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SID MEIER'S AMERICAN MCGEE'S PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS

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Playing a lot of this on Xbox One (X) and I am loving seeing a good player talk about their strategies, and the pros and cons to the patch changes. Please don't stop!

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Happy to oblige :P

 

The new event is good, dumb fun (called "Metal Rail"). 8 player squads on Erengal, with flare guns scattered around the map. Flares set off inside the circle air-drop a super care-package, and those set off outside the circle drop an armored UAZ. 

 

The long duration of firefights with 8 player squads is really fun - a single fight will stretch for like 5+ minutes, whereas with smaller squads typically everything is over in 1-2 minutes tops. Getting to play with tons of high-end kit thanks to the flare guns, and getting to use that kit for a really long time per fight thanks to the large squad size, is both fun and a great way to practice with rare weapons. 

Overall I really like the recent direction of the events - both War and this one are really fresh gameplay modes that feel nothing like the base game, while still helping you practice all the skills you need for base PUBG.

 

Unrelated, I am really looking forward to the weapon balance patch that was just teased - no details yet, but I'm happy they're doing it as it is long overdue. If they get the balance pass right + re-introduce some circle timing changes to address the boring mid-game and RNG-heavy late game I will be very happy!

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https://steamcommunity.com/games/578080/announcements/detail/1651009712392248570

 

BIIIIIIIIIIIG game update! Almost all weapons are being re-balanced, they are adding 3 new grips and 2 new scopes, adding a new weapon, adding a new vehicle, and once again, tweaking the Miramar map. There's also a bunch of changes to other elements of the game, so this one's gonna be a big difference. I think it will feel as big a jump going from early access to 1.0. I welcome basically all of these changes though. I just want those circle speed changes to come back and I'll be very happy with the state of the game.

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Agreed on all counts.

 

I am excited to see some more details on the balance changes, as the patch notes paint with a pretty broad brush ("increased AR recoil" etc). I am especially interested in how they've differentiated within weapon classes (e.g. how is the SCAR different from the M4 now), as they seem to imply in the patch notes. 

Devs are killing it recently. Great start to 2018 for PUBG Corp. 

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Oh man, just had a great round, including a 475m 1-shot K98 headshot - I literally said "oh baby" out loud to an empty room when I hit that.

However most of this was the M4, which (as much as I know it is OP and needs a nerf) I am going to miss. The spray pattern with all the attachments is really satisfying to control, and a small part of me is sad that I will spend most of my time playing with guns that don't feel as good to handle now (save crate drops). It's the right thing for the overall game, but damn that gun feels good pre-nerf. 

uXldbbF.png

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Also, regarding the weapon balance patch, overall I like it - I feel like SMGs and DMRs are the big winners. SMGs feel more viable now (especially if you have a SR or DMR in your other slot) thanks to ARs not being able to spray as well + taking longer to reload. DMRs are simply easier to kit out now that they also take AR attachments (really important for the SKS, SLR, and Mk14 especially given their small mag sizes), but otherwise don't seem to have changed much.

I also really like the crate changes - every crate gives full level 3 kit, a crate gun, and often an 8x or better + a medical item. Especially considering that you *can't* get level 3 helmets any other way now, crates have gotten a *huge* buff. It makes the mid game a bit less boring, since it makes more sense to take a run at nearby crates now. If they also re-add new circle timings to address the rest of the mid game lull the overall pacing will be vastly improved between these two changes. 

 

About the only thing I *don't* like are the new grips. It just feels like there are too many now, without any material difference between them. Yes, the spray patterns are different, but it isn't like any of them fundamentally change how you use a gun, and some of them seem just downright bad, at least at first glance (light grip I am looking at you).

 

I feel like grips need to be consolidated down to 3 or 4, with new attachments instead focusing on actually changing how you use the guns instead of this "distinction without a difference" business. It would be cool to see things like bipods, grenade launchers, bayonettes, etc over these minor number tweaks to existing attachments. 

