PUBG competes with Fortnite with destructible environments and more vehicles in 2024
Despite being the game that pioneered and popularized the battle royale shooter, it seems like PUBG: Battlegrounds has increasingly ended up in the shadow of Fortnite's incredible popularity, with collaborations with McLaren, Travis Scott, Lego , and Eminem , and big, impressive season changes. But it looks like the first battle royale game is planning to borrow at least a bit from its rival's rulebook this year.
See also: Contra: Operation Galuga Greek Review
Revealing its plans for PUBG's future in 2024 – which will also mark the seventh anniversary of its release, can you believe it? – the game's developers said they would focus on perfecting PUBG's core gameplay rather than introducing a separate game mode or anything like that.
Part of those plans is something that looks a lot like Fortnite: destructible environments. While it won't be quite on the level of taking down entire buildings — PUBG's developers say "parts" of environments will be destructible — the goal is to give players more options for creating interesting defensive strategies and mixing up the situations they find themselves in during matches, as they have to adapt their strategy in the moment. A teaser image showed a player armed with a pickaxe digging a hole, which isn't exactly the most exciting example, but it looks like we'll know more in April when the destructible environments update is announced, with future improvements and expansions to follow after that.
“Speaking of ongoing improvements, PUBG weapon tweaks will now come every two months, providing a more frequent way to maintain balance and keep the game’s competitive meta as fresh as possible,” the developers say. These changes will be implemented first in Arcade mode, allowing for player feedback before then being rolled out to Normal and Ranked modes. Patch 28.2 will bring a major SMG overhaul to Arcade, before a planned expansion to the rest of the game in June. PUBG developers added that the SCAR-L and AKM are also in the plans for the future, along with nerfs to unspecified “power weapons.”
See also: Dragon's Dogma 2: Character creator released
Elsewhere, the developers say they will add new items designed around transport and item collection rather than just for shooting each other. The team says that “explores” the potential for portable zip-line cables, following the introduction of vehicle vaulting and climbing cooperation as expandable movement options in the previous update of last month.
While the updates won't necessarily introduce entirely new features, there will be a new way to play. The team vs. team system will let you and your friends take on another team in a series of back-to-back matches, tracking your respective placement and victories to earn new rewards. There will also be some occasional special features, following on from last year's Survivors Left Behind Halloween special, which is now scheduled to receive quarterly updates alongside Team Deathmatch and Intense Battle Royale.
See also: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Luigi's Mansion 2 HD get release dates for Switch
The new updates – especially the destructible environments – will likely be underpinned by a planned move to Unreal Engine 5 as a foundation. This key change will be accompanied by plans to support user-generated content, with PUBG's developers saying they hope to foster "a eroded, community-based ecosystem" as the community adds to its offering.
There's a lot more in the FULL ROAD MAP, including the interesting note that over three million cheaters were banned from the game last year (2023) – a 33% jump from the 2.4 million banned in 2022.This number came from PUBG's revamped approach to detecting cheaters and cheating tools, including using deep learning models to identify targeted cheaters and similar tools. These efforts will continue this year, with PUBG assuring players that those reported will not be automatically banned immediately, but only after "a comprehensive analysis" has been conducted.
Source: rockpapershotgun
