Call of Duty Black Ops 7 Launch Patch Notes: Movement Changes, Weapon Nerfs, and More

After gathering a ton of feedback during the open beta and the game’s promotional cycle, Treyarch has revealed a slate of changes coming to Call of Duty Black Ops 7 at launch. The launch day patch notes highlight adjustments to movement, such as smoother and more consistent mantles, regardless of your chosen Perks. The devs have also increased the gain rate of weapon XP, bumping it up by roughly 25% as compared to Black Ops 6.

Other changes to take note of are all about weapon balancing. Every weapon class has undergone adjustments, ranging from damage increases to range reductions. With all that said, here are the Black Ops 7 launch patch notes.

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 Launchday Patch Notes

Developer’s Note on Aim Assist: In Black Ops 6, we updated Rotational Aim Assist strength at close range to scale over a short distance. In Black Ops 7, we are increasing the range before full Rotational Aim Assist strength is achieved. Additionally, we have slightly increased Rotational Aim Assist strength at very long ranges.

A new right stick aiming requirement has also been added to Rotational Aim Assist. Previously, full Rotational Aim Assist strength was achieved regardless of aiming direction or which stick was being controlled. With this update, the player’s right stick movement must be tracking an enemy target for Rotational Aim Assist to activate at full strength. If the conditions are not met, Rotational Aim Assist strength will be reduced. For example, if only the left stick is being controlled during an engagement, Rotational Aim Assist strength will be reduced.

Movement Updates

• Adjusted mantling for smoother, faster, and more consistent mantles.
• Addressed an issue where players could dive when moving slower than intended.
• Slightly reduced slide acceleration, speed, and duration.

XP Earn Rates

• Increased Weapon XP earn rates. 
• Weapons will progress faster than they did in the Beta, and will reach max level roughly 25% faster than they did in Black Ops 6.
• Addressed inconsistent per-item Overclock earn rates to ensure that players earn Overclocks at a fairly consistent rate when using all Lethal, Tactical, Field Upgrade, and Scorestreak types frequently and successfully.
• Increased Daily Challenge Bonus XP reward from 3,000 XP to 5,000 XP.

Challenges

• Added the ability to Re-Roll one Daily Challenge per day (per mode). 
• The Re-Rolled Challenge will be replaced with a different Challenge, allowing players to replace one Challenge they don’t want to complete each day for a chance at something that better aligns with their playstyle (if desired). 

Medal & Score Events

• Added a significant number of new Multiplayer and Zombies Medals, as well as returning Medals that were not included in the Beta. View the “Medal Collection” in the Career > Stats menu for the full list of Multiplayer and Zombies Medals.

Weapons: Multiplayer & Zombies

Developer’s Note: Black Ops 7 is almost here, and there are quite a few tuning changes coming at launch for the weapons we had in the Beta. Like this past year, we are committed to posting a detailed list of every weapon and attachment change we make in Black Ops 7, as well as providing insight into the reasons for our changes. Today, we’ll be previewing damage range changes to SMGs and the M15 MOD 0 assault rifle, an overhaul to shotgun damage, and numerous attachment adjustments.

When it comes to the attachment changes, you’ll see that we pulled back slightly on some of the parts that improve Damage Range, Bullet Velocity, Recoil Control, and various movement speeds. Now that these attributes can be improved across more nodes, we are keeping tabs on how extreme they can get when stacking them.

Even after these changes, going all in on an attribute will result in larger improvements than were possible in Black Ops 6. And some weapons will be able to push to greater extremes than others in certain areas. Expect more frequent attachment tuning throughout the Black Ops 7 seasons, as build variety is a core goal for us.

As a final note, most weapon classes had jump penalties for ADS and Sprint to Fire slightly increased. There were two reasons for these adjustments: The first is that it’s part of the balancing factor for Wall Jump during an engagement, and especially important now that ADS during Wall Jump is baseline.

