What you need to know
- Treyarch pushed a patch to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on November 4 that contained, among other things, some XP rebalancing across different game modes.
- Some, such as Team Deathmatch and Control, were supposed to get a buff. Others, notably Face Off, were to be adjusted in the opposite direction.
- However, it doesn’t look like all went to plan, with significant XP reductions seen across more than the intended game modes, which if left unchecked makes levelling up through Prestige significantly more grueling.
November 4 saw the first big post launch update to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, with a raft of balance changes included. Some were targeted at balancing out weapons, with ARs getting a slight nerf and SMGs getting a buff (not that I thought SMGs needed making stronger). Others were to adjust XP gains with a view to making things fairer across the board.
Unfortunately, it looks like the targeted nerfs to XP went far beyond what was supposed to happen. Per the patch notes, the only reduction in XP was supposed to be in Face Off modes, something that had become a haven for the XP farmers. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, as both myself and my colleague, Zachary Boddy, have noticed that Domination and Hardpoint, in particular, have seen dramatic reductions in earned XP.
Comments are also beginning to come in from the community suggesting the same thing.
Per the Reddit post above, I’ve seen exactly the same thing. Even with my distinctly average skills, before the patch if I had a good round of Hardpoint during the 2XP event on Nuketown, I would always get between 20k and 25k XP from it. Now I can expect roughly half of that.
Likewise in Domination, breaking 10k with 2XP on now feels impossible, where before it happened easily every round. I’m close to hitting Prestige 2, but now it’s become a real slog, even with double gains until later today. And that’s the real issue. Levelling in Call of Duty is a grind at the best of times, but unless this was a genuine mistake, it’s going to take so much longer now.
I hope it is a mistake, and since it wasn’t actually detailed in the patch notes for these game modes to be affected, fingers and toes are crossed. Of course, the real damage has been that the 2XP event’s final 24 hours or so has been tarnished by this sudden sharp, massive nerf. Sure, the 2XP event was already extended due to issues at the beginning, but I feel like Treyarch owes us an extra day with (hopefully) the correct rates.
But hey, at least the Recon specialization got a reduction in its legalized cheating wallhacks.
