Now that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has been out for around a week, some of the best and brightest players are chipping in on discussions on what guns are busted. These initial posts and speculatory remarks are crucial in the formation of the game’s early meta, but one certain opinion has the community split. Are Assault Rifles too good? Or do people need to settle down and let the game simmer before making such vast statements?
To start, let’s look at the Assault Rifles and why folks think they’re so good. Guns like the XM4 and Model L are getting a lot of heat right now, and at a glance you can see why. As Assault Rifles they are good at a variety of ranges, and with the right attachments they are easy to control. The result of putting a gun in the hands of great players is they become laser beams, able to pick off players quickly without a huge amount of effort. You can even slap an extended mag on them and back-to-back kills become common. A quick browse on social media or Twitch shows this to be true.
What this has resulted in is a gentleman’s agreement between professional players coming into effect in competitive lobbies that’ll ban both the XM4 and the Model L. This isn’t a concrete ban, as there isn’t exactly an official body that can do that and the game hasn’t got a pro scene yet as Black Ops 6 has only been out for a week. But, nonetheless, some of the best players out there already have decided these guns are unfair. And hey, I’m a real bozo on Black Ops 6, so who am I to judge the opinions of those far better than me.
Your honour, may I introduce the opposition: while some feel select Assault Rifles need setting aside for the time being, others believe this is a foolish and somewhat weak response to the game’s emerging meta. Take Clayster, an exceptionally good, world champion CoD player. He posted on Twitter in reaction to the gentlemen’s agreement the following, “lmaooooooooooooo same thing as always, get to the worst usable AR before all the subs figure out routes/nades/teamwork and then by mid-game every sub dominates. “8 XM4’s” yeah no s**t bc nobody knows the game.”
He’s not wrong. If you spend a lot of time with a Call of Duty on launch you’ll notice that the beloved guns on week one do fall out of fashion once people start to figure the game out. Where players are on the map, which equipment is best in competitive spaces, what angles to hold, etc. Especially in Black Ops 6 with its omnimovement system, who can say where fast-paced run and gun gameplay will win over. Sure, SMGS may not be the favoured gun type now, but perhaps in a month those talented players glued to the game will be diving circles around ARs.
The problem at the heart of this debate around Assault Rifles in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is that decisions like this are happening so early in the game’s life. Yes it’s true that some brilliant people are crunching the numbers, figuring out the fastest time-to-kill guns, and determining optimal gun builds so as to squeeze as much value out of each weapon as they can. But, such research is only part of the equation to what a competitive scene looks like for CoD. What really needs to happen, and this happens for other games long before concrete determinations on what guns need banning, is some competitive matches need playing. They need to be played for a while too. If after two months you’re still seeing lobbies filled with XM4s, then a conversation about bans makes sense.
Let’s also not forget we’ve not even had time for an official patch from Activision yet. Yes, pro players have a unique view at high level play that can sometimes be hard to see as a developer looking at community-wide stats. But, internal stats are surely being gathered, as are early learnings from the game’s day-one meta.
But what do you think? Are Assault Rifles too strong in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6? Let us know below!
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