Black Ops 4's First Patch Increases Blackout Player Count

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 hasn't even been out a week yet and already Treyarch has released the game's first patch boasting tweaks across all modes, including a boost to the duos player count in Blackout. If you and your partner are in the market for more targets peppered across the battle royale map, hopefully an extra dozen opponents will do the trick.

The speed with which Treyarch is making adjustments to Black Ops 4 shouldn't come as too big of a surprise, as the developer was able to roll out similar patches in the Blackout beta every couple of days. That's an impressive feat and, particularly for a genre that is highly competitive right now, a huge advantage. One of the major advantages Fortnite has on other battle royale games is that Epic is constantly updating the game, which means players feel listened to, annoying bugs are squashed before they chase away players and fresh content gives everyone a reason to keep checking back in.

As noted above and highlighted in the Black Ops 4 reddit, one of the big highlight's of the Oct. 16 update is a shift in player count for Blackout. Duos has been boosted to 100 players, which makes me wonder if the standard 88 meant that action was not unfolding at a desired pace for that particular version of the mode. If they want to make sure things stay decently busy, another six teams of players should help kick things up a notch. While no changes were made to the solo mode, the Quads mode is now set at 88 players, or 22 teams of four. This item includes a message that Treyarch that they're continuing to tweak things across all modes so, if you're not happy with the new player counts, there's always the chance things will change again.

This is a great way to approach development for a battle royale mode and, again, has helped catapult Fortnite to the top of the pile. I wouldn't be surprised to see Blackout continue to mirror the current genre champion moving forward. In other words, once they've got the basics nailed down and are happy with the mode and map, I fully anticipate a regular stream of new modes, special events and maybe even unexpected alterations to the map.

Other noteworthy alterations include the ability to create a party of six before heading into a round of team deathmatch and the featured playlist has been swapped to Heist for the time being. The post lists a bunch of additional tweaks, most of which are focused on addressing various glitches and crash issues. There's even a separate list of additional fixes specifically for the PC version of Black Ops 4.

Be sure to give Blackout's new player count a go and let us know what you think in the comments below. Better yet, reach out to Treyarch with your two cents, as they seem pretty keen on listening to the community and responding with a quickness.