Treyarch nerfs sliding again in Black Ops Cold War launch update

Treyarch has nerfed Call of Duty’s notorious slide-canceling exploit, and sliding in general, just days out from the Black Ops Cold War launch day, in an effort to cowl the “broken” trick before millions of players flood into the 2021 release.

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The Black Ops Cold War developers have been trying to get sliding under control since the alpha, where it ran rampant. The problem didn’t improve much in the beta, where Call of Duty players were using slide-canceling to hack through maps.

To combat this issue ⁠— which plagued Modern Warfare for much of its lifespan too ⁠— the Black Ops Cold War devs dropped a series of sliding changes in the beta.

Unfortunately, these nerfs didn’t seem to help. Now, right on the eve of the Black Ops Cold War launch day, Treyarch has pushed another set of nerfs, more aggressive than the last, to try and fix the problem once and for all on Day 1.

“Sliding is intended as an escape mechanic, or a quick entrance into crouch or cover. It’s not intended to be over-used in engagements, or to be advantageous in close quarters,” the devs wrote in the Black Ops Cold War day 1 patch notes.

“We’ve shortened the slide length, and reduced its speed to address these goals.

“In the beta, it was faster to fire your weapon from a spring by sliding than by simply ending your spring to fire. This has been fixed so that ending a sprint to fire is the faster way to get your gun up, and sliding to fire is no longer faster.”

Here are the three primary sliding nerfs in the Nov. 12 patch:

• Shortened slide length.
• Reduced slide speed.
• Ending a sprint to fire is now faster than sliding to fire.

The sliding changes were also paired with a small change to mantling. Across the board, Black Ops Cold War mantle speeds have been “increased” dramatically.

• Read more: Black Ops Cold War day 1 launch day patch notes

Treyarch packaged this in with the slide-canceling nerfs in an effort to promote the flow of combat around terrain and defendable objects, rather than just sliding around them or simply ignoring close cover altogether in gunfights.

There’s no indication this may be the be-all-end-all fix Treyarch is hoping it will be. Instead, it may just be another bandaid like the beta changes were all the way back in October.

• Read more: Every multiplayer mode in CoD: Black Ops Cold War

For now, we’ll just have to sit tight for 24 hours. Sliding may well run rampant in the early days of Black Ops again, but Treyarch has proven they’re willing to change it ⁠— if the exploit remains, they likely have more nerfs waiting in the wings.