Why You Should Give PUBG A Second Chance

Is PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds dead?

If you've had that thought creep into your head, you're not alone. It often shows up when a new battle royale game comes out, as players look back and wonder what happened to the title that made the genre popular. We won't argue that PUBG doesn't have quite the cachet it did back in early 2017, when Fortnite was just a floundering survival game and the Apex Legends team was fresh off the release of Titanfall 2. But losing the first place spot doesn't necessarily mean PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has surrendered.

In fact, the PUBG of today is far better than the one that took off like a rocket a few years ago.

While other games have come along to become the shiny new thing in the battle royale space, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been plugging away, working to become a more polished product. And whether you're a lapsed player or someone who simply avoided the game due to the many issues it had, we're pleased to say many of those issues have been resolved. 

Below, we're going to tell you about all of the ways PUBG has improved since you last heard about it.

Here's why you should give PUBG a second chance.

If you've ever played an online shooter, you're probably familiar with latency, or what many people call lag. It seemingly rears its ugly head at the worst times, and can turn a fun run through a few multiplayer matches into an exercise in frustration. Have you ever been shot dead when you thought you were behind cover? Or dumped a thousand bullets into an opponent, only to see them run away unscathed, sometimes teleporting along the way? You're experiencing something called desync, and for a long time, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds had a big problem with it.

Thank the heavens, a lot of those problems have since been resolved.

Updates to PUBG have increased something called the tick rate, which is basically the rate that online servers and the game communicate with one another. The higher the tick rate, the faster the game is able to sync with the server and all of those playing. PUBG now has a server tick rate of 60 hertz, which means that if you're playing the game at 60 frames per second, the game and the PUBG servers are actually trying to sync up with every frame you're seeing on the screen.

Now, it's not always perfect. Some people are going to have bad connections; that's just the way of the world. But these issues should no longer be the fault of PUBG itself, and as a result, most will find player positioning and shot registration to be far more accurate.

Imagine loading into an online shooter and playing on the same map, day after day. It would get pretty old, wouldn't it? At some point, you'd be starving for a little change. You'd be looking for something, anything, to come along and break the monotony. Fortnite aims to battle this by making sweeping changes to its one map every season, adding new areas and completely destroying others. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, however, isn't entirely content with that approach.

Early in PUBG's life, one could knock the game for only having one map. That is no longer the case.

Since its release, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has slowly but steadily added more maps to its rotation. Along with Erangel, the location that players are all too familiar with at this point, the game has also added Miramar, a map based in Central America and Mexico; Vikendi, a snowy European map; and Sanhok, a map with a decidedly Asian flair. But that's not all. The team behind PUBG is also going back and making changes to existing maps, starting with Erangel. 

New maps can add a lot to an online shooter. They force players to learn a new layout and develop new strategies, for instance, and they offer something new to look at when you're tired of the same old, same old. PUBG has done well in this department, and there's no reason to expect it won't continue.

No bones about it, Xbox Game Pass is an absolute beast when it comes to the value it offers gamers. At just $10 a month, the service boasts a library of over 100 titles, yet actually sits somewhere closer to 200 at this point. It's a cheap way to gain access to an instant game collection, and in terms of what you can play, there's something for everyone — especially if you like online shooters. And now you probably know where this is headed.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is a part of the Xbox Game Pass library, which means subscribers can download and play PUBG at no additional cost.

The addition of PUBG in Game Pass has done wonders for it. The game already had a healthy online community on Xbox One, thanks to its period of limited exclusivity there. But Xbox Game Pass has managed to expand its player base even more, getting those who might not have otherwise purchased PUBG to give it a shot. And Xbox Game Pass is almost always on sale, as Microsoft pushes to increase its subscriber count. So players are spending as little as $1 a month to join up, and those same players — who might be looking for a change of pace from Fortnite and Apex Legends — are finding that PUBG offers a bit of a different battle royale flavor.

If you have Game Pass, PUBG won't cost you one extra penny. Give it a look.

You know what a lot of first-person online shooters don't have? A training mode. Something containing a firing range that you can test your guns out on, and locations for practicing important gameplay aspects like grenade tossing and melee combat. Or something like a space for practicing your parachute landings, or learning how to drive vehicles. Ask fans of Destiny, who've been begging for a firing range since the beginning of time. Most developers just aren't interested.

But most developers aren't PUBG Corp., which is another reason you should give PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds another look.

PUBG added a training mode in the summer of 2018 that gives players a way to practice without throwing themselves to the wolves, and that's great news for those who might otherwise shy away from such a game. It's tough to get into tactical shooters like PUBG, and it's even harder to learn the basics when a bunch of wannabe professionals are sniping your head off from a mile away. A training mode is something that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds fans asked for, and though it took some time to eventually make its way into the game, it did finally happen.

If nothing else, that's a promising development, because it means all of the other features players have been requesting are now a possibility.

It's no secret that Fortnite is still running away with the battle royale title right now. And Apex Legends has come on strong to compete with Fortnite and PUBG, launching with a whole lot of polish on day one. But the team at PUBG Corp. isn't resting on its laurels. The folks who kicked off the battle royale craze aren't just sitting around and watching the world pass them by.

Instead, they're doing a whole lot of hiring in order to make PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds the best game it can be.

PUBG Corp. announced in May 2018 that it was staffing up in order to "invest in the game's ongoing development." And those efforts have already bore fruit. Many of the improvements and fixes described above have come thanks to the studio's hiring drive, giving those who play PUBG a better performing game, brand new maps, new loot to chase, a more balanced experience, and a slew of added features.

A lot of what the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds team wanted to complete has been checked off. But there's little to indicate they'll be slowing down anytime soon. As the battle royale competition roars on, all of the games involved will be doing everything they can to get a leg up. And that includes PUBG.