Black Ops Cold War’s Unique Score Streak System

Since Call of Duty 4, the score streak system has been pretty much the same in every Call of Duty game. It has always been you get rewarded for the amount of kills or points you get in one life, which can earn you a streak, and once you die your progress gets reset. Some games only kills counted, whereas others counted score, giving everything from assists to defuses points towards your streaks. But regardless, every kill always counted the same amount towards your streaks and your progress reset upon death. COD: Black Ops Cold War took all of this and flipped it on its head.

Now, instead of having your progress towards streaks reset upon death, you keep your progress until you earn the streak. While this may sound like it becomes easier to get streaks and that you will get much more of them, this is not the case at all.

Kills count 50 points towards score streaks. This is not uncommon across many of the COD games. The difference in Cold War is that the streaks cost a lot more. For example, in Modern Warfare, a UAV takes a four kill streak to earn. In Cold War, it cost 1000 points, which is the equivalent of killing 20 people.

That doesn’t mean that it will always require you to get 20 kills though. The game rewards you for streaks with bonuses, and the longer the streak goes on, the more bonus you get per kill. The bonuses work the same for all game modes except team death match and gunfight, which gives you more bonus faster, and free for all, which gives you 100 points per kill rather than 50 as a base.

Streak Bonus in TDM and Gunfight

Kill Number	Point Bonus (Along with 50 for kill)
1	0
2	150
3	250
8	300
5	500
6	300
7	350
8	400
9	450
10	2000
11-14	500
15	2000
16-19	500
20	2000
21-24	500
25	2500
26-29	500
30	3000
30+	500

Streak Bonus in Objective Based Game Modes

Kill Number	Point Bonus (Along with 50 for kill)
1	0
2	25
3	50
8	50
5	500
6	300
7	350
8	400
9	450
10	2000
11-14	500
15	2000
16-19	500
20	2000
21-24	500
25	2500
26-29	500
30	3000
30+	500

As you can see, you get rewarded for going on long streaks. The longer the streak, the more points you get. So if you take this into consideration, it would take a five kill streak to earn a UAV in team death match, or a six kill streak to earn one in any objective game mode if you were to do it just in one life. You could also earn one by getting four consecutive two kill streaks in team death match, or eight consecutive two kill streaks in objective game modes, totaling 8 or sixteen kills respectively.

But what does this mean for how often you can get score streaks? Well, actually multiple things.

In order to make sure that someone on a high kill streak cannot just keep spamming low score streaks like UAV’s or armor, Activision put a cool down for all kill streaks. Essentially, after you earn one, you have to wait a certain amount of time until you can start earning it again. This means that over the course of a match, you will be able to get significantly less streaks than you would in previous games like Modern Warfare, where you could get all three of your streaks on each life.

However, this also means that not only will you be able to receive more expensive kill streaks regularly, but you will also have to deal with enemy score streaks more often too. Because it no longer requires you to go on a single long kill streak, which can often be stopped even by something as unlucky as a random grenade or being double teamed or shot in the back, players can slowly work their way towards one the whole match. For example, rather than going on one ten kill streak to get a chopper gunner, you can instead go on four separate six kill streaks, or five separate five kill streaks on team death match to earn one, which is very likely to happen over the course of the match.

The new score streak system does make it more difficult for players to earn high score streaks on one life though. For example, the chopper gunner in Modern Warfare takes ten kills to earn. In Black Ops Cold War, it takes a streak of 15 if you were to do it on one life. While the chopper gunner is still easier to get in Cold War than in Modern Warfare, this is one of the negatives of the new system.

Overall, the new score streak system where your progress does not reset upon your death, but it is harder to earn your streaks, punishes good players who often go on really high streaks, and helps players who tend to go on shorter streaks. This is due to it both setting a ceiling on the amount of streaks that a player getting lots of kills can earn, and it makes it easier for worse players to earn their higher kill streaks. This is one new feature introduced in Cold War that hopefully will not stay for future Call of Duty games.