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Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Barebones playlist lets you play without specialists

Back to basics.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will get a Barebones playlist with no specialists, Treyarch has announced.

Confirmation comes from the first in a planned series of developer update videos from Treyarch.

Specialists are the name given to the various soldiers you can pick from when playing multiplayer. Each has its own unique equipment and ability, which run on a cooldown. Battery, for example, has a cluster grenade as her unique equipment, and a grenade launcher for her ability. Firebreak's equipment, meanwhile, is the Reactor Core, while his ability is a flamethrower.

In the video, the wonderfully-named Tony Flame, expert game designer at Treyarch, revealed the Barebones playlist is coming as part of the ongoing Operation Grand Heist, which is now live on all platforms after launching first on PlayStation 4 last week.

This playlist lets you play with no specialists and classic gameplay rules, Flame said.

Cover image for YouTube videoOfficial Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 - Operation Grand Heist Trailer

No specialists is an interesting addition to the game, but it's something players have called for for some time. There's a hankering for a stripped-down, old-school Call of Duty experience (specialists were added to the Black Ops series with the third game in 2015) fuelled by the feeling Black Ops 4 specialist equipment and abilities are particularly powerful and unbalanced. The Barebones playlist, then, will give players the option of playing Black Ops like it's 2012.

We don't know exactly what the classic gameplay rules are, but previous Barebones game modes reduced sprint speed, stripped out perks and banned some weapons.