Xbox & PS4: Dev Update + Map Selection

Another update has been completed for console players, check out the full patchnotes below.

Hi everyone,

Today, we have some information for you around upcoming fixes for a few critical issues on the console version of our game. Before diving in though, we want to thank you for your patience as we work to resolve these ongoing issues. We understand that the experience hasn’t been what it should be, but we sincerely appreciate the time and effort that our community has spent giving feedback, submitting bug reports and continuing to be passionate PUBG players.

Hitching/Freezing

During early game looting, many of our players have been experiencing hitches and freezing. Thanks to your feedback, we were able to identify and fix this issue.

We rolled out a hotfix on April 25, 7PM PDT / April 26, 4AM CEST to resolve this issue, and we would like to thank everyone who took time to send in reports, video, and feedback as this greatly helped us investigate this issue.

Rendering

Our team has been focused on improving rendering and world loading for quite some time. We’ve touched on this topic a few times in past dev letters, but this has been a very complex issue to tackle due to the large amounts of data required to calculate on all maps.

Our current solution is to reduce the data size of all maps, which will reduce loading times to a much faster rate. We expect this optimization will improve loading speed, which will produce fewer “playdough” architecture and more fully rendered buildings.

You can expect these changes to be implemented soon since we plan to launch the optimizations to live servers by the month of May. We obviously want to ensure you are having the best experience possible on all maps, so this is a high priority for us and these solutions are the first step in our efforts to continually improve rendering and optimization.

Map Selection

With the introduction of Vikendi, we changed the way players could select maps. With this change, we received community feedback across our different channels informing us that this change wasn’t welcomed or enjoyed by most players. So today, we want to acknowledge this and let you know that we hear you loud and clear. Because of this, we’d like to discuss planned changes for map selection.

Simply put, we have a lot of different ways to play (four maps, two perspectives, and many different regions), so balancing your desire to drop into a map on-demand with the need to minimize matchmaking times has become a priority. Internally, we have been looking at ways to improve map selection for both PC and console. Although we have not yet decided the best long-term course of action, we have decided to move forward with changes for the console community based on your feedback and suggestions.

‘Featured Map’ selection system

Current:

Featured Map – Currently Vikendi
Standard – Currently Erangel, Miramar and Sanhok
Quick Match

New:

Featured Map – Changes periodically between Sanhok and Erangel
Standard – Remaining maps
Quick Match

Sanhok will be the first featured map. Look out for Erangel to be featured when we introduce upcoming loot balance changes for consoles.

The new Featured Map system is now available with the hotfix rolled out on April 25, 7PM PDT / April 26, 4AM CEST.

We understand that some of these items have been a long time coming, however, we hope that this improves your overall play experience. Our game is continuously improving because of you, so thank you again for your participation and feedback. We’ll see you on the battlegrounds!

– PUBG Console Team