In the 10 days since Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s release, one perk has quickly become a focus for the player base’s contempt: Recon. It’s one of Black Ops 6’s “combat specialties,” which reward players for equipping a full set of perks with the same color-coded theme. Equip a set of blue perks, and you get Recon, which—to the confusion of anyone who’s played a round of a competitive FPS—briefly lets you see enemies through walls whenever you respawn.
Players, as you’d expect, haven’t responded well to their enemies enjoying Activision-sanctioned wallhacks. As our Morgan Park wrote in his own call for Recon’s justified nerfing, “people are literally respawning, aiming at the head of someone they can see through a wall from their spawn point, and getting a completely unfair kill.”
Luckily, Treyarch’s heard those calls. In a Black Ops 6 patch that arrived earlier today with a series of balancing adjustments, the duration during which Recon highlights enemies through walls after respawning has been reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds. Frankly, that half-second reduction seems a little light, but Treyarch says “an additional reduction will be coming before Season 01.”
“As we head into Season 1, we are continuing to observe data and feedback for Perks and Combat Specialties in Multiplayer,” Treyarch said in the patch notes. “We are making some spot adjustments today as we continue to take a holistic look at our Perks and Combat Specialties moving forward.”
Interestingly, Treyarch also points out that Recon isn’t the most popular combat specialty—that’d be Enforcer, which speeds up health regen after getting a kill. While those people might be getting their kills in a more honest and respectable fashion, they’re missing out on what’s easily the most powerful ability in the game.
You don’t need me to explain why being able to see through walls is an unbelievable advantage in a game about shooting other people before they can shoot you. If it wasn’t, opposing players wouldn’t fall back on accusing you of having wallhacks when they refuse to admit they’re being outplayed. Even with an additional nerf on the way, I wonder how healthy Recon’s inclusion can be with any reduction short of 100%.
