PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds players have been through a lot since the game’s release in early 2017. Although the survival shooter went viral and earned the love of millions of fans, players had, and still have, a lot of complaints.
The game’s been buggy. It’s been full of cheaters. And now, the rollout of a $US10 ($13) Event Pass has sparked the ire of its already ireful community.
Last week, Battlegrounds got on multiplayer gaming’s hot new trend and got an Event Pass. Like Fortnite‘s Battle Pass or Rocket League‘s Rocket Pass, an Event Pass is a paid progression system that awards players cosmetic items such as costumes when they have earned enough experience points to level up.
The Event Pass gives players the opportunity to earn experience points by completing tasks such as “Play 3 games on Sanhok where you got at least 1 headshot” or “Heal 200 hp 5 times in a single game”.
Battle passes are so hot right now, with both Battlegrounds and Rocket League receiving them at the same time months after Fortnite‘s success with them. In theory, it’s a great way to encourage players to appreciate a game’s breadth and depth and award them for doing so.
In Fortnite, the pass is mostly uncontroversial: The game is free to play, but for $US10 ($13), players can add a sense of direction and achievement to its otherwise drop-in-drop-out, snack-sized structure.
In Battlegrounds, however, the introduction of the Pass has struck the community a little differently. A lot of players wanted a progression system like this, yes, but they expected it to be added to the game as a free update, considering that the $US30 ($40) Battlegrounds is not free to play.
Moreover, the Event Pass system has apparently launched with a lot of bugs. Battlegrounds has received an onslaught of negative reviews on Steam since the Event Pass’s release.
On Battlegrounds‘ subreddit, players have detailed several issues with Event Pass quests that make them difficult to accomplish.
For example, it looks as though a few quests are only achievable in solos rather than in duos or squads mode, which many players prefer. Others require that players deal a “killing blow” to opponents, the conditions of which seem hyper-specific.
Also, it seems, for Battlegrounds to record a player’s achievement, players must play a “complete game”, which the Pass defines as a game in which they survive for five minutes after the plane takes off. Anyone who’s played Battlegrounds at all knows that isn’t always a realistic scenario.
Bugs can be fixed. A Battlegrounds communications leader said on Reddit that they’re looking into these apparent bugs: “Yep been seeing the reports. Team is working on fixes and retroactive XP granting. It will probably be a messy process because it’s our first time doing something like this but we’ll make sure to take care of you guys.”
The other side to the backlash against Battlegrounds‘ Event Pass is the simple fact of its existence. It isn’t a full progression system. Battlegrounds has struggled with optimisation since release. And in a game where a win comes around very, very rarely, giving players the opportunity to achieve small accomplishments can help keep them around.
One Redditor, whose post received 61,000 upvotes, said it best:
“We have supported this game since early access. PUBG has made over $730 million [$AU988 million]… Yet, it’s still not optimised, cheaters are rampant, crates are locked behind keys. Even after charging $30 [$AU40] for the game, they now introduce this $9.99 [$AU13] Event Pass. If this were free to play, none of us would care.”
A Battlegrounds spokesperson told Kotaku that they will have patch notes going up by midweek to “address some of the fixes we are implementing in regard to the Event Pass”.
Comments
13 responses to “PUBG’s Event Pass Drops, Lands Badly”
Far out people are whingers. Don’t buy it? The answer is very simple.
From my understanding you still earn rewards even without purchasing it.
Lacking the ability to empathize?
It’s not a free to play game and they’re introducing free to play mechanics – not hard to see how long term supporters of the game would be annoyed. Fortnite Vs Pubg will be a good university case study someday – one has done everything right and one has done pretty much everything wrong.
Those rewards are timed. You don’t keep them. People whinge because PUBG had everything it needed to be a great game that stuck around for a long time. Instead its just a waste of potential being driven into the ground by a bunch of incompetent morons.
Wait so the rewards you get from the battle pass achievements only last a certain amount of time? How long?
My initial feeling was much like Sligh’s – that people were whinging because “it’s too hard”. But if it take ages to get the achievements and then they actually drop off I could understand being annoyed. I’d have thought if you got cosmetics they’d be permanent, most other games do that.
Nah, you keep the ones in the purchased pass – but there are also free rewards you earn which are separate from the pass and those are only unlocked for a limited amount of time.
People aren’t really complaining about things being too hard either. Some of the challenges are just absurd and not fun – like surviving for 15 minutes on Miramar without firing a shot or taking damage. Compare that to the stuff in Fortnite’s battle pass and the quality and thought put into it is night and day.
I also read on Reddit that one of the challenges is to last 30 minutes (and win?) a round on Sanhok. Rounds on Sanhok tend to end after 28 minutes according to many users. I don’t really play PUBG anymore and I haven’t bought the pass, but I still follow the game and sloppiness like this is textbook Bluehole.
Hmm I’m not sure what the problem is then. Is it really an achievement if it’s easy to get? Sounds more like a participation award (“aww you tried” award). Take the Sanhok one, if it’s possible (but rare) to hit 30 minutes then it’s still a valid achievement. If matches *never* take 30 minutes then it’s not. I’d assume they’re trying to tune it so some achievements are easy and some might takes weeks, even months to get. I have no problem with that as long as it’s *possible*.
I’m not a fan of super short term availability achivements. Like some of Warcraft’s, where you have to login and do something on one particular day. That kinda sucks if you have to work/are sick/have other commitments. But if you could get an achievement at any time over the course of a year I have no problems with it.
Way to copy Fortnite 😉
In defence of PUBG (I know I know, *ducks rotting vegetables*), it’s not your traditional ‘full price’ game. Many people have received more than their fair share of enjoyable game time for the $40, and now if they want to play a new map or unlock a new progression system they have to pay $10 more, which still has it beneath the common ‘full price’ of games. If you don’t feel you’re getting your money’s worth, stop supporting them. If there isn’t value in what they’re providing, don’t buy it.
Having these constant online outrage competitions every time a publisher doesn’t give something away fr free is getting really old.
Your phrasing makes it sound like it’s a buy-once $10 DLC. To be clear to any others reading, the event pass is $10 per event season, which is expected to be around 4 weeks. For comparison, Fortnite seasons last 2-3 months.
Sorry, just read a bit more. So everyone gets the free map and if you want some extra cosmetics from the event permanently you pay $10. Again, if you don’t see the value don’t but it and send a message that way.
Yeah timed cosmetics are super lame. From what I understand too you get currency with the fortnite pass that allows you to purchase subsequent seasons’ battle passes as long as you play enough during the season you purchased.
Pubg, the best game on steam, owned by the most incompetent spoiled developers. They clearly are un concerned with how the community perceives them, almost as un concerned with how bad their game runs….im still having early fights at sub 30fps…not another cent Brownhole.
With loot boxes out of favor with the public they need a new way to suck money out of fans with minimal effort. Hence event pass.