Even in Early Access PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has overtaken Dota 2 to become the game on Steam with the most concurrent players: 1.3 million. PUBG has enjoyed a stunning ascent, bolstered by updates that have improved optimisation and fixed bugs as part of a roadmap to launch.  The developers are even looking weather, improved traversal systems and cross-platform support with aim-assist and fancy water tech. In light of all this progress we've updated our list of features we'd like to see in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

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Every PUBG round is a story, and I’d the game to capture that using data. I want to see a winner’s route through the map, with annotations for moments they got a kill. I’d like to know how far I’ve travelled in a game. I’d like to see who spent the most time stationary in a bush. I’d like heat maps showing the most contested parts of a map in a round. I’d like to look back at the landing points of every player on the map and see where players like to congregate after they jump out of the plane.

Optimization, optimization

Just as Battlegrounds entered Early Access, Bluehole released a roadmap of the progress they hoped to make with the battle royale shooter. Much of it was focused on optimization, and that's great. I think the game runs pretty darn well for a fresh Early Access title, but I'm looking forward to seeing the optimization dialed in over the coming months. Even looking at the larger cities on the map can result in some steep fps losses, and actually visiting those denser areas can turn the game into a slideshow.

As it is now, a lot of streamers I watch have their graphics settings turned down as low as they'll go to compensate for those optimization issues. That feels like a shame, since Battlegrounds is a really nice-looking game. I know optimization is a priority for Bluehole, and I'm hoping to keep seeing improvements as the weekly and monthly patches arrive. Updates since its Early Access launch have improved optimisation, but it still appears to be an issue for a number players.

Night mode

Adding a night mode to PUBG was something I saw suggested in our comments section, and I love it. With randomised rain and fog weather settings already used to obscure visibility on Erangel, imagine how tough fighting under the cover of darkness would be? And it'd be terrifying too—the sound of unidentified footfall closing in around you, vehicles revving over hillsides with their headlights cut, and the Red Zone briefly illuminating pockets of The Island with fire. Flash bangs would become essential for lighting up buildings, while thermal goggles and sniper scopes could be the rarest and most sought after loot drops.  

Melee mode

My recent quest playing for a bare-fisted PUBG chicken dinner ended in failure. And while I did eventually come second, it involved a lot hiding under bushes, beneath bridges and in abandoned toilets. It was a slog and although I'm not convinced an all-fists round would work, I do think a melee weapons-only bout could be great fun. Imagine spotting someone way off in the distance, but being forced to track them down one-on-one with a scythe—or instead of offing someone with a close range shotgun blast, being required to do so with a frying pan? Moreover, chasing four other survivors around in the last phase of the enclosing circle would be total chaos.

A killcam

It sort of stinks to be killed during a match, especially near the end when there are only a few players left, and not be able to spectate the end of it. I have a natural curiosity for how things will play out, perhaps in some respects driven by the desire to see my killer get his comeuppance (or, if he wins, at least to feel like I was killed by the best player). At the same time, I understand how spectator mode could be used for cheating. If you have a buddy in the same solo match, you could pass along information on enemy locations if you were allowed to just sit there watching.

At the very least, then, I'd love to see a killcam feature added. I'm often uncertain where my killer was when he dropped me, so a little replay, from the other player's perspective, would be helpful. It would help players learn from their mistakes if they could fully take in the circumstances of their deaths. Also, it could help to curb cheating or aimbotting or other exploits, providing some visual proof that someone was up to no good.

Spectator tools

The totalitarian governments in Battle Royale and The Hunger Games use the survival setup to quell youthful rebellion and political dissidence in their populations by broadcasting the bloodsport to every home. If only that was easier to do with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. It’s eminently streamable, but the overall flow of a match is difficult to see. This might be a problem only a team of broadcasters will be able to solve, but I’d still like to be able to follow players around the map, skip to players with the most kills, and snap the camera to hotspots where firefights are breaking out. Chris is right about stream sniping being an issue, but the drama of a teense round of battle royale in PUBG deserves to be captured and celebrated beyond the game. 

