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[twilo99]

Curious to see what my stats will be like with the the new SBMM since this was sort of 50:50

 

[StreetsofBeige]

^ Oh ya forgot about that. Persistent lobbies. Another drawback of SBMM. Lobbies need to be reloaded with new gamers bogging down intermission and you cant have a fun time playing 5 matches in a row kind of knowing who does what and who is good or not like in open persistent lobbies....... fuck, that one guy SniperXXXX guy is pretty good. I'll make sure to equip my smoke grenade anti-sniper loadout if he's on the other team.

 

[twilo99]

 

[clarky]

https://www.callofduty.com/patchnotes/2025/10/call-of-duty-black-ops-7-beta-patch-notes

Took a day for this to become a reality, fair play.

Treyarch do actually care about making a fun game, and I think they've had a lot of things forced on them by Infinity Ward since 2019. Kind of a perfect storm this year as Activision have panicked and allowed Treyarch to call the shots. They're going bold with it.

- EOMM gone
- Persistent lobbies
- Rotational aim assist nerf (will increase the skill gap and make K&M viable on pc again)
- Working on the spawns

If I could've asked a genie to make changes after trying the closed beta, I don't think I could've done any better. Heard they're also bringing back other BO2 maps as seasonal content. There is also a DMZ/MWZ type of game mode for beating the campaign set in Avalon that I'm curious to hear more about.

All good news. Honestly had a decent time with the beta but its is just more COD. Will buy just because of the above changes but be nice if they change things up significantly next year.

 

[ValiantInstance]

Fucking knew it, literally said it in my post last night

Just listen to Joe Cecot's pathetic MW2019 interview where he talks about how they took away the mini map and made maps as campy as possible to give players 'safe spaces'.

Goes against Treyarch's entire design language. They've always been a studio who embrace the skill curve and want to reward people for improving. Wouldn't surprise me if that's why Vonderhaar left.

 

[Branded]

Fucking knew it, literally said it in my post last night

Just listen to Joe Cecot's pathetic MW2019 interview where he talks about how they took away the mini map and made maps as campy as possible to give players 'safe spaces'.

Goes against Treyarch's entire design language. They've always been a studio who embrace the skill curve and want to reward people for improving. Wouldn't surprise me if that's why Vonderhaar left.

To be honest, most modern maps in CoD (and other shooters) are decent at best. I love me some competitive gaming but I don't need to sweat 24/7.

Some maps in BO2/BO3 and the original MW1 and 2 were far from being 'esports ready' but at least they were fun and iconic. Three lane map design works for sure but when you boil it down, at a casual level, all people do is run around non-stop without any sort of flow or reason. Those beta maps for BO7 were some of the worst and uninspired slop I have played in recent memory.

 

[ValiantInstance]

To be honest, most modern maps in CoD (and other shooters) are decent at best. I love me some competitive gaming but I don't need to sweat 24/7.

Some maps in BO2/BO3 and the original MW1 and 2 were far from being 'esports ready' but at least they were fun and iconic. Three lane map design works for sure but when you boil it down, at a casual level, all people do is run around non-stop without any sort of flow or reason. Those beta maps for BO7 where some of the worst and uninspired slop I have played in recent memory.

What makes a good map is flow, and the design philosophy of 3 lanes is reliable for providing this.

Go back and load into any BO2 map, for instance Standoff. Take a walk around the map and you'll see that wherever you are, you can only be shot at from 2 directions. This caters to any playstyle, whether you want to camp or flank. When you turn a corner it's not going to be a coin flip where you check one corner but leave yourself exposed in several other directions.



Then look at this



I think the main problem with BO7's maps is that the movement in modern cod is insane and also the spawns are really terrible. I think they could nerf the slide and they've already said they're working on the spawns.

I like some of them anyway. And I've heard that most of the seasonal maps are going to be remakes mainly from BO2.