Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 players think Treyarch is trying to gaslight them into believing that a hit registration error is really just 'erroneous visual blood effects'

One of the biggest problems that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 players have faced recently has been hit registration errors. There have been numerous reports of bullets disappearing as players take clean shots at enemies who just don't go down. But Treyarch believes it could be a user error.

"We've identified an issue that could result in erroneous visual blood effects when damage was not actually dealt while shooting at enemies in all modes," a Call of Duty update post reads. This means players aren't actually hitting their targets, and the problem is that they get blood splatter as if they are. But this isn't a good enough explanation for some players.

There's even now a community note on the original update post: "There's a hit registration issue in Warzone on the client side. It's displayed that shots hit enemies, showing the visual effect of blood, but servers don't register them as valid hits therefore, the error lies in the unregistered hit, and not on the visual blood effect."

So, right now, there are two sides. Players say that the problem lies with Treyarch's servers not keeping up with authorised hits, and Treyarch which seems to think that players reporting problems can't actually aim straight and aren't hitting anyone.

If there were only a couple of players reporting this issue, you could attribute it to client-side problems like network. I've encountered it before with my trash internet when I unload a mag into someone's chest, getting hit markers and all, only for them to walk off like nothing happened and for me to be lying on the floor like Swiss cheese. But I doubt all complaints about faulty hit registration can be waved off as being due to poor internet connection.

One player who regularly tests Warzone and Call of Duty games for bugs seems to think they may have an idea of what is causing these issues: "Hitboxes for the client-sided blood effects seem to not line up with the actual hitboxes, meaning that sometimes actual (near) misses will still show the client sided blood effects. There will be a few cases where shooting clothes and gear on the operators outside of the hitbox still gives blood splatter. Alternatively, the actual hitboxes are too small." But they also admit that hit registration or the netcode could just be broken.

Most players seem certain that this problem is Treyarch's doing, and the original blood splatter tweet was just done to cover tracks, not actually inform players. "The Call of Duty updates tweet honestly is genuinely awful," a Call of Duty Twitch streamer, TacticalBrit, says. "Because they know it's not the case. They know it has nothing to do with visual blood splatter. Anyone with a week's worth of game dev experience knows it, too. Which means they're actively being dishonest about it, and deliberately so.

"At best, they're simply implying visual blood splatter shouldn't be tied to your client. Which still doesn't change the fact that your shots are on target and your bullets should be registering. At worst, they're effectively saying that they don't want us to see how bad their server/netcode infrastructure is."

TacticalBrit goes on to say that this isn't even the first time players have encountered a problem like this in a Call of Duty game: "During [Modern Warfare 2], I made a video that demonstrated every server lag, stutter, and hit reg error was from Infinity Ward insisting on us having AI in-game on Warzone. It took them months to walk that back. Only because other people got vocal, too."

The wider response can be pretty much summed up with ModernWarzone's reply to Treyarch's blood splatter explanation: "Oh, so we gaslighting now." But I will say that just because Treyarch's response may potentially be misinformed doesn't mean that the developers are intentionally misleading players. Hopefully, we'll get a better, more candid explanation in the next few days or at least proof that this isn't a problem with hit registration or servers.