Dev Letter: Rustle/Rattle Sounds Improvemen

New dev letter has been introduced to the community as a part of game improvement measures.

Hey everyone,
Among the updates to gameplay balance we released in the latest patch (Patch 27), we made an improvement to the sounds generated by a character's movement, which is a critical sound for gameplay. To provide detailed information on the Rustle/Rattle changes, we would like to explain the changes thoroughly and give some before and after examples.
Previous Character Movement Sounds

In order to continually improve realistic elements in PUBG, our DEV teams recently turned their focus to the sounds that are generated from character movement. Previously, when a character was sprinting at full speed, using the shift key, the character emitted a fixed amount of Rustle/Rattle sounds. The video below gives a good example of this.

As you can see from the video above, the character was still emitting rustling sounds in the early game, even before acquiring any equipment. There were cases where rustling sounds were not being emitted when walking and walking slowly.
To simulate these situations more realistically, we have modified the sounds to be more natural, while trying not to disturb gameplay as much as possible*. We’ve also worked on improving character movement sounds in general as part of these changes.
*From recent feedback from the test server, we have confirmed that the volume of the updated sounds were too loud, harming gameplay. We followed up on this with a hotfix last week.
Improved Character Movement Sounds

The general improvements we’ve made to Rustle/Rattle sounds are below.
  • Only Weapons (excluding pistols) and Backpacks will emit Rustle/Rattle sounds.
    • Pistols and Melee weapons will not emit Rustle/Rattle sounds.
  • Rustle/Rattle sounds will be at their highest volume while sprinting (using Shift key).
    • Normal running will play Rustle/Rattle sounds at a lower volume.
    • Rustle/Rattle sounds will be hardly audible while walking slowly or crawling.
  • Overall audible range of Rustle/Rattle sounds are lower than footstep sounds.

To better illustrate the changes, we’ve prepared a few video examples with the above situations.
  • Characters without any major equipment will no longer emit Rustle/Rattle sounds.

  • In terms of weapons, there is a different Rustle/Rattle sound while wearing a weapon on your back and holding one in your hands. Holding a weapon will be slightly louder.

  • Improved realism of sounds emitted by characters wearing a backpack.

  • If you’re holding a gun, wearing a secondary gun, and have a backpack equipped, you will emit all three Rustle/Rattle sounds at once.

As mentioned earlier, the goal here was to make character sounds a bit more realistic. This might seem like a relatively subtle change, but we believe sound is one of the most important elements in PUBG, so we wanted to make sure that everyone understood the changes we were making. These changes are part of Update 27, which is now on live servers. As always, we’re looking forward to your feedback on this patch, and anything else we can do to improve the realism, quality, and balance of the game.

Thank you,
-The PUBG Team