14 DAY TRIAL // Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 might have lost the biggest entertainment launch of the year crown to "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," but the first-person shooter remains a huge presence for many gamers and will continue to attract a wide number of players with its multiplayer mechanics for months.
This means that any changes made by developer Treyarch will be scrutinized and criticized by the player community, and a recent hotfix that seemed to shift the matchmaking mechanics towards skill rather than connection strength has attracted plenty of comments.
David Vonderhaar, the design director working on Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, has taken to Twitter to explain the process that led to the deployment of a set of tweaks that failed to have the expected impact. He reveals that his team deactivated the hotfix as quickly as possible and is now investigating how it can improve it.
The game creator makes it clear that, in the future, Treyarch will continue to make sure that the Internet connection that a player has is the most important deciding factor when it comes to matchmaking, regardless of how other mechanics are being improved.
The process also takes into account player skill and history in matches, but the priority is to find a game very quickly to keep Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 fans engaged for as long as possible.
Treyarch previously said that it was also working on improving its cheat detection techniques for the shooter so that it could ensure that the playing field is level for the entire community.
Awakening DLC is coming to Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 in January of 2016
The development team has stated that it will introduce four new maps, all of them designed with interesting combat scenarios in mind, and a new chapter for the cooperative zombie campaign is also teased.
Treyarch has not yet announced the extra weapons that gamers will get access to when Awakening arrives and the details of the big patch that is associated with the coming DLC.
The downloadable content pack will be introduced towards the middle of January for those playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 on the PlayStation 4.
Those who own the shooter on the PC and the Xbox One will have to wait for a month before they can access the same content.
There are four DLC packs planned in total for the game, and players can pick up a Season Pass to make sure that they get them all as soon as they are available.
Treyarch and Activision have also recently introduced microtransactions for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and they seem determined to see how interested the community is in using real-world money to acquire content in the coming months.
Presumably, they will play a bigger role in the new title in the franchise, which is in development at Infinity Ward and will be launched at some point in the fall of next year, although no details about it have been offered yet.
What we didn't do is "turn on" or implement anything new that would deliberately prioritize any criteria over connection. And we won't.
— David Vonderhaar (@DavidVonderhaar) December 20, 2015