Sledgehammer details what’s in Call of Duty: Vanguard’s beta, including what’s been changed since the alpha

Sledgehammer Games has revealed what players can expect from Call of Duty: Vanguard’s open beta, which begins in early access next weekend.

There will be five playable maps in the beta: Champion Hill, Hotel Royal, Gavutu, Red Star, and Eagle’s Nest on the second weekend. Players will be able to grind and level weapons up to level 30 and PlayStation players get two extra custom loadout slots.

The beta will also have a new mode called Patrol. It’s “based on Hardpoint” and it “features a scoring zone in near-constant motion; if Operators want to rack up points for their team, they should keep up and move around the map within this Patrol point.”

Classic modes are available, too. Team Deathmatch, Domination, Kill Confirmed, and Search and Destroy will also be playable. Champion Hill is there as well, along with Patrol, so there are six total modes to be played across the beta’s two weekends.

The developer also revealed changes that have been made to the game since last week’s Champion Hill alpha test. The full list of changes can be found below.

You can read Sledgehammer’s blog post to learn more about what to expect from the beta. The beta begins on PlayStation on Sept. 10 and joins on Xbox and PC the following weekend.

Visual updates

“Over the course of Alpha, we received a considerable amount of feedback regarding visibility,” Sledgehammer said. “We’ve made several graphical improvements that you should notice in Beta, and we’ve responded to player feedback regarding low visibility when taking damage, and visibility issues with character/map lighting.”

• Damage Overlay:
  • Refined the damage overlay when injured to help maintain visibility.
• Lighting:
  • Reduced the density of sun fog.
  • Increased the rim light around players to help separate them from the background.
  • Adjusted overall exposure—aka we turned up the lights.

Audio tuning

The audio team has made improvements to weapon sounds that will be ready in time for Beta including:

• Non-player footstep volume slightly increased.
• Non-player weapon volume slightly reduced.
  • Note: Non-player is anyone that isn’t you (enemies and teammates).
• Announcer volume and callout frequency reduced.
• Global MP mixing pass to improve informative audio for gameplay

Champion Hill spawn tuning

“Throughout the Champion Hill Alpha, we observed spawn issues that resulted in players spawning very close to other players,” Sledgehammer said. “To address this, the design team has adjusted the spawns on Champion Hill.”

• “We’ve tuned spawn locations and adjusted overall spawn logic. Hopefully, this should eliminate any more Angela & Dwight spawn scares.
• We’ve done away with that one spawn in Courtyard that forced you to have 3 seconds of awkward eye contact with your opponent. You know the one.”

Fixes in the pipeline

“We received reports of nameplate visibility issues and aim assist tracking through destructible walls,” Sledgehammer said. “While these fixes probably won’t be ready before Beta, we assure you they will be addressed before launch. Here’s which issues we’ve identified for fixes and a little information about why these bugs are happening:

• We identified a destructible wall in Champion Hill with a mismatched collision model. Even though it appeared as a solid wall, there was a hole allowing the raycast to pass through and show nameplates.
• Note: Nameplate visibility works by doing a raycast from you to other players. If there’s something blocking it, the nameplate shouldn’t be visible. Please keep this in mind while playing and make a report if something seems off.
• We are aware there are more nametag and aim assist-related issues and have an ongoing investigation on how to resolve them. Gameplay clips have been a great resource for our teams to find and squash these problems, so keep them coming.”