjusting until we’re happy with their usage.
The Maelstrom has received some more pronounced changes, as it was lagging behind the Marine SP and ASG-89. It is now capable of a one-shot kill at very close proximity, and all its other ranges have received a larger boost than the other Shotguns. We’ve also given it a small Fire Rate improvement to help its firepower without further changes to pellet damage.
LMGs
PU-21
The PU-21 is intended to be a more lightweight LMG with build opportunities skewing towards Assault Rifle handling and mobility. We are reducing the pre-fire delay by a little more than half to help fit the more aggressive playstyle, and are reducing deviation in its recoil to help with consistency in gunfights.
Marksman Rifles
DM-10
The Gain-Twist Barrel improvement to Bullet Velocity was unintentionally low on the DM-10. There will now be an advantage to using it over the Reinforced Barrel.
Sniper Rifles
We saw a lot of positivity surrounding the AMR Mod 4 when it launched in Season 01, in no small part due to the consistency it has with its hit location multipliers. With Season 02 we are increasing the one-shot hit locations on the launch snipers, with the goal of giving all of them a similar feeling of consistency and opening the doors to more weapon variety.
We are also making some small reductions to the Aim Down Sight speed bonuses on Quickdraw Grips. There were a couple considerations that went into this change. The first was the general power level of snipers, as the body multiplier changes are a big buff. Another consideration was our Fast Mag buffs, which we hope will enable players to comfortably take builds that stack multiple sources of ADS speed improvements.
LR 7.62
Pistols
Stryder .22
The Stryder .22 launched with a smaller Bullet Penetration profile than the other pistols. The distinction is hard to read as a player and offers little to weapon identity, so we’re bringing it up to parity with the rest of the class.
Special Weapons
Sirin 9mm
We’ve addressed an issue causing unintended Sprint to Fire modifications with the magazine attachments on the Sirin 9mm. We have updated the attributes on these magazines so that they’re in line with the tradeoffs that appear on other weapons.
Launchers
Last but not least, launchers are receiving some major handling improvements to help with general usability and responsiveness.
Black Ops 6 launched with more Calling Card Challenges than any recent Call of Duty, brought the return of “100 Percenter” Cards for Multiplayer and Zombies, and brought a deep Calling Card grind to Warzone with its own “100 Percenter” Card for the first time. It has been very exciting to see players strategizing over and unlocking all the various Calling Card Challenges in the game since launch.
Some Multiplayer Challenges, however, have been either a bit on the frustrating side, or have had bugs and other issues that have prevented some players from completing them on the path to “100 Percenter”.For Season 02, we’ve put a big focus on fixing these Challenge bugs and smoothing over the key frustration points players have been experiencing as part of the Multiplayer Calling Card Challenge grind since launch. We hope these fixes and updates help players stuck in their Challenge journey and unblock their progress toward 100% completion.
Scorestreak Destruction Challenges
We made this adjustment to ensure that Challenge progress for destroying Scorestreaks is made whenever you earn Scorestreak Destruction Medals like “Flyswatter” and “Downed,” and to make challenges that involve destroying Scorestreaks much more consistent. This should make the grind for Diamond Launchers smoother and less random or frustrating for players.
Calling Card Challenges
We know the “Flowing Low” Prestige 1 Calling Card Challenge is top of mind for many players, and the team is working on a fix for an upcoming update. Thanks for your patience on this one.
We’re always actively monitoring Daily Challenge completion rates, as well as the feedback we see from players. With Season 02, we wanted to remove or update some of the more frustrating Dailies to ensure that players are always receiving Challenges that are approachable and straightforward. Our goal with Daily Challenges is to encourage players to try out various items and strategies, without making them too restrictive or frustrating for players to complete in a single session.
General
Movement
We are continuing to monitor Omnimovement feedback, and of course playing the game ourselves. We are currently testing slight reductions to initial slide speed and duration to improve predictability of engagements when opponents enter with a slide.
Additionally, we are always evaluating areas for improved fluidity, whether those are specific to movement mechanics or other mechanics like the ability to interrupt weapon raises during respawns that we highlighted above.
Ranked Play
Cross-Play
The following changes are being implemented at the launch of Season 02 to provide players on console with the option to select the platform pool(s) they wish to matchmake with:
Season 02 Weapon Evaluation
At the start of Ranked Play Season 02, the new PPSh-41 SMG and Cypher 091 Assault Rifle will both be unrestricted in Ranked Play for a minimum of one week. This one week evaluation period will give players a chance to experiment with the weapons in a competitive environment, provide feedback, and help Treyarch and the CDL determine whether they should remain unrestricted in CDL and Ranked Play.
To stay up to date on the latest Ranked Play restrictions and settings, stay tuned to@Treyarchand@CODUpdatesfor the latest details, and bookmark our Patch Notes pages.
We’ve made the Ranked Play Seasonal setback more forgiving in Black Ops 6 as we observed it to be too punishing in previous installments, especially for players still early in their Rank journey.
Veto Vote
This new addition to the Ranked Play Veto Vote gives players the occasional choice over which Ranked Play mode they want to avoid in their next match, while ensuring that all the maps in the CDL map rotation get playtime in Ranked. We look forward to seeing how players react and vote when this Veto type occasionally appears before Ranked matches. Please let us know what you think.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
WHERE TO PLAY
Forced to go rogue. Hunted from within. This is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.Developed by Treyarch and Raven, Black Ops 6 is a spy action thriller set in the early 90s, a period of transition and upheaval in global politics, characterized by the end of the Cold War and the rise of the United States as a single superpower. With a mind-bending narrative, and unbound by the rules of engagement, this is signature Black Ops.The Black Ops 6 Campaign provides dynamic moment-to-moment gameplay that includes a variety of play spaces with blockbuster set pieces and action-packed moments, high-stakes heists, and cloak-and-dagger spy activity.In a best-in-class Multiplayer experience, players will test their skills across 16 new maps at launch, including 12 core 6v6 maps and 4 Strike maps that can be played 2v2 or 6v6.Black Ops 6 also marks the epic return of Round-Based Zombies, the fan-favorite mode where players will take down hordes of the undead in two brand-new maps at launch. Post-launch, players can look forward to even more exciting maps and groundbreaking experiences dropping into both Multiplayer and Zombies.