Better directional sound

My biggest problem in Battlegrounds—apart from the fact that my aim isn't so great—is that when I'm fired at from a long distance away, I have a lot of difficulty telling where the shots are coming from. Bluehole posted recently about how the gunshot sounds work in Battlegrounds, but in my experience—and I've seen others saying the same—even though I know what the sounds mean, it's still very difficult to tell which direction they're coming from.

Many times I've taken cover from an assailant, only to continue to take fire because the assailant isn't where I think he is, based on the sound of the gunshots. And I've seen it happen in-game to players I've been firing on. Above, I nail a guy a few times, and he moves behind a tree, but he clearly thinks the sounds are coming from the left side of the screen. He tries to put a tree between us, but fails. While I'm happy he was wrong and that I was able to kill him, I've been in the exact same situation, and I know how frustrating it is.

Sound effects balance

This is really just a matter of tweaking things during Early Access, but right now the volume of certain sound effects feels a bit out of whack. I can hear footsteps if another player is in a house with me, but can barely hear the noise of them opening a door a few feet away, so door noises need to come up a bit in the mix. Occasionally, footsteps outside seem a bit too muffled, as I've been startled in the past to suddenly see another player sprint past—though at other times footsteps sound just fine and can be heard over long distances.

Rain, meanwhile: it's just a bummer. I appreciate that sounds can be muffled during a rainstorm—that's just nature. But rain currently feels overly noisy, and here's the real kicker: it just sucks to hear the sound of rain in a game for twenty solid minutes. I absolutely hated when it rained in DayZ: I would immediately leave the server and look for a sunnier one. It's just tiring to have to listen to that constant, inescapable noise while playing a game. (Though in life, I quite enjoy it.)

Better swimming

Admittedly, swimming is probably very difficult for someone wearing a motorcycle helmet and leather coat while carrying three guns and several grenades. If anything, perhaps swimming should be a lot harder than it is in Battlegrounds. 

It just sort of sucks, though: I feel like it takes forever to paddle across a river. I don't know if it's a strong current coded in the water or what, but it's already extremely punishing (and a little boring) to swim even a short distance. As someone who has wound up in the water more than once—usually due to poor driving or fleeing in panic—I wouldn't mind feeling a bit more like Michael Phelps and a bit less than Michael Caine.*

*No offense to meant Michael Caine. He may be a very strong swimmer. It's just that he's 84 is probably not as good a swimmer as Michael Phelps, and also I think he got eaten in the Jaws movie he was in.

We've been enjoying our time with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the Early Access battle royale shooter. We've also enjoyed watching others play it, and we've put together a collection of our favorite kills (with the exception of those accomplished through the upside-down car strategy, which we already covered here).

Below, gaze upon our favorite kills involving cars, grenades, frying pans, fists, and in one case, a door. Oh yeah, a few have guns, too.

Annnd action!

This scene tracks better than most action movies, featuring car combat, lovely first person camerawork, a tense shootout in the street, and some timely reinforcements when things look grim. To see the whole clip, check out the link below. Someone get Hollywood on the horn.

Via Reddit

Up in smoke

Weed_Man deserved better than this. Weed_Man is worth more than death by motorcycle-squashing from a skyscraper’s height. No one should puff-puff pass like this. Tragic.

Via Reddit

Karma

In which Twitch streamer Ninja speaks a bit too soon. 

Via Twitch

How to fly

There’s no preventing a death like this. If you’re the PUBG Terminator’s target, might as well lay down and wait for the big shotgun in the sky to take you away. 

Via YouTube

Man vs Nature

PUBG’s most dangerous threat isn’t other players. It’s not what the big blue forcefield or the risky gear hunt. PUBG’s biggest monster is Mother Nature. I’ve seen more matches go awry due to trees leaping in front of drivers than just about anything else, and it never gets easier to watch. 