The second reason is that there are more opportunities to reduce these penalties via attachments in Black Ops 7, including significant improvements on some Prestige Attachments. This will allow players to tech into combat movement, and also let some weapons shine in this area.

Assault Rifles

• General Updates
  • Jump ADS Speed Penalty increased from 30% to 40%.
  • Jump Sprint to Fire Penalty increased from 35% to 45%.
• Attachment Updates
  • Tactical Laser
    • Tac Stance Aim Down Sight Speed improvement reduced from 25% to 20%.

SMGs

• General Adjustments
  • Jump ADS Speed Penalty increased from 30% to 40%.
  • Jump Sprint to Fire Penalty increased from 35% to 45%.
  • Addressed issues with the ADS firing motion on SMGs when modifying the Recoil Stabilization stat.
  • Tac Stance Aim Down Sight Speed improvement reduced from 25% to 15%.

Shotguns

• General Adjustments
  • Jump ADS Speed Penalty increased from 30% to 40%.
  • Jump Sprint to Fire Penalty increased from 35% to 45%.
  • Reduced muzzle flash on Slug Rounds.
  • Lower Leg and Foot multipliers increased from 0.8x to 1x.
• Attachment Adjustments
  • Tactical Laser
    • Tac Stance Aim Down Sight Speed improvement reduced from 25% to 20%.

Light Machine Guns

• General Adjustments
  • Jump ADS Speed Penalty increased from 30% to 35%.
  • Jump Sprint to Fire Penalty increased from 35% to 40%.
• Attachment Adjustments
  • Tactical Laser
    • Tac Stance Aim Down Sight Speed improvement reduced from 25% to 20%.\

Marksman Rifle

• General Adjustments
  • Jump ADS Speed Penalty increased from 30% to 40%.
  • Jump Sprint to Fire Penalty increased from 35% to 45%.
• Attachment Adjustments
  • Tactical Laser
    • Tac Stance Aim Down Sight Speed improvement reduced from 25% to 20%.

Launchers

• General Adjustments
  • Reduced turn sway and idle motion.
  • Enabled Idle Sway Delay system so that ADS starts perfectly centered.

Weapons Attachments: General

• Mobility Spread Muzzle
  • This muzzle now improves Tac Stance Spread and all Hip Spread values. Jump, Slide, and Dive Spread values were improved by 10%.
• Mobility Foregrip
  • This underbarrel now improves Movement Speed and no longer improves Sprint Speed.
• Fast Mags and Flip Mags
  • Most Fast Mags and Flip Mags have had their starting and max stock ammo increased to compensate for smaller mag sizes.
• Tactical Spread Stock
  • This stock now improves all Hip Spread values, including Jump, Slide, and Dive spread.
  • All weapons had the Tac Stance Spread improvement increased by 2%, except for SMGs which were improved by 5%.
• Millimeter Scanner
  • Increased scan distance from 15m to 30m.
  • Increased maximum movement speed to appear on scans from 2m/s to 2.5m/s.

Multiplayer

• Maps
  • Exposure
    • Updated spawn points across all modes.
    • Slightly increased some Hardpoint zone sizes.
    • Overload zones have been moved slightly deeper toward the ends of the map.
    • Adjusted Domination A zone for minimap clarity.
    • New Search and Destroy bomb site locations.
  • Imprint
    • Inclinator button prompt text updated for clarity.
  • The Forge
    • Updated starting objective device locations for Overload.
  • Cortex
    • Updated spawns for all modes and polished objective locations.

• Modes
  • Overload
    • Updated device reset timer from 60 seconds to 15 seconds.
    • UI string and visual updates for gameplay clarity.
    • Medal additions and updates.
    • General bug fixes.

• Perks
  • Combined certain Perks into other existing Perks to create more meaningful choices.
    • Gearhead gets Quartermaster benefits.
    • Assassin gets Vendetta benefits.
    • Close Shave gets Bruiser benefits.
    • Engineer gets Shadow benefits.
    • Tracker gets Hunter’s Instinct benefits.
  • Added increased minimap visibility to Vigilance.
  • Slightly increased assist score radius of Charge Link and Blast Link.
  • Increased Tactician Combat Speciality elimination score.

