Dev Letter: Reward System Improvements

Hey everyone,

Over the past few weeks, we have been tackling some of the game’s long-standing bugs and quality of life requests with the FIX PUBG campaign. In addition to these, we want to continue to reinforce the various elements that allow the players to enjoy PUBG. Among them is our brand new in-game reward system, the Survival Supply System, which is being introduced in Update #21.

There are any number of reasons that players enjoy PUBG, from the realistic gun play, to securing that chicken dinner, to collecting skins. It’s important for us to have a variety of rewards available to our players and we’ve been working on finding new ways to offer skins outside of locked crates. The Survival Supply System and the restructuring of how BP is earned, are our next steps in that endeavor and we’d like to take some time today to share a little bit about each.

Survival Supply System

The Survival Supply System will function much like the Event Pass, except there is no max level and no optional premium pass to purchase. You increase your survival level by filling the survival gauge, which in turn earns you either a temporary or permanent item. Temporary items serve as an in-between-milestones gift to let you play around with different wardrobe options while you work towards your permanent items, which is awarded at minimum every 10th level.

There will be daily and weekly Survival missions that grant bonus amounts of XP and help you get through those levels faster, but you will also earn XP simply by playing, and surviving, in-game. These missions reset every day or week depending on the type of mission and there’s an option to manually refresh the list a fixed number of times if you find that you do not like your missions.

Best of all, the Survival Supply System is a semi-permanent Reward System, meaning that for the foreseeable future, there is no deadline to when you have to earn rewards by as there was with the Event Pass. We’re discussing long term plans to make the Survival Supply System a seasonal thing to keep rewards fresh and will keep you updated as these plans take shape.

We’re excited to get the Survival Supply System in your hands. We know players have been requesting a system like this for some time, and we hope you enjoy these additional rewards just for spending time in PUBG.

Improving BP Calculation

Alongside the new rewards system, we’re reworking the way that BP is calculated slightly. Until now, BP was awarded based on a few factors- Your Rank reward, Kill reward, and Damage reward, meaning that the amount of BP earned could vary greatly from game to game. This also means that there could be a pretty big gap between the BP earned by a skilled player and someone just starting out.

The amount of BP earned was also quite different based on play style and which map and queue type you choose. Players who wanted to focus on the survival aspect and didn’t seek out kills were earning far less BP. In addition, over 50% of all PUBG games are squad queues, which rewarded a lower overall BP amount compared to solo games. On our most recent map, Sanhok, the BP rate was 1.4 times higher and more efficient in playtime compared to Erangel or Miramar.

All these variances led to a simple truth, BP acquisition had to be adjusted to also include overall playtime and to account for letting players play the game how they wanted to without worrying about what is most efficient. From this patch on, BP rewards will be calculated based on kills, damage dealt, final rank, and play time. To prevent abusing the system, the play time reward is a little more complex than simply how many minutes (or seconds) you survive during a match.

BP Reward

Before
Kills+Damage Dealt+Final Rank = Reward
After
Kills+Damage Dealt+Final Rank+Play Time = Reward

The Kill, Damage, and Ranking rewards for each Mode and Map have been rebalanced as well to help ensure players receive rewards in the fairest possible way, but this new system should be far more considerate of the individual player, regardless of how they choose to play the game.

PUBG has been available on Steam for quite a while now, and we’re working on better ways for you to use your hard-earned BP. A BP-exclusive helmet skin, for example, is available on live servers today for 20,000 BP. Beyond that, we need to make sure that BP acquisition is in a state that we want it before we introduce a greater amount of BP content.

As always, we’re continuously monitoring/analyzing PUBG’s economy, and will especially do so with the upcoming adjustments. There will be likely be increases/decreases in BP gains here and there, but the total amount of BP earned will not differ greatly. We ask for your patience while we fine tune the new system, and look forward to getting more great rewards into your hands for all the time you’ve put into our game.

Conclusion

BP Acquisition and the Survival Supply System are some of many ways we’re working to keep the game feeling fresh and rewarding for the PUBG community. We’re in the early planning stages of other ways to drive these goals, such as a “Badge of Honor” system that will hopefully provide continued enjoyment and fun to all players. We’ll continue to share our thoughts and ideas as they get further along.

As always, we welcome your feedback on the newly added or changed content. We’re committed to keeping PUBG as the best Battle Royale experience out there, and that means meeting and exceeding your expectations for new content, rewards, and of course communication. Try out the new systems and let us know what you think!

Thank you,
–The PUBG Dev and Community Teams