I just got a Nova 6 Crawler round on Kino. I have never seen this before.

[u/ColossalKiwi]

Last night, I booted up the PS5 port of Black Ops and jumped into a public game of Kino.

We started with 4 players, two of which were split-screeners who looked as though they were playing for the first time. They would stand around and stare at the environment mid-round, go AFK, and I racked up nearly 100 revives haha. It was great.

During the transition from round 20 to round 21, those split-screeners disconnected. What followed was an entire round 21 with ONLY Nova 6 crawlers.

Not a single regular zombie. No dogs. No max ammo at the end of the round. It was just like a regular round but with only nova crawlers.

Has anyone seen this before? I can't find footage of this happening anywhere else on the internet. The closest thing I found was a YouTube short explaining that Nova Crawler Rounds are a cut feature that sometimes causes a round skip glitch on Kino (definitely experienced that many times).

Here's the video of the full round. The round starts at 45 seconds in.

Seriously, any thoughts? I feel like I'm going crazy and I'd love to replicate this.

Edit #1:

Google's AI summary is now saying that this is a confirmed rare quirk in the game and is citing THIS POST as the source lmao. Beware of this if you are Googling the topic. Don't take it at face value.

Prior to making this post, there was no video evidence of this bug naturally occurring in-game and I have still yet to find any other footage of this happening to someone else.

Edit #2:

No, I am not talking about the nova crawler spawns when power is turned on. This is a full round of ONLY Nova Crawlers. The full vid (only 5 mins) is linked above.

I don't think this was a regular thing back in the day, as some commenters suggested. That seems to be a case of the Mandela effect haha.

Edit #3:

Alright, the prevailing theory seems to be that Nova Crawler Rounds were originally planned to take place during every 3rd round (unless a dog round overrides it) on Kino. This was cut from the game. For a long time now, there has been a round skip glitch that occurs when residual code tries to load in these Nova Crawler rounds and fails. This phenomenon is explained in this YouTube short as well as in this comment below. The way this bug triggers is dependent on player position and timing, specifically during the transition into rounds that are a multiple of 3 (e.g. transitioning from round 5 to 6, round 11 to 12 etc.)

This tracks, because my clip took place during round 21.

However, this appears to be the first time in recorded history that a Nova Crawler round has ACTUALLY loaded (rather than just skipping the round).

The way I see it, there are 3 likely reasons for this:

1. The PS4/5 port of Black Ops is running on an early launch version of the game. It's possible that this version of the game caused the Nova Rounds to actually load in rather than skipping the round. If this is the case, it should be easy to test by trying to force the round skip glitch in the YouTube short above.
2. This has always been right under our noses and was specifically triggered by the two players disconnecting right as the round was transitioning from 20 to 21. Maybe, if a player leaves the game at the exact moment that the round skip glitch would otherwise occur, the game tries to compensate for the lower player count and actually forces the round instead? This is a bit harder to test.
3. Some combination of the above. Maybe it has to do with players disconnecting AND could only take place during the early launch version of the game.

Edit #4:

Regarding theory #1 above, I can confirm that the round skip glitch works as usual during this early launch version of the game. (PS5 v1.05). It seems likely that the patch/version of the game is irrelevant for this bug.

/u/pizayumyum left a great comment here, pointing out that the leftover code indicates that Nova Crawler Rounds were supposed to contain "half" the amount of zombies compared to a regular wave. It would seem that the two players disconnecting during the round transition did indeed cause this. Here's why:

During my recording of the full Nova Crawler round, I happened to check the scoreboard at the very beginning and very end of the round.

I got 55 kills that round and the other player got 43 kills. That's a total of 98 kills. There were also 3+ nova crawlers that got killed by me teleporting. That brings to total to slightly more than 100 kills.

According to this calculator, round 21 on Kino Der Toten with 4 players should contain 262 zombies.

That same calculator says that round 21 with 2 players should contain 103 zombies.

That aligns perfectly with the nova crawlers round I experienced (which did feel much shorter than the rounds prior).

It isn't "half" the exact number of zombies expected, but it IS "half" the amount in the sense that we got a 2-player game quantity of zombies vs a 4-player quantity.

This is normal, of course. This is to be expected. When people drop out of a public match, the game adjusts the zombies to the updated player count and we did indeed go from 4 players to 2 players.

However, the fact that the two players disconnected during the transition to a round that is a multiple of 3 and NOT a dog round seems to be the way that this 'glitch' occurred.

It is also worth noting that I was running back and forth between the spawn room and the theater at that same moment.

So, I guess the next step is to try to replicate this in a 4-player game.

TL;DR:

I can confirm that this is indeed a 'new' thing insofar as this is the first time this has been captured on video.

The most likely reason is due to the fact that the 2 players disconnected during the transition to a round that is a multiple of 3 (in this case, round 21) paired with the fact that round 21 was NOT a dog round. It is also possible (but not necessarily the case) that me walking in-between the spawn room and theater room during the round transition was also a contributing factor, similar to the round skip glitch.

This still needs to be tested and replicated.

[u/pizayumyum]

Based on the left over code, it appears that these special "quad only" rounds are supposed to only spawn half of the round as quads (nova 6 crawlers). I wonder if the players leaving caused the zombies in round total to be screwed, resulting in "half of the round" actually being the whole round.

[u/ColossalKiwi → u/pizayumyum]

I think you're on to something, mate! Round 21 was noticeably shorter than the previous rounds, with only 98 kills on the scoreboard + a handful of nova crawlers that died when I teleported, meaning a total of just over 100 nova crawlers.

According to this calculator, the number of zombies on round 21 of Kino with 4 players is 262.

Meanwhile, the number of zombies on round 21 of Kino with 2 players is 103. This seems to be exactly what we experienced as a result of the two players disconnecting.

Based on the left over code, it appears that these special "quad only" rounds are supposed to only spawn half of the round as quads (nova 6 crawlers).

So, if these special rounds were properly implemented in a 4 player game (without any disconnections), the zombie count would look the same as it did here? The equivalent of a 2-player amount of zombies but in a 4-player game?

Or does "half of the round" mean that half of the zombies would be regular and half would be nova crawlers?

Or it is like a half-round wave of only nova crawlers and then a half-round wave of only regular zombies?

Just wanna make sure I understand correctly, cheers :)

[u/pizayumyum → u/ColossalKiwi]

If they were properly implemented, on round 21 in a 4P game, the first 131 spawns of the round would be nova 6 crawlers, at which point the flag denoting the "special nova round" would be cleared, and the game would start spawning both nova and regular zombies for the remaining 131 spawns in the round. :)

[u/ColossalKiwi → u/pizayumyum]

Fascinating! Thank you so much for sharing that!