Treyarch’s Dan Bunting Discusses Competitive in Black Ops 4 – “Competitive players will be surprised”
Twitter/ActivisionCo-Studio head at Treyarch, Dan Bunting, has spoken for the first time about competitive play in Black Ops 4, amid the on-going debate with players, fans and casters.
With a host of significant changes to the fundamentals of CoD, including 5v5 public matches, manual healing and much more, the competitive community is debating how it will all work in competitive.
In an interview with Millenium, Bunting discussed the beta and touches on the competitive side of things, explaining that they will “do a lot“ for competitive this year.
In terms of the games overall design, Bunting said that the game is a mix of the “best of Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 3”.
So what does Dan Bunting say about competitive? Well he reassures us that Treyarch is focusing on the esports side of things, and that competitive players will be “surprised.”
The following is translated from French, read the original interview here.
“Staying in line with what we did on previous Black Ops games, we will do a lot for the competitive scene. We have not announced anything about the new competitive system but we will talk about it very soon.
This will be an integral part of the gaming experience, and we think [Black Ops 4] is the right game to promote the competitive experience. I think competitive players will be surprised.”
Bunting also touched on the change from 6v6 public matches to 5v5, and how this could affect the competitive scene.
“Some [public match] modes are in 5v5 others are in 6v6, but we really thought of this game for 5v5. The reason we switched to 5v5 is that we wanted to encourage interaction and communication within the teams.
When the games become a bit chaotic, it doesn’t really give you time to breathe, think and talk with your teammates. We really wanted to reintroduce this tactical side, make the game more rewarding, more predictable so that players can really control the game.
That’s why we made this decision, and I think the 5v5 will appeal to competitive players because it effectively reduces the gap between the traditional experience, the competitive experience and even the professional player experience.
But on the other hand we’re also trying not to upset the habits of casual players with playlists like Chaos that is close to what they know.”
Whether 5v5 is also introduced or not for competitive remains up in the air, but it would be one of the more drastic changes if it was. For now, there is still the CWL Championship for WWII to get through, before the competitive community can really focus on Black Ops 4.
Source: Millenium