• Equipment
  • Needle Drone now eliminates enemies on direct impact.
  • Increased the HUD warning radius of Needle Drone, so potential victims are warned sooner.
  • Improvements to Sensor Grenade to make tagging more responsive and reliable.
  • Reduced duration of EMP Grenade HUD scramble effect.

• Field Upgrades
  • Improved charge time balance across all Field Upgrades and charge time boosters.
  • Addressed an issue with Drone Pod eliminations where it was not awarding the full +100 score.
  • Reduced duration and area of effect of Squad Link and set a deployed limit of 1.
  • Trophy Systems can no longer be deployed underwater.

• Scorestreaks
  • Improved messaging of Scorestreak earn and ready states.
  • Adjusted Scorestreak health, hits to kill, and score cost.
  • Updated Scorestreak health Overclock descriptions to be clearer.
  • Reduced fire delay of D.A.W.G. and now allow 2 active per team.
  • D.A.W.G. can now use map traversals more often.
  • Addressed an issue where Sentry Turret barrel did not spin.
  • Increased Sentry Turret targeting distance.
  • Reduced initial targeting delay of Skewer.
  • Reduced Rhino melee hit time delay to better match animation.
  • Reduced EMP effect duration on Rhino.
  • Addressed an issue where Hellstorm cluster missiles were not doing correct damage to Scorestreaks.
  • Added a “Drone Damaged Enemy” Drone Pod Score Event to help players understand when their Drone Pod is damaging enemies.

• Audio
  • Removed the guitar riff SFX that played in the Beta when killing your current Nemesis, or when being killed by your Nemesis.

Zombies

• Maps
  • Vandorn Farm (Survival)
    • Addressed an issue where Chompy wouldn’t eat a weapon but would still reward the player.
    • Reduced Salvage rewarded from Chompy.
    • Increased Saw Blade Trap cost to 2000 Essence and slightly reduced its attraction radius.
    • Trap kills do not drop loot.
    • T.E.D.D. Tasks now spawn in the map.

• Weapons
  • General
    • Addressed an issue that was severely reducing the effective penetration of all bullet weapons. Damage will not be reduced as severely for penetration hits.
    • Slight increase to Legendary and Pack-a-Punch III damage multipliers for Assault Rifle, SMG, Marksman Rifle, and Shotgun weapon classes to ensure a viable economy loop when coupled with Augments.
    • Pack-a-Punched SMGs now have a short-range damage buff of 50%.
  • Weapon Specific
    • MXR-17:
      • Increased stock Ammo to 550 for Pack-a-Punched version.
    • A.R.C. M1
      • Increased charge gain to 0.5 seconds. 
    • Flatline MK.II
      • Non-Pack-a-Punched Flatline MK.II Changes:
        • Lowered Heavy Melee damage from 375 -> 300 
        • Lowered head scale from 2 -> 1.5x
      • Pack-a-Punched Flatline MK.II Changes:
        • Pack-a-Punch II Damage: 2x
        • Pack-a-Punch III Damage: 4x
    • Dravec 45
      • Lowered kick scale by 100% for Pack-a-Punch variant. 

Enemies

• Addressed an issue where zombies had trouble attacking the ARC-XD.

UI

• Updated the Exfil Vote widget to more clearly describe the updated Exfil, which allows each player to opt-in to an Exfil initiated by another player.
  • Everyone who opts-in leaves the match, with players who opt out staying in the match until they decide to Exfil later… or die. 

Known Issues

• Camos
  • The Doomsteel Mastery Camo unlock requirements show 30 Elite Zombies Eliminations instead of the 10 that are needed to actually unlock it.
    • This will be addressed shortly after launch.

And that wraps up the launch day patch notes for Black Ops 7. So, what do you make of the changes? Let us know in the comments.