Via Reddit

Para-shoot

I really hope the player this person shot out of the air before they could even finish parachuting wasn’t a newcomer. There’d be no better excuse to quit playing videogames for good. 

Via Reddit

Car-ma

Never leave a squadmate behind, unless it’s to grab a car or motorcycle to save them with the terrible power of vehicular manslaughter. It’s hard to watch this clip without feeling A) sorry for the helpless squad getting run over one by one, and B) vicariously invigorated by the power rush the drivers are going through. 

Via Reddit

Divine intervention

PUBG can be pretty tense and surprising, but damn, that’s some poor aim. It’s a scene straight out of Pulp Fiction. On the other hand, those are some nice dance moves. The punching player earned that beatdown. 

Via Twitter

Pan, the bullet trickster 

OK, so it’s not a kill, but seeing 50 players empty their weapons into a frying pan covering another player’s ass is the triumphant inversion of death, a bold proclamation that says—well, I’m not entirely sure to be honest. It’s just funny.

Via YouTube

Bam!

Now that’s how you cook a grenade! Simmer it on a low heat, lure a disillusioned player into a small room, swap spaces, toss, and enjoy. How about that amazing ragdoll at the end? Cathartic. 

Via Reddit

Flying lesson 

Looks like this location is becoming a hotspot for cool car stunt kills. Despite how many times we’ve seen it happen, this clip earns inclusion for the dramatic editing and Arnold cameo. 

Via Twitter

Hidden weapon

A little patience can go a long way in PUBG. So can hiding in an upturned car. Plays.tv user Bashery used such a driving accident to their advantage, discreetly watching the final moments of a match unfold until only a few contenders remained before popping out and cleaning up. 

Via Plays.tv

Threading the needle

So the kills are a bit sloppy, but after defying physics by threading two bodies and a motorcycle through a thin window, I’d be a bit disoriented too.  

Via YouTube

On page two, more frying pans, flying punches, and a door death.

Supine surprise

File this under 'You Have Got To Be Kidding Me.' Not only does the player take a major fall off a cliff, survive with a sliver of health, have the wherewithal to spot another player, and have the steady hands to aim and kill him—but it's the final kill of the match. This winner deserves more than a chicken dinner.

Via Reddit.

A low blow

Rico Rodriguez from Just Cause has a particular knack for parachuting from the sky and hijacking a car before his boots even hit the ground. The player in this clip from streamer WannaSp00n is clearly no Rico Rodriguez.

Via Twitch.

Long distance relationship

Fair bit of sniping here, and while it's a knockout and not a kill, it still shows the dangers of climbing a mountain to have a look around. Nice shot.

Via Reddit.

Hail Mary

One disadvantage of playing in a squad of four is the inclination to carpool. Sure, it lets you use the diamond lane, but it also leaves you open to extremely timely grenade throws. Next time, you might want to split up before you blow up.

Via YouTube.

Stop and pop

The shooting range is naturally a great place to look for guns: unfortunately, that's not exactly a secret. Luckily, the player above stays calm, works through cover, and manages a nice little jump-n-pump-action. Hitting a moving target is tough, but hitting a stationary target when you're in motion is even more impressive.

Via Reddit, where you can watch the entire clip.

Sting like a bee

We've all been there: being chased by someone with a gun when we have no gun of our own. We've probably all also tried to fight back with our fists, but this surprise flying punch is definitely one to be savored.

Via Reddit.

Leading 'em on

Another nice bit of sniping, this time at a moving buggy. The first shot pops the driver out of the car, the next seals the deal. Next time, bring a tank.

Via Reddit.

Delivery!

I wasn't aware the word 'dope' was still being trafficked, but who cares: driving a car up a cliff, through the air, onto the terrace of a building, then jumping out and wasting the two players who just happened to be there? Yeah, that's definitely dope.

Can't see me

Here we see the wily chameleon, blending in with his surroundings using natural camouflage. The screaming in the clip is understandable. I would have screamed too.

