[ad_1]
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is planning to introduce a new automatic pistol, the Skorpion, and will also reduce the opacity of the blue zone to make it easier to spot late-comers sneaking in. The changes are coming in Update #23, due in November.
On top of that, a new Conquest War Mode has been introduced, involving platoons of 50 versus 50. In this Mode, players will be required to capture and hold objectives within a particular area. However, replays of Conquest games are not yet available, but will be introduced at a later date.
In addition, of course, is the usual slew of fixes for PUBG’s many bugs, including (hopefully) fixes for lobby freezes and the bug in which sounds made by players sneaking around slowly were not played to other users.
The new Skorpion, though, is likely to most interest players. The fully automatic pistol will be available on all maps and will use 9mm ammo. It can load up to 20 bullets, or a very handy 40 with an extended magazine, making it more useful than the average PUBG side arm. Attachments will include the red-dot sight, suppressor, a variety of grips and the stock for the Micro Uzi.
Fully kitted out, it should be pretty stable but will dish out damage of just 22 in single-shot firing – even less than a P92 pistol. It’s effective range is around 50 metres.
Clearly, it’s intended for up-close and personal combat, but could be a useful tool enabling players to kit themselves out with two meatier main weapons for longer range business – a Skorpion, MK47 Mutant and a SKS with a 6X scope wouldn’t be something to sniff at.
At the same time, recoil on the P18C pistol has also been reduced, but let’s face it, the Skorpion sounds like much more fun.
In terms of gameplay, PUBG has not only reduced the opacity of the blue zone, but also fixed a bug whereby its opacity changed somewhat depending on the weather and map type.
To help newbies and incompetents alike, PUBG will also introduce a dynamic guide that will change, depending on the gameplay situation. So, for example, if a player is bearing down on an opponent in a 4X scope, the guide will offer the key presses required to use it. The guide will appear above the mini-map. Turned on by default, experienced (and competent) killers can turn it off in ‘settings’.
The Update is now available on the Test Server and will be coming to the regular hoi polloi at the beginning of November.
What can artificial intelligence and machine learning do for you and your organisation?
If you don’t know yet, or want to make sure that you’re not missing out, Computing’s first AI & Machine Learning Live event is for you. To find out more, check out the Computing AI & Machine Learning Live website. Attendance is FREE to qualifying IT leaders and senior IT pros, but places are going fast
18 October 2018: Players of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) are being offered a free item and 20,000 battle points as an apology for server issues that have plagued the game since the last major update.
The October update had been intended to introduce ping-based match-making, putting players of similar skill together based on the speed of their connections to servers rather than letting players connect to the server of their choice.
PC Players: The connectivity issues experienced by some players after the recent maintenance have now been resolved.
Please restart the game to ensure your client is up to date.https://t.co/RoQV1vIs1Z
— PUBG Help (@PUBG_help) October 17, 2018
However, as with so many PUBG updates, the implementation was botched. Players have complained of frequent network lag, and even struggled to connect to servers.
In a bid to overcome these various game-degrading glitches, PUBG Corp took servers down in the small hours of Wednesday morning for maintenance. While this was expected to last for just three hours, when the servers were reinstated players faced still more issues.
Maintenance was subsequently extended by a further two hours. The company claims that these issues have now been resolved and is giving out some freebies, partly in compensation, but also (no doubt) to persuade disgruntled players to log back in.
In addition to the 20,000 battle points, PUBG is also giving away the Black Beanie with Headphones item. Which is nice.
We sincerely apologize for the negative experience caused by our recent server connectivity and matchmaking related issues. As compensation, we will be gifting all PC players the Black Beanie with Headphones item along with 20,000 BP. Log in to PUBG by 5pm PDT on Oct 23 to claim. pic.twitter.com/CW5L8nf25z
— PUBG (@PUBG) October 18, 2018
What can artificial intelligence and machine learning do for you and your organisation?
