Dev Letter: A Look Back at Sanhok Testing

Hi everyone,
Update #14 brought some big upgrades to throwables, introduced the M24 rifle to the world’s weapon spawn pool, and (most importantly) implemented a few clutch performance improvements. There are still many more performance improvements in the works—expect to see more make their way over to live servers in update #15.
Today, though, we want to take a quick look back at the four testing rounds we ran for Sanhok, our 4km x 4km map which is coming to live servers on June 22.
From all of us at PUBG Corporation, thanks so much to all of you who participated in the four rounds of testing we conducted on Sanhok.
This was an experiment for us. We let you explore the map while many of its textures and structures were in a pre-alpha—in many ways it was a return to our Early Access roots, working hand-in-hand with the community to build the map together.

An early stage image of Sanhok
We’re especially grateful to all of you who reported bugs and shared your opinions about how we could make the map better. The feedback you gave us meaningfully changed the way we designed so many details of the map.

We’ve got more surprises in store for the Sanhok launch, but there are two topics we’d like to discuss early, so you guys aren’t surprised when the map hits live servers.
The first topic is an update to the way map selection works. When we first announced map selection, we said “we’ll still have to keep a close eye on it, since it could become problematic as new maps continue to be added.”
It’s now become clear to us that these concerns were justified, and we’ve decided that we can’t support individual map selection for more than two maps. This is because map selection creates an essentially exponential increase in the number of total separate queues when combined with other queue options like party size and perspective. That means the matchmaking pool gets split into many small sections, making it nearly impossible to put together a match in at least some of those queues.
We still want to make sure that players can play on Sanhok without any hassle, especially given that it’s an exciting new map. So, at least for now, we’re going to launch Sanhok as its own queue, with Miramar and Erangel bundled together in a separate queue. That means that in the new UI, you’ll be able to queue up for Sanhok by itself, or Erangel + Miramar together. Choosing both queues means you’ll randomly be dropped into one of the three maps currently in the game.

As we announced at E3 this week, we’ll continue to add new maps. Our current thinking is that maps will be added separately to one or the other queues, but it’s possible we’ll change our plans as we learn more.
The second topic is a little surprise about the way Sanhok’s matchmaking will work. We want Sanhok to feel like a truly chaotic, different gaming experience. For that reason, there will be no MMR-based matchmaking when you play on Sanhok. Although career stats will still be recorded, your performance on Sanhok won’t affect your MMR at all.
When you drop into a game, you’ll be battling it out against both the world’s best players and… well... let’s just say players with “lots of potential for growth.”
That’s all for now! We can’t wait to share more about Sanhok soon.