Via Reddit.

Fried

Frying pan, or flying pan? Both, in this case. Breakfast is served.

Via YouTube.

Central air

How to deal with an unwanted guest? Show them to the door. If the door isn't handy, the window will do. Thanks for visiting!

Via Reddit.

Occupied

Remember, it's polite to knock before entering a bathroom, just in case it's occupied by four other people.

Via Reddit.

Gunslinger

I don't much care for the revolver in Battlegrounds: it takes a long time to reload and only holds a few shots. It can make dropping foes pretty satisfying, though, as the player above does with three different enemies.

Via Reddit, where you can see the entire sequence (including finishing off the three players with a car).

Knock, knock

It's not a bad idea, really, to open a door and take cover to one side, thus hopefully preventing an ambush. It does appear, however, to leave a slight risk medical scientists describe as 'Early Access Game Fatal Hover-Plummet.' Ask your doctor if opening doors is right for you.

Via Reddit.

Need a lift?

And just to prove that Battlegrounds isn't all death and mayhem, let's finish with a moment of serendipitous sportsmanship.

You don't kill your way to victory in a gruelling round of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on luck alone. Anyone who's survived a hundred-man deathmatch and come out on top will tell you that having a solid strategy is the key. Some players (like me) avoid conflict as much as necessary as the bloodbath transpires. Some players rush high-value loot areas to secure the best gear. And then there are those that intentionally flip one of Battlegrounds' disused cars so they can turtle inside it.

Earlier this week YouTuber Sir Lance and his partner stumbled into a pretty killer tactic to survive the chaos of the first 20 minutes. En route to a bunker, they accidentally flipped their sedan and landed upside down. Now, most people would do the logical thing and get out of the car, use a bandage to recover the health they lost from flipping over, and continue on foot. But not these two geniuses. 

For about 20 minutes, they sat upside down in the car and waited. At one point, Sir Lance scores an amazing kill despite being upside down with his view obstructed by the long grass—one of the most badass things I've seen in Battlegrounds so far. Eventually Sir Lance and his pal are forced to abandon the vehicle as the deadly electric field, which effectively narrows the size of the map, closes in. At that point they're in such good shape from avoiding combat that they don't have much trouble winning the round.

Being a sitting duck might sound stupid, but it works beautifully. As Evan wrote yesterday, Battlegrounds plays like a streamlined, hyperconcentrated Arma. And like Arma, there's no 'command' for flipping an overturned vehicle. And, mercifully, flipped cars also don't explode like they do in most videogames including the other popular battle royale game, H1Z1: King of the Kill.

All this means most players have learned to view overturned vehicles as useless, abandoned objects in the environment. Who could possibly anticipate that someone would be sitting inside of one just waiting? Why would they?

Those two small kinks in the established formula of how we expect vehicles to work in videogames is what makes Sir Lance's tactic so effective. And players have already started exploiting it to hilarious effect. Twitch streamer PaperbagNinja and three friends piled into a tipped over jeep and waited patiently to ambush players strolling by. With four against one, the element of surprise doesn't matter nearly as much, but that doesn't mean it's not hilarious. 

If you do decide to use this strategy, just be careful. Players are quickly wising up to it, as demonstrated by omnomanom on Reddit. 

Sadly, I don't think sneaky sedaning is going to fool people for very much longer. With more examples hitting the Battlegrounds subreddit daily, players are beginning to regard any flipped vehicles with an appropriate amount of caution.

That said, it's not like Battlegrounds' cars will go back to only being useful for something as boring as driving. No, no, no. See, the only thing more ingenious than sitting in a car for 20 minutes like a middle-aged parent waiting for their kids to finish school is using that same car for physics-defying feats of strategic prowess. Consider this clip posted to Twitter: 

Or this amazing play by Headlessturt1e where he uses a jeep for a stealthy rooftop infiltration: 

Okay, so not everything in Battlegrounds is realistic, but I'm willing to bend the rules a bit if it means more of these ridiculous stunts. 

