Black Ops 6's developers are trying to work out how quickly headshots should kill you

rockpapershotgun.com:

There is an absolute carkfest of a headline to be written here involving the words "head" "not" "enough" and "giving", but I am a journalist of grace and discretion, and will resist. Treyarch, Raven Software and Activision have popped up a note-to-players covering a range of improvements they're making to Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 in the aftermath of August's beta. Specifically, they're tweaking the damage from bullets to the cranium, while trying to ensure that bullets to the cranium don't "significantly affect the consistency of time to kill".

"A common piece of feedback we saw was that low headshot damage reduced the impact of skillful play and made it difficult to challenge certain power positions," comments the Steam post in question. "We agree with these points and are working on adjustments to many weapons to reward players who land multiple headshots during an engagement. That said, we do not want hit location multipliers to significantly affect the consistency of time to kill in Black Ops 6, so we will continue to monitor the effectiveness of headshots during launch and beyond."

I know little and wish to know little about the real-life efficacy of headshots. I know slightly more about the concept of time-to-kill in shooters. It's a deceptively simple-sounding metric that can transform your FPS entirely. Stretch out the seconds a player can last under fire and you've got a relatively sedate, borderline-RPG experience, in which duellists have leisure to dart and circle and get to know each other between bursts. Shrink them back down, and (if you're a terrible player, like me), you've got an extremely fast Game-Over montage, with the occasional hint of a pointed rifle in the scarlet haze of your peripheral vision.

COD has historically been a low TTK shooter, and it doesn't feel like you're all that spongier in Black Ops 6, but then again, I rarely land a headshot. I wish Treyarch and Raven Software the best of luck cooking the books, because it's the kind of