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As Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Season 2 draws near, Treyarch has addressed some of the community's loudest criticisms, promising significant improvements to make gameplay both fair and more enjoyable for everyone. Scheduled for release on January 28, 2025, the Season 2 update for Black Ops 6 and Warzone will introduce major enhancements to the crossplay system and implement new measures to combat in-game cheating.
Crossplay is one of the most beloved in-game features that gamers prefer to have in almost all multiplayer games. Crossplay allows players to team up with friends, irrespective of their gaming platforms. To explain it further, as a PC player, if one wants to have PlayStation or Xbox players in the squad, enabling the crossplay feature will allow them to do it.
In Call of Duty, this crossplay system is enabled by default in Warzone and Black Ops 6. Therefore, just sharing the code of the lobby with friends will allow them to join it irrespective of their platforms. It, in fact, impacts the random matchmaking system of the game.
Apparently, it looks great, but recently, Black Ops 6 players have been complaining about issues that the crossplay system has been causing them during the Ranked matches of the game.
Season 2 of Black Ops 6 is bringing several changes, but the crossplay is the biggest among them. Since the game was released, players have complained about PC and console gamers competing against each other in the Ranked matches. PlayStation and Xbox gamers were especially unhappy with this, as they kept saying that PC players have competitive advantages over controllers when using a keyboard and mouse.
On the other hand, PC players also started complaining about playing with console players in competitive multiplayer matches. The reason is that console players have an aim-assist feature that enables them to correct any inconsistency during the matches. As per PC players, that’s an unfair advantage.
Treyarch has taken steps to resolve this issue, as the latest Call of Duty blog post revealed that the developer is returning to the traditional way of handling crossplay. According to the developer, “In Season 02, we are enabling the ability to disable cross-play for console players who want to compete only against other console players.”
It also mentioned that this feature is currently in the testing stage, and the team is monitoring it attentively to consider further changes “to prioritize the integrity of the ecosystem.”
That’s not all. The upcoming season will bring new game modes, maps, and other interesting features to make the gameplay more exciting. Above all, Activision is taking steps against in-game cheating.
Cheating is one of the biggest unsolved issues in Call of Duty games. With the introduction of RICOCHET, the anti-cheat software by Activision, players thought things would be solved, but the scenario is getting worse with each new installment. No matter how strict the anti-cheat policies become, cheaters find their way into the game with brand-new hacks.
In Black Ops 6, RICOCHET has adopted new policies, and continuous scrutiny by anti-cheat software has banned more than 19,000 accounts. Still, cheating is one of the prevalent issues ruining the gameplay experience of hardcore COD fans.
A month back, in a Call of Duty blog post, Team RICOCHET confirmed that the measures were not enough in Season 1, particularly in the Ranked play. Per them, “We understand the promise of glory and notoriety from Ranked Play leaderboards makes Ranked Play an attractive target for cheaters. For this reason, our teams have been especially focused on turning the tide to deliver the competitive arena our players seek.”
To prevent the cheaters from targeting the Ranked matches, in Season 2, an updated detection model will be introduced that will track aimbotting, account trust, and hardware identifiers to restrict serial cheaters. The cross-examination tool also got enhanced to take action faster, and more than 136,000 Ranked Play accounts have been banned since it launched.
Spamming the report button in the multiplayer games won’t count. For example, if someone spams the button a thousand times against another player, only one report will be counted. The best part is that when one cheater’s account gets banned, the new detection system will detect more accounts that this account used to get partied up regularly and investigate those to identify the other cheaters.
Activision is hoping this new security measure will make the game playable for those who want to compete fairly without any unfair means and rank up on the leaderboard by using skills.
