If you, like me, have been playing the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War alpha on PlayStation 4 this weekend, you may have noticed sniper rifles are pretty handy.
I spent most of yesterday evening playing the alpha, getting a feel for the multiplayer portion of the game, its weapons and potential loadouts, and it quickly became apparent that snipers were the go-to weapon.
They’re super powerful, as you’d expect, but also have an extremely quick aim down sights (ADS) speed – much faster than the kind of sniper rifle ADS speed we’re used to from recent games in the series.
The ADS on snipers is so quick – near instant in some cases – that snipers are outperforming assault rifles even at ranges ARs should dominate. The video below, from Call of Duty YouTuber Drift0r, gives you an idea of how snipers work in Black Ops Cold War:
Black Ops Cold War Sniping Gameplay & Mini-Discussion Watch on YouTube
It turns out the current sniper rifle experience in the alpha is not what we should expect from the launch game. Treyarch deliberately buffed sniper rifles for the alpha in order to evaluate their performance, and has already promised a nerf for the upcoming beta.
“We buffed snipers to evaluate their performance in this alpha specifically,” Treyarch’s Tony Flame explained in a tweet.
“Sniper rifles WILL have balance changes for the upcoming beta based on our analytics data this weekend.”
Ok let’s talk Sniping in Cold War.
Crossplay is coming, but we knew it wouldn’t be in Alpha. We buffed Snipers to evaluate their performance in this Alpha specifically. Sniper Rifles WILL have balance changes for the upcoming Beta based on our analytics data this weekend.
— Tony Flame (@Tony_Flame) September 18, 2020
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The news has been welcomed by most players, from what I can tell, although some have said they will miss how much fun snipers are to use at the moment.
“I agree that it’s pretty fun, but it is just way too easy,” said redditor ermahgerditsdaddel. “I’m not a sniper and I was still able to go off. They should probably slow the ADS time on the snipers a little. It’s almost instant now.”