“Every Lane Needs a Purpose” – How Treyarch Crafts Multiplayer Maps for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7

As I touched upon earlier, cover placement is another big piece of a balanced lane, Scronce tells me. “If I don’t have cover, I’m just in the open. Whether it’s a trash can or a crate or a rock, if I can post-up at this piece of cover, then most likely you want the opposing player to have another piece of cover, so we can have kind of a proper head-on engagement.”

My experience on Toshin during the recent Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Multiplayer Beta confirmed much of what Scronce detailed. That city street between the buildings? In every match that landed on Toshin, I found it to be one of the biggest danger points where teams would mix it up, with each side being naturally driven to that point through alleyways, shops, and apartments. It’s clear a tremendous amount of work goes into crafting every one of these Multiplayer maps, taking chokepoints, lanes, and other considerations into account, and that it must be hard to know when to check a map off as “ready” to be deployed.

“It’s tough: because the team is so passionate about all the maps, they want to continue going forever,” says Miller. “That’s why things like the Beta are so crucial for us. It’s a lot of looking at how a team and the overall community plays on the map.”

To get it to a point where Treyarch feels a Multiplayer map is ready to be deployed, the team goes through a ton of playtesting in the studio, until it feels like they’ve created the best map possible for their players — in the sense that it feels fair, balanced, and the average player could learn the map and get better at it, and doesn’t feel like there’s any spot that’s exploitative in the sense of single power position where you can see the whole map.

“Another huge one is visibility,” adds Miller. “So much work goes into it because you have interiors, you have exteriors, you have lines of sight. If someone’s hiding in the back of a building, but there’s a doorway here and it’s looking down onto a lane, if you’re on the other side, can you see them? Does it make sense how you move through it? Then as you start to layer things like visuals, additional cover… you start seeing different sight lines. You’re smoothing something down and you look for those problem spaces – it’s like whittling wood and trying to get it as smooth as you possibly can. And if we’re playing a bunch and no one’s seeing a huge cut or a nick, to continue that analogy, then we feel like we’re in a pretty good spot.”

Call of Duty maps are well known for showcasing some truly great-looking maps (Hijacked and Carrier come to mind), but part of that “awesome” is also ensuring these maps have good visual landmarking as well. Not only should the map play well after a few turns, as a player you need to be able to figure out “Where the hell am I?” when you spawn in, so you know you’ll be able to call out where you’re at to your teammates so they can come help you.

“That’s why the Betas are so important to us,” says Miller. “Because there are things that we’re trying, but how’s the community reacting? There will be changes to maps post-Beta absolutely, there’s no question. The team’s already debating this stuff.”

“It’s a conversation between design and production,” adds Scronce. “If it’s up to design, they’re never done (making the map). I was talking to our level design director (during Call of Duty: Next) who was back at the offices watching the stream, and he was like, ‘Hey, we should address this…’ We’ve been known to make changes to maps that are already out in retail based off player feedback. If we have time and we feel like it will make the map better, we will try our hardest to make that change.”

One of the things that made Black Ops 6 Multiplayer stand out was introducing a new way for players to move through the maps with Omnimovement – a feature that allows you to sprint, slide, and dive in any direction with a full 360-degress range of motion. It was perhaps one of the biggest game changers to come to Multiplayer in years. New for Black Ops 7 will be wall jumps, which have given matches an even greater level of verticality and speed, in addition to a refined version of Omnimovement. When the crafting process starts, I wanted to know at which point do these new and distinct gameplay features play a role in how a map is built – is it from inception or later in the process?

“I think it can be both, but usually it’s from inception,” Scronce tell me. “Where a map like Blackheart, for example, which was in the Beta, that map has wall jumps that go over a grinder. So, for sure, new mechanics are considered. I think, when everything turns out the best is when everybody’s kind of aware and driving towards the same goal. But there are maps where you start playing them, and then you’re like, ‘Oh, it’d be really cool if I could do this…’ That might not be a wall jump opportunity, but perhaps a sneaky, clever opportunity. Maybe we’ll put a piece of plywood down to tell you that you can jump here, and the team will shape it a little bit more.”

“When we’re looking at stuff and talking about different maps, before they’re even starting paper design, it’s like, ‘What’s the intention of this map?’” adds Miller. “Do we want it to be a big map, but [have] the engagements be close? What are the goals? And some of it could be we want this to be a map where it’s about finding flank routes and moving constantly, versus a map where it’s about finding good cover, posting up, and kind of head-to-head battles.”

No player wants every map to play the same way, which circles back to how features like Omnimovement and wall jumps can feed into making each of these maps feel distinct, whether they are leaning into these new features or not. “You can kind of learn from that in the design. And then, of course, the community figures out other ways of being successful in maps… and we make changes,” Miller says.

Treyarch has confirmed they’ve already begun implementing key improvements and updates for launch (see Beta patch notes), thanks to some key takeaways from the recent Black Ops 7 Beta. One of those is having Open Matchmaking with minimal skill consideration as a default for Black Ops 7 Multiplayer (like the Open Moshpit approach tested during the Beta). They also confirmed they’re focused on keeping players together from match to match more often, and that persistent lobbies will be available at launch, with more details and confirmed changes to be shared in the coming weeks.

At the end of the day, Scronce tells me that making sure a map is competitive, fair, and fun are part of the ethos that the team drives to during their creations. “Whether you want to tune out and play Nuketown all day, or spend the night diving into Ranked, you should be walking away feeling that it was a fair fight, no matter which side you’re on.”

Now in the lead-up to the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Treyarch is taking all their collective experience over the years of crafting best-in-class Multiplayer experiences into the newest Call of Duty title. Knowing the team’s stellar track record, and what we’ve personally been able to play ourselves recently during the Beta, this year’s Multiplayer offering is shaping up to be one of the best. November 14 can’t get here soon enough.