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

[Badfinger]

I bought INSERTNAMEHERE'S BATTLEGROUNDS yesterday and I'm not sure why I waited 3 weeks. It's, at present, a straightforward take on the games of Battle Royale. You and 99 of your closest friends are air dropped out of the back of a cargo plane onto an island covered in guns, gear, and vehicles, and your task is to be the last person standing. As the game progresses, players are herded into an increasingly shrinking safe area of the map. It's currently more popular than any game on Steam that Valve hasn't set up as a gambling skinner box. I played for 2 hours yesterday, and outside of the jank that seems omnipresent in games like this, it was really good and fun. Has anyone else tried it out? Can we squad up?

 

https://www.playbattlegrounds.com/main.pu

[YoThatLimp]

Alright, you've twisted my arm. This seems like my kind of non-sense!

[Gormongous]

I'm tempted. How's the shooting model? Is there a game that the moment-to-moment gameplay resembles?

[Jutranjo]

If the game is actually good, why does it have such a shit name?

 

edit: It reads like the ultimate Twitch On Brand Streamer name survival garbage pile.

[Badfinger]

  On 4/13/2017 at 6:49 PM, Gormongous said:

I'm tempted. How's the shooting model? Is there a game that the moment-to-moment gameplay resembles?

 

It's apparently supposed to be attempting to find a sweet spot between ARMA 3 and stuff like H1Z1. It has the DayZ style 3rd person/1st person/Aim Down Sights camera setup. I find it to be a more workable version of that ARMA stuff. No middle mouse wheel to swap between actions. You have a "use" action, number keys to select weapons, thrown weapons, and healing items.

 

  On 4/13/2017 at 7:45 PM, Jutranjo said:

If the game is actually good, why does it have such a shit name?

 

I dunno dude? People like games named Destiny and Dota. The game's just called Battlegrounds. It could be way worse.

[Twig]

It's actually called "PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS".

 

That's a whole other beast from "Destiny" or "Dota 2".

[Gormongous]

  On 4/13/2017 at 8:00 PM, Twig said:

It's actually called "PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS".

 

That's a whole other beast from "Destiny" or "Dota 2".

 

Hah! It's hard to name things, for sure, but when you have to have a section on your website that's basically "Who the fuck is the guy we named our game after?" your branding attempt might be on shaky ground...

[Twig]

It does add a unique flair to the otherwise completely inconspicuous BATTLEGROUNDS, I suppose.

[sucks2Bme]

Wasn't PlayerUnknown the guy who did the mod for ARMA that became Day Z? Or something? 

 

maybe I should look at the website...

[Twig]

No that's Dean "Rocket" Hall. I believe PLAYERUNKNOWN may have modded DayZ a bit. He worked on H1Z1's hunger games mode, I think.

[Badfinger]

  On 4/13/2017 at 9:46 PM, sucks2Bme said:

Wasn't PlayerUnknown the guy who did the mod for ARMA that became Day Z? Or something? 

 

maybe I should look at the website...

 

He's the guy that made the Battle Royale mod for DayZ Mod.

 

[Reyturner]

This game is good and I was to squad up!

[Badfinger]

Still really liking this. I'm not consumed by it, but I'm definitely thinking about playing it when I'm not playing. Got a 4th place tonight and ugh it could have been. I had my back almost to the death zone and I still got shot from behind. I guess that's where I should have been looking, since no ones gonna run across the open area to come at me.

[Badfinger]

Woo patch notes! Haven't played yet but news from the ground is it's improved both the visuals and how well stuff runs. Also if you wear a frying pan bullets can deflect off of it which owns.

 

https://steamcommunity.com/games/578080/announcements/detail/646673219748632258

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Players, 

This week we roll out our first monthly patch. This patch will the first of many to address performance, fix bugs and add new content to the game. I must stress that we will not be able to fix all performance issues with a single patch. For this patch, we focused on stabilizing performance for all users, trying to ensure there would be less FPS drops, and improve performance for those with lower spec systems. Optimizing the game will take us time, and will continue all through early access, so please have patience while we work to improve the game experience for all players.

We are opening a Test Server to better manage our updates and ensure stability before we push updates to the Live Servers. We will push each new update to this server on the Wednesday of the week, to allow a full days testing before updating the live servers. We will have the exact time you should expect this server to be online tomorrow, so stay tuned to our Twitter!

We are aware that some of you are experiencing what appear to be memory leaks, and we will work on fixing this going forward, but over the last month, we have been concentrating on improving the performance for min spec systems, and stabilizing FPS for everyone no matter what their PC specs. We are still a relativity small team, so we must focus on one problem at a time right now. We are working to expand the team, but finding the right people with suitable experience and capabilities takes time, so please bear with us.