If you don’t know yet, or want to make sure that you’re not missing out, Computing’s first AI & Machine Learning Live event is for you. To find out more, check out the Computing AI & Machine Learning Live website. Attendance is FREE to qualifying IT leaders and senior IT pros, but places are going fast
18 October 2018: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is gearing up for a scary, Hallowe’en-themed event at the end of the month. The event was teased in a nine second video released today on Twitter, with the line, “Beware… Halloween Approaches”.
The video features scary-looking nurses, evil clowns and squads bearing machetes and pistols, and the event will be coming to both PC and Xbox. PUBG Mobile, meanwhile, will get a one-off night mode for Erangel.
Beware… Halloween Approaches. pic.twitter.com/Cdol5V8H9B
— PUBG (@PUBG) October 17, 2018
The coming event was revealed at the same time that the company behind the game also unveiled HUBG, a new website that will enable players to examine the PUBG game stats of any player.
Currently in beta, it makes use of the ‘official PUBG API’ and will include lifetime wins (but only after April 2018), lifetime kills, longest kill (291 metres, since you ask), number of top tens and so on. It will also offer game-by-game stats, but this feature isn’t completed yet.
HUBG and the Hallowe’en event were revealed just days after the launch of the latest in the long line of Call of Duty games, Call of Duty Black Ops 4. Unlike past Call of Duty games, the developer Activision has eschewed a single or even multiplayer campaign mode, and instead focused on purely online Battle Royale and zombies.
And, while the decision to ditch the campaign, while still charging full price, was widely criticised, the game has nevertheless broken Activision’s day-one digital release record, the company claims, across PC, Playstation and Xbox.
Although remaining cagey about revealing precise figures, sales may have been boosted by making it available in beta format for free over Activision’s Blizzard.net platform before launch – although the retail price of £49.99 is almost twice that of PUBG and about £49.99 more than that of Fortnite, the most popular of the Battle Royale games.
However, Steam player figures indicate that the release of the much-hyped title has only marginally affected PUBG player numbers, with PUBG on PC now down to peaks of between 800,000 and one million daily players. That is well down on the numbers that were playing on PC at its peak in February this year when more than 3.2 million people were taking part in daily pixelated slaughter.
There’s a new wave of automation hitting big business and the public sector, and organisations that fail to prepare or implement properly will, literally, be left for dead.
Hear from end users and other organisations about how you can effectively automate the enterprise at Computing’s Automation: streamlining your essential business processes IT Leaders’ Forum.
To reserve your FREE place for the event on Wednesday 7 November, check out the dedicate IT Leaders’ Forum website
12 October 2018: The PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) Development Team has apologised to players for botching Update #22, which resulted in players being assigned to the wrong servers.
As a consequence, matchmaking times went through the roof and players experienced a surge of in-game problems, such as lagging.
Unfortunately an error related to ping calculation occurred and the player’s location wasn’t being identified correctly
In an open letter published today, though, the developers acknowledged the problem and formally apologised to players. Furthermore, interim updates going out today ought to fix the problem, they added, and provide faster queue times.
“The improved system is intended to automatically send players to the region that provides the lowest ping, but unfortunately an error related to ping calculation occurred and the player’s location wasn’t being identified correctly, resulting in them being placed into matches in a region that didn’t provide the optimal gameplay experience,” the company admitted today.
Furthermore, the fix should ensure that not only do players connect to a server in the right region – normally, the region closest to them, providing the lowest ‘pings’ – but also that the ability to connect with friends and team mates is also prioritised.
The system will now properly prioritise putting players into matches on servers in their local region
Another update next week is intended to fix a number of other problems introduced with Update #22.
“Within the last 24 hours we deployed an initial fix to prevent players from connecting to the wrong local region. The team is actively working to resolve the remaining issues in a fix we expect to deploy next week, which also includes a change to prioritize matching players with teammates who speak the same language, to improve the player experience,” the missive added.
