Ahead of Black Ops 6 Season 2, a hefty set of patch notes have just landed that detail some of the sweeping gameplay changes hitting the FPS game. While there’s the usual affair of bug fixes and widespread weapon balance changes, there are some major improvements for those of you out there grinding challenges for camos and calling cards too. There’s also a slightly vague promise of new anti-cheat upgrades.
Treyarch has already shown off all of the shiny content hitting Black Ops 6 in Season 2 – and I’m personally thrilled about all the Black Ops 2 callbacks. While a fresh battle pass, arsenal additions, and new maps and modes are all on the way, so too is a mountain of under-the-hood improvements and changes. One main area of focus for Season 2 involves the multiplayer game’s mind-boggling array of challenges and camos, and that’s good news for all the grinders.
Players will now have access to a challenge tracker tool which lets them manually pick up to ten camo challenges and ten calling card challenges that they can monitor – this prevents the monotonous journeys in and out of the game’s challenge menus when it comes to checking your progress. The tracker can also automatically alert you to any untracked challenges that you are near to completing if you haven’t filled all 20 of those spots up manually.
Flaunting Special-tier Black Ops 6 camos is also going to become much easier. Previously, you could only equip Special camos to a gun after unlocking nine of its Military camos – from Season 2 onwards, that limit has been dropped down to just five Military camos. This gives you more time to use a Special camo before you hit the super-desirable Mastery camos that you’ll inevitably want to equip.
As is usually the case for a big seasonal update, BO6’s lineup of weaponry is getting a once-over. Thanks to some global changes that are not directed at individual weapons or weapon classes, Season 2 will technically tweak every single gun in the game. These global changes span three areas. The first is to do with weapon animations when you respawn, as these can sometimes be disorientating or block parts of your screen – from Season 2 onwards, these can be canceled immediately by aiming, firing, or sprinting. The second sees bullet penetration reduced across the board, so now you won’t be able to shoot through some thicker or harder surfaces. The final global change involves “an improvement to the weapon motion reduction on the Dexterity Perk, which will make weapons feel even more stable while jumping, sliding, and diving.”
Then there are several tweaks to individual weapons. All of the snipers that were in the game at launch are getting buffs to their one-shot-kill hit locations to make them more satisfying to use. All of the game’s shotguns are getting a small buff to their range and sprint-to-fire speeds to make them more viable on larger maps. The Goblin MK2, which Treyarch itself describes as potentially “the most divisive weapon out there,” has also been buffed.
Following lots of discontent about its anti-cheat efforts, the patch notes also mention that some new improvements to the Ricochet system will begin to go live in Season 2, but a lot of what’s in the pipeline looks more set for Season 3.
“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,” the patch notes read. “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 3.”
Black Ops 6 Season 2 goes live tomorrow, January 28. To check out every single change coming in Season 2, head to the official patch notes here.
To further prepare for all the new content and changes, head to our explainer guides on all the current and upcoming Black Ops 6 events and the latest Black Ops 6 meta.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or join our community Discord to stay in the know.