Early Access - September Update September 11 - Harusol Players, As we noted in our previous dev blog, we have changed our patch and update schedule to increase the amount of time we spend on testing and fixing new features before we deploy them. This week, we will push out an update to the Test servers that will be available for download on Tuesday evening KST (Tuesday morning CEST, Tuesday early morning PDT) and will include some new features, bug fixes, and improvements. Before we dive into the patch notes, we would like to address few important topics. Vaulting – Update on progress We are aware that many players have been looking forward to trying it out. Our Action and Gunplay Lead Pawel Smolewski has addressed this in his interview but there are some challenges to introducing the feature as soon as people are requesting. First of all, our vaulting system is not built on predefined objects or locations in the map. There are tens of thousands of objects that should be vaultable or climbable in Erangel. To perform the action, the geometry and properties of each object have to be dynamically detected and analyzed. The algorithm is quite complex and requires rigorous testing and fine-tuning of the map. Testing it for only a couple of days before deployment on the Live servers won’t be enough for us to identify all bugs and side effects. Therefore, we are planning to test it for a longer period of time in early November. If needed, we may roll it out on test servers for a certain amount of time even before November. Until then, we will be working on the feature internally. Please stay tuned for an update on the testing schedules for vaulting. Idle players earning BPs We have implemented rules that will not allow idle players to earn BPs. We will monitor this and improve the current system going forward. Adding FPP servers We have recently added first-person only servers for DUO on OCE servers. For SOLO and SQUAD, we will continue to monitor player data in the region and determine when we can add another game mode. After looking into data and adding FPP to OCE servers, we have also found that the number of FPP players in South America and Southeast Asia has increased recently. We will continue to monitor data and provide an update as soon as conclusive results can be reported. We would definitely like to provide a better FPP experience to players in SA and SEA servers. However, we must look into this with more detail to ensure that adding another game mode does not hurt the user experience for the player base as a whole. The entire team is hard at work to stay on track with the current roadmap and move out of Early Access before the end of Q4 2017, and we hope to share more details about the official launch later this month. While we would like to provide updates as soon as we can, we want to take some time to finalize all the details and give you the full picture. Test servers: This week, test servers will be up for at least 2 days o KST: Tuesday evening o CEST: Tuesday morning o PDT: Tuesday early morning o Live server update: Later this week – TBD Below are the patch notes for this week's update. Client Optimization Optimized shadows Improved performance on low-end PCs by optimizing buildings Optimized client and server performance when there are multiple vehicles in a close vicinity Optimized UI World Added Foggy weather o The foggy weather effect will hinder player sight on the map. This weather effect has a low probability to occur o In order to test the weather effect, the foggy weather will have a higher chance to occur during test server gameplay, but will be reduced for Live servers Enhanced graphics of the sky in pre-existing weather effects Added a new town, East of Stalber UI/UX Added new Option to change Cross-hair color Added new Double Tap feature in control options for leaning (Default keys set to Q and E) Added new option to improve the visual effect of going from free look back to character's line of sight Added new key binds when using Consumables Teammates' names are now representative of their current postures (IE Standing, Crouching, Prone, etc) Added new key bind to mark your current position on the map (Default key set to Insert) Added a new key bind to center the map around the character's current position (Default key set to Space) Added a new key bind to use the Consumables in the order of Med Kit, First Aid Kit, and Bandage (Default key set to "-") Added a new feature to reset the zeroing distance using Mouse wheel click Adjusted the position of the Report window Added a new feature in Settings, called “Inventory screen character render” to turn off character rendering in Inventory screen to improve performance. New Item Added a new weapon, the Mini-14. The Mini-14 is a lightweight and compact 5.56 semi-automatic marksman rifle o The weapon uses sniper rifle attachments for both the muzzle and magazine slots, and can take any type of optic sight o This weapon has lower damage stats than other DMR's, which is compensated by very high muzzle velocity and low bullet drop Gameplay Distance at which shadows are rendered are now synchronized across all graphics settings to ensure fair play Characters who are knocked out while underwater will now have a breath gauge as well as take additional damage over time Adjusted the balance of several weapons: o Increased the Crossbow reload speed by 35% o Tommy gun has been removed from Care Packages and become a world spawn. It now supports attachments such as the Silencer, Vertical Foregrip, and Magazines o Horizontal recoil scale has been clamped for greater consistency for weapons with high horizontal recoils You may now holster grenades by switching to another weapon or unarmed state unless the grenades have already been cooked The firing mode of weapons will now remain consistent with the firing mode that was selected, after dropping a weapon and picking it back up again Adjusted the collision damage of Motorcycles Actions Recoil animations are updated for all weapons Adjusted animations and balance of throwables o Decreased fuse time of the Flash Grenade to 2.5 seconds o Increased the lethal and injury ranges of the Frag Grenade o Improved the animation for throwing grenades to allow for increased speeds and more accurate trajectories, but decreased visual trajectory distance of throwables o Cooking of grenades is now manual (Default key set to R) o You may now toggle the throwing mode between overhead and roll (Default key set to Right Mouse Click) o The movement speed of a character affects the trajectory of throwables Improved leaning animation; leaning on the left side to expose less of the body Sprinting will no longer prevent regeneration of breath gauge and will stop leaning state automatically You may change your stance while reloading without cancelling the reload Sounds Added new sounds when using Consumables Adjusted the audible ranges of reloading and window breaking Added a new sound for collisions between vehicles and characters Added new sound for the animation of removing the grenade safety pin Bug Fixes Characters that fall or glitch underneath the map will now be reset to the ground automatically Fixed a bug where FOV slider value would be improperly set inside of vehicles in FPP mode, regardless of FOV slider setting Fixed a bug resulting in clients freezing when changing controls in the options Corrected the descriptions of certain weapon attachments Fixed animation bugs of other characters after reconnecting to a game Fixed several bugs related to the Spectator mode Fixed a bug of the breath gauge appearing at zero at the start of the game Reloading will now cancel if a character loots an item with Right Click during reload Fixed a bug with the honking sound remaining persistent when opening the map or performing other actions while honking You may no longer set different features on a single key bind in the Options Fixed a graphic bug of the Magazine position on the weapon in the Inventory screen when switching to a different weapon Others Revised the BP methodology to prevent BP farming and idle users from gaining BP Added FPP Leaderboard for all regions with FPP NVIDIA ShadowPlay Highlights™ now works on Window 7 and Window 8 (However, if Windows Aero is disabled it may not work) As always, please let us know your feedback in our forum once the update goes live on test servers. See you in-game, The PUBG Development and Community Team