Arma has quietly become a very influential game.

Bohemia Interactive's military sim series has been around for 15 years (including its early life as Operation Flashpoint), but its best ideas are only now being borrowed by some of today's most popular multiplayer games: Ark: Survival Evolved, H1Z1: King of the Kill, Rust, or even low-key open-world co-op romp Ghost Recon Wildlands. Directly and indirectly, these massive-scale shooters build on Arma's legacy of fidelity, big maps, and its make-your-own-fun mentality.

Add PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds to that list. Born from the Arma mod Battle Royale (which became the basis for H1Z1: King of the Kill), Battlegrounds is the latest mutation of the emerging subgenre of the same name. Despite that relatively long period of gestation, Battlegrounds' launch last week wasn't without the expected Early Access bruises. Developer Bluehole seems to be on top of it, issuing its first patch yesterday, but the reward system has been having issues. Server performance has struggled here and there. And even on lower settings, my framerate plunges when I look at the biggest cities on the map. 

Still, Battlegrounds is the best game of its kind available, thanks in large part to its considerable Arma DNA.

Concentrated

If Arma's tea, Battlegrounds is espresso. Its format compresses the time and space you're accustomed to in sandbox FPSes, dropping you into a 64 km² map (much smaller than Arma 3's 270 km²) that perpetually shrinks in diameter. King of the Kill players know how this system works: a 'safe zone' is marked on the map a few minutes into the match, and all players have to scramble to get inside. Anyone caught outside takes damage over time. Every few minutes, a smaller zone within the previous zone appears, forcing anyone left alive closer together. A match takes 20 minutes at most.

Some core Arma mechanics are purposefully shrunk down, too. Your compass is a fixed part of the UI, not something you have to find, equip, then 'pull out' by hitting a key. Body positioning matters, but you don't have nine different infantry stances to fiddle with. Each gun shoots a different caliber of ammo, but it's an easy system to grasp.

In short: Battlegrounds isn't a simulation, but it retains plenty of Arma's spirit. Using your eyes to spot and track enemies is an essential skill, for example. When you see someone running across a field, there's this 'I know something you don't know' sensation—I can totally shoot this guy, he doesn't see me, you'll think. But like Arma and DayZ, it's usually not a matter of putting them under your crosshairs and jabbing the left mouse button. You want to wait until they're out in the open, when they're checking their inventory, when they're preoccupied and aloof. In these moments, I love the way Battlegrounds asks me to think critically and examine an enemy's body language, check which towns are nearby, or guess based on the state of the ever-changing safe zone what that enemy might do next.

Like Arma, too, you should play it with friends. Scrounging for loot is more satisfying when you're filling in each other's equipment gaps ("Anyone got any 7.62mm?") and announcing big finds over voice chat. Moments of leadership emerge: deciding when to jump out of the plane at the start, deciding which group of buildings to raid next, figuring out the right time to ditch a vehicle. Someone's got to make those calls, and I like that Battlegrounds makes me feel the disappointment when they go wrong alongside doses of GTA Online-style calamity.

Other than the performance imperfections and untenable gunshot sounds, I'm only curious, and slightly concerned, about how quickly Battlegrounds might age. Although it's a prettier, grittier, and more deliberate game than King of the Kill, those who've already put a ton of time into battle royale might eventually feel like Battlegrounds is a better-fitting set of pants. The Early Access offering is shallow: a map, essentially one mode, and the mildly satisfying lure of sick trenchcoats awaiting you in the loot system. It'll be interesting to see if the devs can keep pace with the game's burgeoning community.

Overall, Battlegrounds' approach to simplifying simulation-style systems and mechanics is successful. Many of my gaming friends who bounced off of Arma because they perceived it as too unwieldy are diving in, and those who haven't yet have been asking me enthusiastically about whether they should. I'm glad to have a short-form gateway game to sell them on the fun of FPS fidelity.