"No stone was unturned," said Miles Leslie.
Call of Duty Black Ops 7’s betas have come and gone, and with them, a bevy of changes in the game as it heads towards its full launch on Friday. Speaking with associate creative director Miles Leslie in Sydney last week, we got the rundown on some of those changes.
“We learned a lot [from the betas],” Leslie said, “and I think you can see that in our response — how we quickly heard feedback and addressed the doors in Cortex, right?”
Leslie is referring to player feedback on automatic doors found in 6v6 multiplayer maps, and criticisms levelled at the doors generally being in a closed state. Following tweaks, doors will automatically open at the start of a match and will remain open for longer.
“Now you can ADS [aim down sights] while you slide by default,” Leslie continued, detailing additional changes. “We’re trying to make it feel fair where you still feel empowered to use the movement, but never at a disadvantage.
“[There’s even change] in Zombies — and I really love for the first time we had Zombies mode in the betas; we’ve already tweaked damage numbers,” he said.
“We’ve looked at spawns across all the maps. We’ve looked at the doors on the rest of the maps. We’re looking at weapon damage. We’re looking at sliding and jumping. No stone was unturned.”
That said, it’s never as simple as the entire player base engaging with content and deciding on a unified set of changes.
“It is a fine balance of intuition and trusting your instincts, but also looking at constructive feedback and cutting out the noise,” Leslie replied when asked how Treyarch addresses player feedback – and specifically, vocal player feedback.
To Leslie, Treyarch takes player feedback and then goes through “a little investigation” to find the root behind a complaint, then “really attack that head on”.
“[We use] data where players are playing,” Leslie said, “but also, how are we feeling about it when we play. Because, to be honest, we know games are going to be successful when we’re having fun [playing].
“So you have that trifecta: our instincts, data, and then the sort of noise we hear in constructive criticism,” Leslie continued. “Then you put it in a melting pot and you try to make the changes.”
Leslie said that Treyarch has been hard at work on a system that will allow for relatively easy changes once a need for one arises.
“A big part of it people don’t understand… is we try to make tools that we can rapidly respond [with],” he said. “Because the more you can respond, then we can [review]; ‘oh, we overcorrected’, or ‘we didn’t do enough’ — we want to have that relationship with the community.
“We’ve really pushed hard to make it super easy to push [changes] through – ‘yeah, let’s open the doors’ or ‘let’s change how quickly [doors] open and close and look at spawns.
“The more tools we have in our ability to do that, the better it’ll be when we see or hear things.”
Call of Duty Black Ops 7 heads to Windows PC via Steam and Battle.net, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, and PS5 this Friday on 14 November.
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Call of Duty Black Ops 714 November 2025PC PS4 PS5 Xbox One Xbox Series S & X
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