Black Ops Cold War beta update adjusts scorestreaks: full patch notes

An October 16 update to Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s open beta adjusts controversial scorestreak tunings, fixes some stability issues, and deploys this weekend’s 2XP and 2X weapon XP bonuses.

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One of the biggest points of debate throughout the Black Ops Cold War alpha and beta periods has been its scorestreak system. In a departure from Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare, the newest game in the franchise rewards player score more than it does kills for scorestreak accumulation.

That appears to be changing, as Treyarch’s October 16 patch explicitly zeroes in on consistency across scorestreak costs and an attempt to reward players for kill-streaks anywhere between six and nine. 

• Read more: CoD pro ACHES wants 11 major changes to Black Ops Cold War

Casual and professional players alike, including former Call of Duty League and Los Angeles Guerrillas pro, Patrick ‘ACHES’ Price, have complained of the current system. This update is part of an ongoing effort to adapt to that feedback and balance the upcoming Black Ops title.

CoD players like to get kills and enjoy getting rewarded for those kills. In previous iterations of BOCW, players found themselves bereft of scorestreaks even after securing kills in the six-to-nine range. Treyarch has listened to feedback surrounding that issue and deployed a series of changes to score tuning and scorestreak costs to reflect that in their October 16 update.

• Read more: Shroud explains why killstreaks “ruin gameplay” in Black Ops Cold War

As an added bonus, this comes alongside the launch of 2XP weekend, which gives the community a great chance to enjoy points from their kills and scorestreaks while leveling up and unlocking new guns and attachments.

Black Ops Cold War October 16 full patch notes

SCORESTREAKS

Score Tuning/Rewards

• Adjusted score tuning to deliver a more consistent earn rate across all game modes.
  • We’ve noticed a disparity of Scorestreak earn potential across game modes. Domination saw a high volume of Scorestreaks, while TDM saw less. This new adjustment now sits between where Domination and TDM were during the PS4 Beta.
• Increased score rewards for streaks of 6, 7, 8, and 9 kills to better reward players.
  • We agree with feedback that players who go on killstreaks in the 6-9 range were not rewarded enough by the Scorestreak system, and had to go on too high of a streak to earn powerful Scorestreaks compared to past games. This update increases those score values to better reward players for going on higher streaks.

Scorestreak Costs

• Adjusted costs for all Beta Scorestreaks.
  • The process of dialing in the exact Scorestreak earn rate that feels good for the majority of players will take a few rounds of feedback, and this is the next step. Our process here will allow us to better evaluate feedback after the Crossplay Open Beta to have Scorestreaks in a solid place for launch.

Cooldowns

• Increased the cooldown on Spy Planes to help limit their numbers in the sky at one time.

STABILITY

• Fixed a crash that could occur when joining a match in progress where items were not properly spawned.
• Fixed a crash on PC that could occur on boot if Windows was set to certain languages with the “DD.MM.YYYY” date format (for example, Finnish and German).
• Additional general stability improvements on all platforms.

BUG FIXES

• Addressed an issue where a player could spawn outside of the map in Cartel at the start of a match.

2XP + 2X WEAPON XP NOW LIVE

Now through the rest of the Crossplay Open Beta, everyone gets 2XP and 2X Weapon XP to rank up and unlock weapon attachments twice as fast through the rest of the weekend.