Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Q&A – Mutliplayer
Twinfinite: With Blackout, it’s built on the same engine as the rest of the game, right?
Scronce: It is.
Twinfinite: If you can go into it, how were you able to expand on what was normally a 12 or 16 player match into something that large?
Miller: So the engine and the things that we have, like if you look at Black Ops 3, the size of some of those maps, and four-player co-op and a lot of those technologies. When we were thinking about what we were gonna do next, and kind of growing and making an even more non-traditional campaign, there were tons of technology things that we were working on that would lend themselves to it. And when we were thinking about doing a battle royale mode, kind of the decisions are can we keep gunplay as awesome as it is, can we make engagements, can we keep the level of visual fidelity. We wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t have the back-end engine work, we’ve got a lot of really really smart people, a whole lot smarter than me, working on low-level tech. There are things, we’re pulling different bits and bobs that we have from tech that we’ve built for different campaigns, for multiplayer, even things that we’ve built for Zombies, and using those things as building blocks to allow us bring what’s a truly Black Ops experience to Blackout.
Q: Is there any chance of working with Sony to try and do cross-play?
Miller: No to my knowledge right now. It may be something that other people are working on, but I’m not close enough to that to answer.
Q: Something that they noted in the presentation, that stuck out to me, is the accessories for the guns. That the guns themselves have attachments and not the classes. Can you talk about that?
Scronce: Sure, each gun was meant to be an individual, its own special snowflake. So this SMG that has extended mags, maybe it’s the only one that has extended mags, and maybe this AR with a suppressor is the only one that has a suppressor. It’s about setting a role for that gun. For example, a stealthy assault rifle may have a suppressor, whereas a mobility SMG may have quick draw. It’s about creating different archetypes over the vast library of weapons we have, and then assigning special attachments that work best for that gameplay.
Miller: So instead of guns becoming really broad, you can put any attachment onto any gun to make it similar to another gun, it’s like picking what’s best about that gun, so if it’s a high capacity gun, the attachments on it are gonna make it really good at doing that thing so you’re playing that role. Versus making the gun okay at everything, we wanted to make guns that are great at doing a thing.
Q: With the pick ten system coming back, what kind of work went into making this system more balanced?
Scronce: It still comes down to our balancing values, in every single game we’ve always been very dedicated on finding balance pre- and post-launch. We’re a very data-driven design team, we’re always gathering data on how many kills a weapon has, how many kills a weapon has with attachments, the engagement distances. It comes down to the data, but at the core it’s about what makes it fun.
Miller: Iteration, that’s the best answer. When we come out there will probably be some loadout that is better than others, it’s just a fact, but we will continue to noodle on those and work on them.
Twinfinite: With this process of iteration, adding on all this stuff is a huge undertaking, especially with a battle royale mode. In a year’s time when another Call of Duty releases, how do you see Blackout and the other modes interacting with that, are you trying to make it have longevity?
Miller: We don’t think about it as interacting with other Call of Duty games, we think about it as a mode that will live on everything we do, and part of our ideas for a non-traditional campaign from the start were about creating experiences that can be more organic, that can live on. It’s not, okay I played it, I know what happens, I’m done. We’re thinking about Blackout as something that, when we come out and Blackout will be on the disc at launch that’s gonna be an epic experience, but that’s something that we’re gonna grow on. It’s gonna be a platform for us that we can just change, iterate, who knows, new modes, whatever else. There’ll be different things we’re gonna try, but at this point we’re just talking about the basics of what we’ve got, and it’s really about growing and making it better.
Scronce: It’s all about longevity for us and replayability, you know. We’re still supporting Black Ops 3 to this day, and we’re gonna double down on that for Black Ops 4.
Twinfinite: Are there any plans to bring any aspect of Black Ops 4 to Nintendo Switch?
Miller: No there is not.
