Details of PUBG's third major patch were revealed today, and include a range of changes to the way looting works, the introduction of two new weapons, rebalancing of weapon drops overall, as well as a handful of bug fixes and improvements to server and client optimization. The patch will arrive Thursday "if everything is stable" after a run through PUBG's test servers on Wednesday this week.
Here are the biggest changes that stick out to me:
You can now pick up items while moving. The interaction animation will not force you to stop anymore, but make you walk slowly.
A huge quality-of-life change that could also accelerate the pace of the game overall.
Adjusted vehicles to face random directions at spawn.
Currently all untouched vehicles face east by default, making it easy to distinguish between a vehicle someone's left by the roadside and a pristine car. Randomizing the orientation of vehicles will add more uncertainty when you see a parked bike or buggy.
You can now pull out pistols faster; Red Dot Sight is now attachable to pistols, except for the revolver.
Pistols get a little more utility here with the addition of optics and increased draw speed. I think we'll see some sick, Solid Snake-grade silenced pistol kills in the coming months.
Added destructible cabins.
Here's Johnny! I don't think this hints at a larger trend toward destructibility in PUBG, but Bluehole selectively making a few structures breakable. My guess is that cars or grenades will break these shacks, but it's unclear what impact small arms fire will have.
See the full patch notes below:
Server performance
- Improved network performance by reducing the amount of data being sent from the server to the client.
- Reduced network lag by preventing a large amount of data being sent from the server to the client simultaneously.
Client performance
- Fixed an issue of frame drop when other characters were around by optimizing nearby characters.
- Fixed an issue of frame drop when vehicles were around by optimizing vehicles.
- Optimized the starting airplane and Care Package airplanes.
- Improved rendering performance of weapons from far-off.
- Made improvements to the weapon animations.
- Optimized many in-game effects, including the red zone bombing effect.
- Improved many UI features.
- Improved features regarding rainy weather.
New items
- Added Groza. Groza is an AR chambered for 7.62mm ammo, and can only be acquired in Care Packages.
- Added P18C. P18C is a pistol chambered for 9mm ammo with a full auto fire-mode.
Gameplay
- Vector and UMP now support burst mode.
- You can now pick up items while moving. The interaction animation will not force you to stop anymore, but make you walk slowly.
- You may interact with doors, items, or vehicles while reloading. Reloads will be canceled with such interactions.
- The screen will be gradually desaturated based on remaining health during the REVIVE state.
- Blood effect does not appear during the REVIVE state anymore.
- Adjusted kill count system in Duo and Squad modes. A person knocking an opponent out will receive a kill count regardless of the actual killer.
- Adjusted F key (interaction) to prioritize the REVIVE action in certain cases
- You can now pull out pistols faster.
- Fire mode can no longer be switched during reload.
- Adjusted the play area to spawn more evenly within a circle, so that the play area does not appear in the center so frequently.
- Adjusted default quantity to be selected at 1 when pressing CTRL key at inventory to partially drop or pick up items.
- Adjusted motorcycle and motorcycle with sidecar to move more smoothly.
- You can no longer switch to/from prone while picking up items.
- Red Dot Sight is now attachable to pistols, except for the revolver.
- Increased the recoil on UMP.
World
- Added two new weather settings: Sunset and Clear Skies.
- Added destructible cabins.
- Added new animation for when a character is at the speed of taking fall damage.
Items and vehicles
- Adjusted vehicles to face random directions at spawn.
- Adjusted loot balance for certain items.
- VSS will no longer be found in Care Packages. It will remain to be spawned in the map.
- At a low probability, you will be able to acquire AR Silencers, SR Silencers, and 4x Scopes in Care Packages.
- Spawn rate of UMP was slightly decreased.
- Spawn rate of UZI was slightly increased.
- Level 1 Helmet was being spawned at a much higher rate than the Level 1 Vest, and the spawn rate was adjusted so that both items will be spawned at a similar rate.
- Increased spawn rate of items in regions and buildings with relatively low spawn rate.
- Changed the names of certain weapon attachments.
- Adjusted the spawn time of vehicles and speedboats, so that they can be seen from farther away.
- Improved the starting airplanes.
- Cargo door opens when participants get ejected from the airplane.
- Optimized lighting inside and outside of the airplane.
UI
- Adjusted the direction of teammate icons to the direction the teammate faces.
- Added teammate list on World Map.
- Improved character’s recoil animation.
- Removed death marks of teammates after a certain period of time or distance away from the place of death.
- Added three new languages: Thai, Indonesian, and Vietnamese.
Bug fixes
- Fixed an issue when the voice chat volume blasted momentarily after getting on an airplane.
- Fixed an issue where the character was not at the center of the screen while on a parachute.
- If you reload into game while in a parachute, you will still be in the parachute.
- Prevented users from removing outer walls of buildings by deleting certain files.
- Partially fixed a bug that caused a character to be stuck in terrain.
- Fixed a bug that caused a character to be misplaced after getting in a vehicle.
- Fixed a bug that caused effects to look identical underwater and outside of water.
- Fixed a bug that caused a character to make an interaction motion trying to pick up an item when there is no inventory space.
- Fixed a client crash that occurred when fences were destroyed.
- Fixed an issue of invisible fences even after destruction.
