Alpha 2 Test – Update 2

The following is an official dev log from the BATTLEGROUNDS website.

Contents


Players,

Once again we’d like to thank everyone for helping us test last weekend, and for all of your valuable suggestions and feedback. The team’s spent this week working hard to quash as many bugs as they could while continuing to improve the overall gameplay experience.

The servers will be online on Thursday from 8PM-12AM PST for a short stress test of the new build before going live this weekend.

We’ll be highlighting some of the standout changes below, but first I’d like to address the memory issues we brought up last week.

After some investigation, we’ve managed to reduce the RAM/memory requirements for this coming weekend’s test back down to 8GB. To achieve this, we’ve had to temporarily remove the HLOD system, which allowed us to show buildings at distances over 1.5KM from the player. The pre-loading of these distant assets was using up a considerable amount of memory and was also responsible for the long loading times when entering a game. Now that the HLOD system has been disabled, loading times should be much more reasonable.

Since the start of the alpha, we’ve frequently received requests to enable teamplay during our weekend tests. I’m excited to announce that during the final weekend of testing (3 – 4 December), we’ll be doing exactly that by enabling a very basic 2 player team system.



You’ll be able to choose your partner and play with them for the whole weekend. While the team system is still not in its final state, we wanted to give you all the chance to play with your friends before our second round of alpha testing is concluded. We look forward to hearing all of your feedback once the game mode has been opened.

You can see the full set of patch notes at the end of this post, but here is an overview of some of things we’ve patched in this update:

Gunplay

We have adjusted the accuracy of 3rd person aiming. This change will not affect short range combat, but it will make aiming down sights more favorable when engaging targets at over 100m. This is still very much a work in progress, so please leave your feedback on the new settings over on our forums.

Invisible Players

We have pushed a temporary fix for when your character shows as invisible when joining the game. This fix may change your character appearance in the lobby, but it will not effect gameplay.

Tree Collision

We have made improvements to reduce occurrences of players becoming stuck within trees. We expect to see much less of this happening, and we’ll announce when it’s been fixed for good. While we believe we have found most of the reasons why this was happening, if it happens to you, please report it on the forums.

Attachments

Attachments can now be equipped directly from the environment, rather than requiring the player to equip them from the inventory.

Finally, we now have the ability to ban players, so if you spot someone cheating, please report them on the forums and we will drop the ban hammer on them.

See you in-game,

PLAYERUNKNOWN

Alpha 2 Patch Notes
Stability & Performance Improvements


 * Reduced the RAM requirement to 8GB
 * Made general improvements to connectivity. You should now be seeing fewer occurrences of the following:
 * Long loading times when joining games
 * Getting disconnected following long loading times
 * Multiple players being dropped from games in a short period

Gunplay


 * Weapons will no longer auto-reload ammo when equipped
 * Adjusted the accuracy while aiming in third person
 * Increased the ADS accuracy for rifles and sniper rifles
 * Adjusted the recoil recovery mechanics. Weapons do not recover to the same position after shots anymore and you will need to re-aim each shot

Balance Adjustments


 * Reduced the Frying Pan damage by 40%
 * Reduced the Flash Bang explosion delay from 5 seconds to 2.8 seconds

Lobby/Front End Improvements


 * Made improvements to lobby response time; reactions to lobby actions should now be quicker

Quality of Life Improvements


 * Attachments can now be equipped directly from the environment, rather than requiring the player to equip them from the inventory
 * Adjusted the drop mesh sizes for weapons and accessories

Rewards


 * The amount of reward points you can earn when playing has been increased 3 times
 * The drop rate of rare skins from crates have been increased 5~7 times

Bug Fixes
Sound


 * Fixed an issue causing players to be able to very clearly hear the sound of other players’ empty shells dropping

Vehicles


 * Fixed a bug that caused vehicles to react unpredictably (fly away or flip over) when players came in contact with them
 * Fixed a bug allowing vehicles to be driven upside down and/or sideways

Loot


 * Fixed a bug that caused dropped items to disappear
 * Fixed a bug preventing players from looting items spawned in certain buildings (i.e – Warehouses)
 * Fixed a bug causing crossbows to spawn without bolts

Actions


 * Fixed a bug preventing players from being able to melee other players that are in crouch/prone stances
 * Made some improvements to reduce occurrences of players becoming stuck within trees. We expect to see much less of this happening, and we’ll announce when it’s been fixed for good

Characters


 * Fixed an issue causing some players to appear invisible or transparent
 * Fixed issue in which some pants, when equipped, would cause a player’s feet to disappear

Miscellaneous


 * Corrected the descriptions for Boost items

Known Issues


 * When joining a game, there’s a small chance that character appearance differs from the selected, customized appearance