Bluehole published three big updates on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on Monday morning, offering new details on the game’s next map, timelines for PUBG’s dynamic vaulting system and surprising statistics from the war on cheaters. And it sounds like the end of 2017 will be even more exciting for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds fans than the last severak months have been.
PC Gamer received an early look at the desert map coming to PUBG later this year. PUBG Corporation is going for a very different vibe with the game’s second map, an arid patch of land somewhere in Mexico. We’re pretty excited to hear that lucha libre is well represented in the new space and join PC Gamer in hoping to see lucha masks added to the loot table. It’s also nice to know the signs of civilization in the desert will be aesthetically different from the structures PUBG players have explored since March. We’ll even get to explore “three ancient meteor impact craters” that each host a small town and, based on screenshots from the story, at least one more downed airplane. PC Gamer says there will also be a new military base for everyone to crowd at every opportunity; however, it wasn’t ready to be shown to the public yet.
Over on Steam, the PUBG Development and Community team offered an update on what to expect from Bluehole during the final 11 weeks of 2017. The studio believes it’s still on track to deliver the launch build of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds before the end of the year. But even more exciting is the possibility that PUBG fans will get to experiment with the game’s dynamic vaulting and climbing mechanics before the end of the month. The team expects to break the remaining 11 weeks down into three phases: one to test vaulting, a second for testing other upcoming features and the final phase, in which Bluehole delivers all launch content… including the new desert map.
“The content and features that will be in test servers need to be tested for at least two to four weeks. It will be very difficult for us to provide a stable service if we rush updates to live servers after short bursts of testing.” the team wrote. “You will be able to try out vaulting & climbing first in late October or early November. We will give you an update on test schedules later.”
The post also included patch notes for a small update coming later this week:
Gameplay
Decreased the Starting Island item spawn levels in order to adjust the item balance on the Northeast side of Erangel
Bug Fixes
Eliminated the fire animation and effect that occured in the Starting Airplane when a player was on fire from a molotov cocktail
Fixed a bug that enabled a character to hold a main weapon and frying pan simultaneously
Fixed a spectator mode bug of flickering weapon UI icons
Last, but certainly not least, we got an update on Bluehole’s efforts to keep cheaters out of the player pool. The publisher has been working with BattlEye, makers of widely trusted anti-cheat software, to identify and ban players who rely on aimbots, exploits and other forms of cheating. According to BE, Bluehole has banned more than 322,000 PUBG players. That’s more than double the number offered by Greene last month. China accounts for the largest share of the bans, lining up with the nation’s majority-status among active players, but it’s far from the only country where cheaters live. What’s shocking is that BattlEye claims to be banning anywhere from 6,000 to 13,000 players per day. And more than 20K were banned in a 24-hour span just last week.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is currently available in Early Access. The launch build is expected before the end of 2017 and an Xbox One port is slated for early 2018.
Be sure to check back with Player.One and follow Scott on Twitter for additional PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds news in 2017 and however long Bluehole supports PUBG in the years ahead.
