If there's one consistent piece of feedback emerging from the Black Ops 7 beta, it's that Dexterity shouldn't be a perk – it should be the default. There's a loud contingent of players singing this tune, espousing the belief that something so fundamental to movement and momentum should be part of the combat baseline rather than an opt-in.
If you need a brief recap, the Black Ops 7 Dexterity perk unlocks "Reduced weapon motion and full ADS on slides, dives, and wall jumps." The ability to Aim-Down-Sights while sliding and diving is pretty fundamental to combat flow in Black Ops 6, so I understand why some players are confused by the decision to push something so important to the foundations of Omnimovement into the Perk system.
There's every chance that Treyarch may alter this decision before launch. Speaking with me at Call of Duty: Next, the studio explained that it's exceptionally open to all constructive criticism, and that it isn't too late for the team to make changes – in fact, Treyarch already moved Dexterity from the Perk 1 to Perk 3 category based on early feedback.
Now, do I believe that Treyarch is going to go one step further here and remove the Dexterity perk entirely, restoring this type of kinetic movement back to the multiplayer as standard? Of that I'm not so sure. The team has been pretty open about its intention to not slow Omnimovement down, necessarily, but to refocus it – reframe it for a game which sits on the timeline between Black Ops 2's more-grounded action and the advanced movement which defined Black Ops 3.
Speaking to the reasoning for why the Dexterity and Tac Sprinter perks need to exist, design director Matt Scronce says that "we're being a bit more intentional with our combat, just at a baseline. If you do want to get a little more aggressive with your movement, we will have perks that allow you to do that."
Scrone says that these sorts of decisions have been made as a result of Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7 being developed in parallel, where Treyarch is able to "look at what we introduced in Black Ops 6 with Omnimovement, hear the player feedback, and directly infuse that into Black Ops 7." He adds: "The ability for us to take that feedback and almost do a post-mortem in real time has been an amazing opportunity."
Dexterity may be the center of attention right now, but it isn't the only significant change being routed through the perk system. Tactical Sprint has been disabled by default, with Treyarch instead opting to raise base movement speed as standard and then offer the ability to regain those burst speeds through the Tac Sprinter perk.
Reload speeds, "which we've traditionally pushed into our attachments", can now be improved via the Fast Hands perk. The ability to fire while sprinting also returns, albeit specifically for those who equip the Gun Ho perk. "That is very exciting for us," says Scronce, "because in an Omnimovement world you can sprint in all 360 directions; so if I can also sprint while firing, that means I can also sprint fire in all 360 directions. It's a lot of fun."
Speaking more to the decision to reframe Omnimovement in this way, associate creative director Miles Leslie tells me that Black Ops 6 was always going to have some key differences to Black Ops 7. "You were an action hero in Black Ops 6 and we wanted to embody that. But then coming into Black Ops 7, we wanted to have a tighter focus."
"A lot of this refocusing also comes from player testing and player feedback. People really want the option to play how they want to play," Leslie adds, "and still give a sense of mastery for the players that want that as well."
To learn more about Black Ops 7, check out our hands-on impressions with the recent open beta.
