‘We’ve fallen short,’ they acknowledge
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ development team for PC promised to be more responsive to player concerns — particularly over long running performance issues in the game — in a lengthy note to the community posted yesterday.
Performance, server-side optimization and cheating are the top priorities, PUBG ’s developers said, noting that “we’ve fallen short” despite some improvements to the game since its 1.0 launch back in December. “Players have rightfully called us out for failing to address complaints about performance,” they wrote, “and recently we haven’t done the best job of communicating about the changes we’re making to the game.”
To show even more responsiveness, the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds team will push updates to servers once fixes are ready; in the past, they’d waited on major patches to do a round all at once. “We’ll announce each of these improvements in subsequent patch notes,” meaning players may not know something has been fixed unless they see it for themselves.
As for optimization: some of the promises the developers make acknowledge some of the weaker and more aggravating points of the game. Most of these are related to things like frame rate drops, sluggish performance and stuttering. These are broken down into server-side problems (stuff handled online) and client-side (issues where the user’s hardware is getting flooded).
For example, a client-side optimization promised has to do with vehicles — they create so many effects driving over multiple surfaces too quickly that they can overload players’ GPUs. Character movement will also be optimized on the parachute drop, especially with a lot of players coming in, to cut down on frame drops at the beginning of a match.
And then on the server side, optimizing network code and reducing latency will mean that other players’ basic inputs will be revealed much more quickly. The speed at which server transfer data will also be improved so that items aren’t spawning in late after players parachute in. And server improvements should mean that weird physics affecting some vehicles will be resolved.
There is a ton more of what the PUBG development team promises to do — so if you play on PC, do give that letter a look, because it may address a specific gripe you have. Mainly, the performance issues seem to involve vehicles and then the rate at which servers update data. Those unoptimized processes manifest sometimes in things like image stuttering.
As for cheating, the devs called attention to the visible ways in which they’ve battled and even worked with authorities to arrest hackers and cheaters .
“We’ve introduced a variety of encryption based solutions to make it harder for hackers to exploit vulnerabilities,” they wrote. “We’ve also… refined the process by which we identify cheaters—most cheaters are now banned within hours of using an exploit.”
Not everything was about the bad news of fixing a problem or dealing with a malefactors. The team said the Sanhok map is expected to be live on servers before the end of June, and it will carry a new vehicle — the “Tukshai” — a drivable three-wheeled vehicle like the tuk-tuk, or auto rickshaw.
“The team is focused on making literally every inch of Sanhok perfect for players,” they wrote, “whether it’s the texture on a rock wall or little unique trimmings around each of the islands houses.”