 

Overall though, cool new patch that seems to have made the meta a lot less rigid and predictable. 

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I finally found a good guide to optimizing drop speed since the parachute patch a few months ago. Old news to some, but something I've been meaning to learn more about for some time as I am increasingly limited in my leaderboard dreams by not being first to the ground.
 

 

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I should probably give that a rewatch since I think I'm trying what it says in the video but it's not really working out too hot for me. Also the devs stated that the new map should be live within a month (by the end of June), so that's pretty exciting. I've played it already in the alpha test/experimental stage, and I really enjoy the faster rounds when I feel like a change of pace in PUBG.

 

https://steamcommunity.com/games/578080/announcements/detail/1651012430523385580

 

 

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I think the throwables changes are smart, at least on paper. Frags have always been far-and-away the best grenade, with smokes being a distant second and everything else being mostly irrelevant. The last patch increased frags "inventory size" (while decreasing the size of other throwables) which was a good start, but not enough to really tip the balance.

 

I am excited to see how the molotov buff works out in practice - I think it really depends on how good their "fire spreading" tech is. Stun grenade buffs are nice too, and more straight forward.

 

Overall, I am excited to see a more varied throwables meta coming.

More importantly though, if the 60 tick rate preliminary results hold true that will be the biggest improvement to this game in a long time. Anyone who's ever gone "what the fuck, why can I not pick up this gun" has felt the pain of the inconsistent tick rate in this game.

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I was getting my laptop repaired in a Mall in Bangkok and they were hosting a preliminary local event for the Thai finals of the South East Asia Championships.

 

The setup was 4 man teams, with the TVs on the peripheral being controlled by the announcers and the audience could see player outlines through walls and get all kinds of additional information that the players themselves had to do without (taken from my Discord channel):

 

I spent three hours watching the 4 team, FPS PUBG tournaments.
 
 
Some weird less than Semi-Pro behaviour, like everyone always shot at vehicles no matter how far away they were.
 
 
Nonetheless it was great to watch, especially when you know exactly where someone is in a house and you see 3 dudes charge in to murder them
 
 
Some really close shaves with one dude downing a person, throwing a grenade that killed that person and downed the person trying to revive them, and then they jumped out of a window and killed the third dude
 
 
Team I liked the most was the RA group, a bunch of kids who were really good at getting out of tough combat situations, they were really well co-ordinated but it seemed that they were not good in clutch situations - they were number 2 in the first match and barely scraped the top 5 in the second two matches I watched
 
 
Team I liked the least were the MTX team - almost all their tactics involved getting in a house and then shooting at anything that moved - frustratingly that got them to two top five finishes with some of the most boring plays
 
 
However, the clear heroes of the tournament (loved by the presenters as much as me as they kept switching back to check what they were doing) were the FOCUS team, led by KiSsMyAsZ
 
 
Honestly, it was like A Keystone cop, a person who had never played the game before, and someone that didn't know what a mouse and keyboard was, got in a team together and decided they would show up for the PUBG nationals
 
 
Everytime the controlled camera switched back to them they were doing sick jumps off of things, throwing Smoke bombs at themselves, or trolling another team, before escaping in a jeep and doing more sick stunts. I am not sure they got a single kill
 
 
Way more exciting than I was hoping, and I couldn't understand anything that was being said
The most exciting play had the logitech-sponsored players parking jeeps in a field with a single player trapped in a shed, while the Logitech players got in a shoot out with two other teams, lots of smoke grenades and tentative sniping led to a really intense threeway.

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They have the Thai Finals tomorrow - so I might go check them out, then a few days later they have the regional finals with players from Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and I think the Philiphines playing.

