Treyarch has announced that the ongoing beta for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is getting extended to October 9. In a post on official Call of Duty blog, the studio noted that the beta has been quite successful so far, and that the decision to extend the beta all the way up to just a day before the October 10 release of competing multiplayer shooter Battlefield 6.
“The reaction to the Black Ops 7 Beta so far has been awesome to see,” wrote the developer in the blog post. “Whether you’re calling in Nukes in Multiplayer or going for high rounds in Zombies Survival, there’s plenty to jump into and we’ve had a ton of fun playing alongside everyone. On behalf of all of us at Treyarch, we’re truly grateful for your feedback so far… and speaking of which, we heard you might want a little more, so we’re extending the Black Ops 7 Beta to 9am PT on Thursday, October 9!”
Along with this, Treyarch has also announced that the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will be getting its sixth map as well – Toshin – along with the Open playlists that don’t make use of skill-based matchmaking. Rather, the studio has described Open playlists as being more akin to “classic matchmaking where skill is minimally considered”.
After the beta wraps up later this week, Treyarch has also confirmed that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone will be kicking off the Haunting event, which revolves around Halloween. Along with this, Black Ops 6 will also be starting its Season 6.
As development on Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 continues leading up to its release on November 14, design director Matt Scronce has also revealed a few details about how the gameplay for the shooter is turning out. In a series of social media posts, Scronce revealed that the time-to-kill (TTK) in Black Ops 7 will be quite similar to its predecessor – Black Ops 6. However, this might not end up being the case permanently, since the developers have also been tuning it to find a good balance.
In his post, Scronce wrote about making sure that the TTK for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 would be just right so that players neither take too many bullets to kill, nor do they die too quickly. Rather, finding the right balance in TTK is an important factor of the gameplay since it affects both the attacker as well as the person being shot.
“Currently sitting around Black Ops 6 [time to kill],” wrote Sconce. “We like where that has settled as not too fast and not too slow, giving enough time to react and room for weapons to have diversity without targets feeling overly spongy.”
Developers Treyarch and Raven Software are also taking cheating and hacking in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 quite seriously, with both studios having announced last week that the PC version of the game will require Secure Boot and Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM) to be enabled.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.