Black Ops 4 Developer Treyarch Addresses Poor Server Performance Complaints

Like most developers getting ready to launch a major AAA game title, Treyarch, developer of the highly anticipated Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 game that launched this month, held a beta and used that feedback to improve the game. Black Ops 4 earned rave reviews from the players who participated in that beta for its gameplay and the speedy nature of the servers hosting the game. However, players have been upset because when the game launched, the performance of the network hosting the online-only game wasn't up to the same standards as the network hosting the beta.

During the beta period, the servers for the game were reported to be operating at 60Hz, but after launch, the servers are operating at a much slower 20Hz pace. For the first time, Treyarch has directly addressed these complaints; it says that it is constantly working to optimize Black Ops 4, and specifically to optimize network performance.

The reason the server network is running slower than it was during the beta period has to do with Treyarch opting to prioritize game stability over outright performance at launch. Treyarch says that with the game launching to such a massive audience, and hitting servers globally at the same time, it had to configure the network for stability. The developers note that now that the game is past the initial launch phase, it is focusing on fine-tuning network performance globally.

Some had speculated that the massive number of players that flocked to the game was the reason network performance had been downgraded, and Treyarch has directly confirmed that with its comments. The issue that gamers have with the slower network speeds, was in part, the associated poor hit registration and unbalanced corner peeking among other things. Treyarch's comments came in a post on Reddit talking about the October 21 update for the game that addresses issues with crashing and stability across all game modes. Black Ops 4 is the first title in Call of Duty franchise history to offer a battle royale mode to compete directly with Fortnite and PUBG.