Early Signs Point to a Massive Aim Assist Nerf in the Black Ops 6 Beta

If you’ve played any Call of Duty game since at least Modern Warfare (2019) on console, you’ve taken advantage of very strong aim assist or the game “pulling” toward an enemy in your sights. The mechanic has grown more and more controversial, and with the Black Ops 6 beta, there are early signs Treyarch is providing a massive nerf to aim assist to even the playing field.

Is There an Aim Assist Nerf in Black Ops 6?

The Black Ops 6 multiplayer beta is in full swing, and players around the world are testing out everything they can get their hands on. A buddy of mine, we’ll call him Tim the Enchanter, showed me a reply from Matt Scronce, Associate Director of Design at Treyarch on X (formerly Twitter). User JGODYT was testing aim assist in the training mode, using standing targets as stand-ins for enemy players. JGOD noticed that there was not nearly as much “rotational aim assist” or the game pulling toward a target from either side without additional player input.

Scronce’s reply was to JGOD posting, “Black Ops 6 AA Nerf might actually be real this year…” The director had this to say: “Tweaks have been made. Aim Assist Type removed so we can get everyone on a level playing field. We’ll share details soon.”

Another popular Call of Duty X account, ModernWarzone, seems to have independently verified the aim assist changes in an actual match. They posted a clip of a player sneaking up on another on the Skyline map and strafing back and forth with their reticle on the enemy player’s back. There was no auto-aim “tug” for the few seconds he was strafing when, in previous titles, there would have been significant movement.

In short, based on early in-game testing during the Black Ops 6 beta, there appears to have been a major nerf to aim assist for this year’s Call of Duty.

Why Is Aim Assist a Big Deal in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6?

Aim assist isn’t a huge issue by itself. Any FPS on console uses it, as precise aiming on two control sticks will always be leagues less accurate than with a mouse. The micromovements a mouse can create are almost impossible to replicate on a controller. And in much older games, including Treyarch’s magnum opus, Black Ops 2, or the OG Call of Duty 4, aim assist was present but not overpowering.

However, since Modern Warfare (2019), the Call of Duty series has seen its aim assist strength increase with each entry, to the point where the game mostly aims for you so long as you have an enemy near the center of your screen and you aim down your sights. Is it a true, traditional aimbot? No, because you won’t be snapping to the heads of every enemy player on the map instantly, but it is a functional one because the computer is doing so much more of the work for you.

This difference in controllability wouldn’t be as much of an issue if today’s Call of Duty games weren’t cross-platform. But we live in a world where mouse and keyboard players, who have no aim assist to speak of, will regularly play against people on consoles with what many PC players consider a massive and crucial advantage.

Now, Treyarch is doing what it has done with many of its games: rethinking the playing field. They did it with the Stopping Power perk and Sniper Rifles in Black Ops 1. In Black Ops 2, they brought us the Pick 10 system, and now, with Black Ops 6, they’re messing with a mechanic many players have become very used to: overly strong aim assist.

Rotational aim assist is specifically the issue here. I’ve seen anecdotal testing in Warzone, where a player stands on a roof, looking down at another player as they cross a field. A camera looks at their hands, and their aiming reticle follows the enemy without input from their thumbs. At all.

Worse, aim assist has long acted as its own version of a UAV, allowing savvy players to know an enemy is coming by watching for an auto-aim tug through a wall or across a long sightline. I’ve done it, and I’ve seen it done. While I think that particular concept isn’t going away, if the aim assist changes present in the Black Ops 6 beta can make it into the launch version, the gap between how much help the game gives a console and PC player will shrink.

I don’t think aim assist should vanish entirely from consoles because I can’t imagine how hard it would be for them to compete if it were. The mechanic is there to ensure they can enjoy the game, but in recent years AA has become suffocating with the implementation of crossplay. Many of my friends simply don’t play Call of Duty anymore because they feel like they’re not fighting other players. They’re fighting enemy programs.

Whether the massive aim assist nerf in the Black Ops 6 beta survives the feedback and additional development time between now and release is unknown. If it does, I think more than a few people will come back to play the game on PC because, for the first time in a long time, they’re standing on similar ground to everyone else, regardless of platform.