“Once deployed, the system will now properly prioritise putting players into matches on servers in their local region. In the event of excessive queue times due to a small matchmaking pool, the next closest region will be chosen to ensure players aren’t stuck matchmaking indefinitely.”
We’ll believe that when we see it, of course.
For more news on the crackdown on cheats coming in Update #23 in November, read on!
The Computing Technology Product Awards 2018 are coming!
Recognising the very best in technology talent, the Awards will recognise innovation and technology excellence across the range of mobility, software, infrastructure, security, cloud computing – and people.
To find out more, to enter and to reserve your table at the Awards on 30 November, check out our dedicated Computing Technology Product Awards website
11 October 2018: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is planning to implement hardware bans on players found to be cheating.
That’s according to postings on the official PUBG forums in Korea, where the game is developed, which indicates that the crackdown has been pencilled in for the next update coming on 10 November.
“Hardware (HWID) devices that have been confirmed to have illegal usage history during battle ground service (including global service via Steam) may be restricted from using game service,” the changes to terms and conditions (as translated by Google Translate) states, indicating the change of policy.
The ban will not only affect players found to be cheating after 10 November, but also players identified to have a history of cheating, who have returned to the game with new accounts.
It comes after the latest update (see below) introduced a new anti-cheat tool, which had been in testing since May.
However, there is also a risk that a heavy-handed clampdown on cheating could risk alienating legitimate players if bans are handed down to players who claim they were not cheating.
What can artificial intelligence and machine learning do for you and your organisation?
If you don’t know yet, or want to make sure that you’re not missing out, Computing’s first AI & Machine Learning Live event is for you. To find out more, check out the Computing AI & Machine Learning Live website. Attendance is FREE to qualifying IT leaders and senior IT pros, but places are going fast
3 October 2018: The latest update to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) has landed with the long-promised anti-cheat tool finally appearing, and map selection returning by popular demand.
The anti-cheat tool is the most obvious part of the update, with players given the option of launching it on start-up – and who wouldn’t? The company admits that some players might experience compatibility issues, hence the option. However, once these are finally ironed out, the opt-out will be removed.
The anti-cheat mechanism had been trailed earlier this year and promised in May, but has taken longer to finesse than expected.
Even more popular than improved anti-cheat mechanisms – at least with legitimate players – will be the return of map selection. This had been removed with the introduction of the Sanhok map, giving players the choice between “Mini Royale” (ie: Sanhok) or full-fat, manly “Battle Royale”, in which players would be thrown-in to either Erangel or Miramar.
PUBG had introduced this, partly to encourage players to try Sanhok, but also to try and balance declining player numbers with queue times, especially given the other options (solo, duo, squad, third-person, first person etcetera).
Players, however, didn’t like it, so in the new “Fix PUBG” spirit, that’s been fixed.
Other improvements improve a wheel menu to make fragging and burning other players quicker and easier, better magnification on the mini-map, more consistency in player orders and numbers between the lobby and the game, and a better friend UI – if you have friends, that is.
The Rank System has also been changed, with nice medals now depicting your progress, and the server region decided automatically depending on your own local region. Matchmaking when playing with players from different regions will be done automatically.
Finally, there’s a slew of bug fixes, all of which can be perused in detail here.
The update comes as it appears that the developers are turning a corner in terms of Steam reviews, with the “Mostly negative” rating of the most recent reviews becoming “Mixed”.
However, the player base has fallen from a peak of 3.2 million in February this year to an average of around one million a day.
There’s no bigger event in the UK IT industry’s calendar than the UK IT Industry Awards, brought to you by the BCS and Computing. The UK IT Industry Awards are all about celebrating the achievements of IT professionals from apprentices to CIOs, throughout the industry. Check out the 2018 shortlist and reserve your table for the biggest night of the year
Next page: PUBG introduces scooters on Sanhok and the Beryl M762, PUBG on Xbox finally hits version 1.0, Update #21, and the return of map selection!
[ad_2]
Source link
