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If you, like me, have been playing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War alpha on PlayStation 4 this weekend, you may have noticed that sniper rifles are quite useful.
I spent most of last night playing alpha, familiarizing myself with the multiplayer part of the game, its weapons and possible equipment, and it quickly became apparent that snipers were the weapon of choice.
They’re super powerful, unsurprisingly, but they also have extremely fast Aiming Down Speed (ADS), much faster than the sniper rifle ADS type of speed we’re used to in recent games in the series.
Sniper ADS is so fast, almost instantaneous in some cases, that snipers are outperforming assault rifles even at the ranges that ARs should master. The following video, from Call of Duty YouTuber Drift0r, gives you an idea of how snipers work in Black Ops Cold War:
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It turns out that the current sniper rifle experience in the alpha is not what we should expect from the launch game. Treyarch deliberately polished the sniper rifles for the alpha in order to assess their performance, and has already promised a nerf for the next beta.
“We upgrade snipers to assess their performance in this alpha specifically,” explained Treyarch’s Tony Flame in a tweet.
“Sniper Rifles WILL HAVE balance changes for the next beta based on our analytics data this weekend.”
Ok, let’s talk snipers in the Cold War.
Crossover play is coming, but we knew it wouldn’t be in Alpha. We upgrade snipers to assess their performance in this Alpha specifically. Sniper Rifles WILL HAVE balance changes for the next Beta based on our analytics data this weekend.
– Tony Flame (@Tony_Flame) September 18, 2020
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The news has been well received by most gamers from what I can tell, although some have said they will miss how much fun sniping is right now.
“I agree that it’s pretty fun, but it’s too easy,” said redditor ermahgerditsdaddel. “I’m not a sniper and I still managed to shoot. They should probably slow down ADS time on snipers a bit. It’s almost instantaneous now.”
I’ve also seen some Call of Duty pros ask Treyarch to leave snipers as is. I’m sure if you are skilled in the fast field, you will enjoy your time in the Cold War alpha. Nervous snipers blunt the edge of one of their long-standing tools of destruction. On the other hand, it can be quite frustrating to be on the receiving end of an insanely fast single-shot sniper at almost any distance.
Low damage? In my experience (and I’m not a sniper) I got a single shot kill at all ranges in 12v12. When you have a higher TTK like in CW, the snipers need to be balanced. It’s not fair that it takes a full magazine to kill someone from just one shot with super fast ADS.
– Chris (@ tkdchris2) September 19, 2020
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Still, according to Flame, the decision has already been made: snipers are getting weaker. So go ahead, Call of Duty sniper experts. The alpha is yours, but the beta, and the release version of Black Ops Cold War, may not be.
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