Next I need to address a slight price change for the game in New Zealand. We’ve been seeing some abnormal patterns in our New Zealand sales. It turns out that due to the comparatively low price in New Zealand (roughly US$25) and the fact that gifting from New Zealand to other countries is not restricted the same as it is for other countries like China, Russia and Brazil, people seem to be exploiting the system. We have slightly raised the price to US$28 to combat this.

I also want to address server lag once again. The lag you experience on the servers is not due to the hardware or size of the server, nor does it have to do with the number of players online. It is due to a networking issue with the core engine code, and it is something we are working hard to resolve, but it is not a simple issue to fix, so it will take us some time. Please bear with us and we will get it fixed as soon as we can.

Finally, before we get to the patch-notes for this month’s update, I want to once again thank everyone for their support over the past month. We broke 100,000 concurrent users on Monday which is a huge milestone for any game and we wouldn’t have done this without the tremendous support of every player, so from all team here, a sincere thank you.

This patch will be deployed for both clients and servers Thursday, April 20, 5PM KST/1AM PDT/8AM UTC and is expected to take approx. 1 hour to complete.

Early Access - Month 1 - Patch Notes 

Known issues 

• The motorbike leans slightly to the right when being driven straight.
• The tires of the motorbike cannot be shot out at the moment
• [Non-English Players] There are some mistranslated in-game texts and they will be shown in English 

 
Client Performance Improvements 

• Made some improvements to address the issue of FPS drops when opening the inventory UI
• Reduced the load on the CPU through instance rendering so that the GPUs can function to their full capabilities
• Made improvements to address the issue of FPS severely dropping when in the vicinity of Yasnaya, Polyana & Georgopol 
• Rendering performance on PCs with minimum system requirements has been improved
• Graphic performance and quality on PCs with minimum system requirements has been improved 

 
Server Performance Improvements 

• Performance improvements have been made with relation to the items spawned in the world 

 
Content Updates  

• Added Vector SMG. A very powerful SMG most appropriate for short to mid-range combat that is spawned in the world
• Added Motorbike w/ sidecar. A sidecar-less version will be added in a future update
• Added a 2X Aimpoint scope 
• Added a Ballistic Mask
• Added 3 new color variations for the Dacia
• Added the crossbow back into the game 

 
World  

• Adjusted the density of environmental elements to be identical across all graphic options
• Adjusted object placement to address issues of characters getting stuck
• Adjusted placement of trees that were spawning inside houses or above the terrain
• Adjusted the frequency of thunder sound effects 

 
UI  

• Revised certain system messages and item descriptions. 
• Added descriptions for attachments
• The dead team-mate icon will now disappear after a certain time and distance when in team modes
• Map markers are now visible to all teammates
• Names of teammates now appear on the world map 

 
Gameplay  

• You are now able to move sideways and backwards in the REVIVE state 
• The REVIVE timer will no longer decrease when a team mate is attempting to revive you
• When attempting to revive a team mate, the reviving timer icon will now also be visible to the player being revived
• Adjusted the character position slightly when in the REVIVE state
• Made improvements to address the issue of characters shaking while being spectated
• You are now able to open the world map when spectating
• You can now view the casting bar when the teammate you are spectating uses heal and/or boost items 
• You can no longer use heal and/or boost items when in water

 
Action/Gunplay  

• Adjusted the overall balance on all attachments
• Adjusted the overall balance on Assault Rifles
• We will continue to balance all weapons and attachments throughout Early Access 
• Fixed the issue that caused cars to temporarily stop when their tires get shot out
• You can now sprint when in the crouch stance
• Fixed the issue of “Armed/Unarmed” state not being applied when there are delays in the server network
• The blood hit effect size now varies according to the weapon caliber
• You can now move when in aiming and/or scoping in the prone state
• Fixed an issue with the sitting position of the character in the back-right seat of the UAZ 
• Fixed an issue with the position of the left hand when reloading the AWM
• Fixed an issue where aiming from vehicles was not accurate
• The positions of bullet hits are now the same for both yourself and the others
• Fixed an issue that caused the hit box for the head to be slightly larger than the actual head
• Adjusted the ragdoll physics for dead characters to be more natural
• Fixed an issue that caused the character to use the wrong aim offset when using the freelook function while holding a grenade
• Fixed an issue that caused the landing-from-a-high-altitude motion to seem awkward when holding a pistol
• Improved the quality of zoomed-in scope views
• Bolt actions are now triggered even after the final shot has been fired, so that you can starti re-firing as soon as reload is complete
• Added swimming animations to go upwards and downwards
• Fixed an issue that caused the reticle to appear even when in situations where you are not able to shoot
• Your character now uses a different animation when in crouch stance while holding a melee weapon
• Made improvements to the reload animations for the M249
• Made improvements to the reload animations for the P1911
• The muzzle flash is now brighter than before and is now visible from a longer distance 