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PUBG esports and other "high-level" play does kinda boil down to securing a tactical position, usually in a small set of houses, and waiting out the circle. It can get pretty boring, but hopefully there are a dozen other teams doing something more interesting, even if it does mean all their actions are "sub-optimal". Moving into the playzone by running just ahead of the moving circle can work out if you know you have a good set of cover between you and the playzone, since it means you only ever have to worry about enemies from one direction. Most of the time, though, teams are eliminated during these "rotations", so teams often play very conservatively and will try to secure those central areas sooner than later, resulting in lulls in the action, until suddenly everything erupts in the final few minutes because the circle is half a kilometre across and there are dozens of players still alive in it.

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PUBG's big $2 million tournament started yesterday. PUBG's spectator mode has gotten steadily better over time in the past year. The Gamescom invitational last August(?) was rife with technical issues, but the PGI has been spectacular. Everything is seamless and there are things like grenade trajectories and bullets highlighted to make it very easy to follow how a fight goes down. Day 1 and 2 are TPP, which I think tends to be less exciting, but I'm enjoying it anyway. I'm cheering for Team Liquid, whose players I enjoy streaming and who I have been following as a team for almost a decade now. Anyone else following PGI?

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I watched a bunch of the PGI tournament - it was really good! Especially when compared to the gong show that was the first big tournament round about a year ago it was really well run.

 

Casting and production was solid, but most importantly the spectator mode & scoring are vastly improved. As eRonin says above, tracers etc add a lot of information for spectators and make it much easier to follow the flow of the match, but also the way they manage the camera has been improved quite a bit and they were almost always always right with the action. 

 

On top of that, the changes made to swimming many patches ago + how they reward kills with tournament score now resolved the "sit in the water" playstyle we saw last year really nicely.

 

Huge improvement overall. It was actually very watchable as an esport, though from a technical perspective there is still a long way for the game to go (desync etc).

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One of the devs just posted a thread called "It's time to FIX PUBG" on reddit, and it basically sounds like they're spending the next 3 months purely bug-fixing and optimizing. They even have a pretty detailed site, which includes snippets like this:

 

Quote

The average FPS [is] 60 FPS on minimum system requirements [but] that FPS would intermittently drop under 60 about every 10 seconds on average, which significantly harms your experience. 

 

Until now, we have been concentrating on increasing the average FPS rate, which we have been able to achieve. From this point onward, we will be working on fixing sudden frame drops, otherwise known as hitching.


Pretty cool to see them just own some of their problems like that. I wonder if they will deliver?

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nice work cakedotavi :D

 

I played some solos for the first time in forever yesterday; after a few rough starts, managed to get 2nd with 5 kills. The last guy ended up being one hit away from dying; we basically shot each other at the same time but his level 3 gear was just superior to me with my level 1 helmet/level 2 vest. 

 

In non PUBG news, both BFV and CoD Black Ops 4 have finally shed some more light on their respective battle royale modes. BFV's Firestorm will feature their "largest ever" map, for 16 teams of 4 players (no solos/duos it seems). Blops 4's Blackout will apparently have 80 players, and have released their map, which you can find here: https://charlieintel.com/2018/09/05/this-is-the-blackout-map/

 

Unfortunately it seems Firestorm will not be available in the current BFV beta, which I feel is a mistake since that's probably the mode that needs most testing. I think BF players knows how conquest plays out by this point. Not sure if Blops beta will have their Blackout mode available.

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On 2018-09-05 at 10:52 PM, eRonin said:

Unfortunately it seems Firestorm will not be available in the current BFV beta, which I feel is a mistake since that's probably the mode that needs most testing. I think BF players knows how conquest plays out by this point. Not sure if Blops beta will have their Blackout mode available.


Hah, while I totally agree with you I also feel "betas" are just limited time demos & back-end server stress tests these days, as opposed to actually really testing the game in any meaningful way. 

 

I am also really excited for the practice range - I've not played since I posted that 5 game streak, but should have some time tonight and this weekend to give it a go. Even though I've got a lot of hours played at this point (800 or something) it is still damn near impossible to really test out how different attachments interact to change weapon recoil patterns mid-match. The practice range should finally make this possible :)

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