CoD pro ACHES wants 11 major changes to Black Ops Cold War

Theo Salaun
aches black ops cold war

Two-time Call of Duty world champion and former Los Angeles Guerrillas player, Patrick ‘ACHES’ Price has delivered an in-depth powerpoint giving feedback on the issues with Black Ops Cold War and how they can be fixed.

With the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Open Beta in full swing, the developers over at Treyarch and Raven Software are absorbing a bevy of focused criticisms from the franchise’s ever-eager fanbase. Fortunately, ACHES has balanced his own critiques with a variety of constructive suggestions, giving a professional player’s perspective on how best to balance the newest upcoming CoD title.

And that perspective appears to be presented as professionally as the former Call of Duty League pro’s gameplay is, with a series of PowerPoint-esque slides shared on Twitter. 

Starting with a disclaimer that he is excited by this game’s potential, ACHES proceeds to dive into 11 suggestions spanning movement mechanics, stocks, perks, equipment, and scorestreaks. We summarize those issues and suggestions here.

Sliding, movement, and the Duster Stock

First, ACHES details how he would adjust the game’s movement mechanics. Most notably, he thinks that sliding needs to be nerfed in a variety of ways so that the game isn’t overwhelmed by a slide-cancel meta like Modern Warfare was. This is in line with others’ complaints about slide exploits in the title. Further, as a countermeasure, he thinks that the game’s base movement speed should be buffed. 

With the idea of cutting down on movement tricks while boosting general mobility, this would make Black Ops Cold War a more evenly balanced title (and less easily dominated by pros like Anthony ‘Shotzzy’ Cuevas?). He then touches on how the Duster Stock should be overhauled before diving into the Ninja Perk and some of the game’s equipment.

Ninja Perk, EMP Grenades, throwables, and Trophy System

For Ninja, ACHES believes that the perk should be buffed “a bit more” in hopes that it improves competitiveness on respawn modes and encourages the Search and Destroy community to make a return. 

Then, while wanting EMP Grenades and the Hardwired perk to be added to the game, he has also laid out that he thinks throwable equipment needs to be nerfed so that players can’t launch them across the map like an NFL quarterback. Further, he believes the Trophy System field upgrade needs to be balanced so that it isn’t used by every single player at all times.

Scorestreak, Wildcard, Stim Shot, and Jump-Shotting

Finally, ACHES joins much of the CoD community in wanting changes to the scorestreak system. Further, he adds suggestions for the Wildcard system and Stim Shot to be improved, while offering that jump-shotting simply feels awkward.

As of yet, developers have not responded to ACHES’ 11 general suggestions, but the Open Beta is open until October 12 so it is likely that they are still gathering information. As a general note, though, this is probably the best way to offer feedback, as ACHES made sure to offer suggestions for each issue he has with the game’s current iteration.

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About The Author

Théo is a former writer at Dexerto based in New York and built on competition. Formerly an editor for Bleacher Report and philosophy student at McGill, he fell in love with Overwatch and Call of Duty — leading him to focus on esports for Dex.