 
Sound  

• There are now sound effect differences for supersonic and non-supersonic bullet speeds
• Made adjustments so that the sound of the bullet flying through air doesn’t play when shots are fired from a short distance from your character
• You can now figure out what floor the opponents are at just by listening to their footsteps
• Adjusted the firing sound of the SKS in mid to long range combat
• Adjusted the volume of the footsteps

 
Miscellaneous  

• We have opened a test server to better manage our content and secure stability for our live environment updates
• Additional in-game texts have been localized 

 
Bug fixes  

• Fixed a bug that caused some buildings to not be visible at long distance
• Fixed a bug that caused a knocked out player to be ejected in front of a vehicle. If knocked out in a vehicle, you will now be ejected to the side
• Fixed a bug that caused weapons to clip through walls
• Fixed a bug that caused the icons for certain “pants” items to not appear correctly
• Fixed a bug that caused the PLAYERUNKNOWN shoes to not render properly
• Fixed a bug that caused the hit effects to play at random
• Fixed a bug that caused bald characters to have hair
• Fixed a bug that caused disconnects after 5 minutes into a match

See you in-game,
PLAYERUNKNOWN 

 

[Dewar]

I've watched a bunch of this on Twitch and it looks aces. I'm on a bit of a budget right now though, so I'm holding off for the moment.

[cakedotavi]

I am also playing quite a bit of this, and enjoying it. In many ways it's the best Battle Royale game I've played, but there are some pretty serious pacing issues too.

I really like the restricting play area mechanic; it does a great job of focusing the action. Some of the timings for this need a tweak (mid-game play zones are way too big - I'm literally alt-tabbed mid-match typing this it's so slow), but overall it does its job of moving players around the map.

However, late game has the opposite problem. You're in a tiny area with constant fighting, and the zone is more of a danger than the other players. It introduces this really unpleasant RNG aspect to the late game, where if the zone centers on you, you win. If not, you are almost for sure dead because of how it will force you to re position in the middle of a firefight. 

If they can fix the mid and late game zone restriction mechanic, this will be a hell of a game. As it is today, it's still good fun - just a bit too much RNG for me late game.

[YoThatLimp]

So I picked this up and put and hour or so in this morning and actually took home 1st place, woo!

 

I'd like to check out the squad stuff, it seems neat. I miss the DayZ stuff we used to do here at Idle Thumbs!

[Salacious Snake]

This shit is fun.

 

Are you people rocking the test client, or using the "stable" version? Just curious if it's worth livin' on the edge.

[Badfinger]

  On 4/26/2017 at 12:25 PM, Salacious Snake said:

This shit is fun.

 

Are you people rocking the test client, or using the "stable" version? Just curious if it's worth livin' on the edge.

The test client is the Public Test Realm equivalent. I believe it's only live for rolling out update patches (so it's live today for rollout tomorrow). It's not experimental branch type stuff like Starbound.

 

https://clips.twitch.tv/BlindingFastBaguettePeoplesChamp

 

We tried being way more aggressive yesterday. I was silly and didn't clip the version of this that worked, only the one that was the most bloody. Even with mistakes it almost did work.

[cakedotavi]

I think aggressive early is just the optimal playstyle honestly. There is near zero penalty for dieing in the first few minutes, and if you successfully lord-of-the-flys your way out for a big target like the school you're basically kitted out by ~10 minutes.

Leads to a *really* boring mid-game if you play for optimal win chances though, as if you're that kitted that early the "smart" thing to do is just get to the circle and camp. 

[cakedotavi]

Cool! Finally won a solo game. 

Got pretty lucky with the circle at the end, and had a few close-calls where I almost got shot out of my car twice (down to ~20% HP while driving both times), but managed to hold on.

I really do think the RNG for circle luck in very late game (last ~10 people) is ridiculous. Everyone camps behind hard cover that late, so who wins is mostly determined by who gets flushed out by the circle moving vs not. If you're forced to move from cover, you are almost certain to get shot in the open. If you get to sit behind a tree and pick people off who get forced out, you will almost surely win. 

Hopefully they find a way to reduce the RNG late game, but otherwise this game is super fun still.

[Lechimp]

So really stupid question but I'm assuming that if you die then you're out for the game right? So I'm assuming that if you're one of the 99 people to die in the game then you just leave and find another game to join? 

[Badfinger]

  On 4/30/2017 at 7:57 PM, MechaTofuPirate said:

So really stupid question but I'm assuming that if you die then you're out for the game right? So I'm assuming that if you're one of the 99 people to die in the game then you just leave and find another game to join? 

 

Yes and yes. One spawn is one round.

[YoThatLimp]

Anyone want to squad up tonight? 

[Nappi]

This is one of those games that I think I couldn't actually play (at least alone) because I would find it too stressful, but love watching other people play it. The Giant Bomb Battlegrounds streams, for example, have been really fun so far. The setting creates really interesting tense moments ("The doors in that building are already open." or "Oh shit, did you hear that car?"), and fortunately the game doesn't dwell on the gross Battle Royale setting.