Wait long enough at the start of a Battlegrounds match and you’ll be forcibly ejected out of the plane, pushed out the back to await a miserable fate. Most players don’t care, because they’re too busy trying to get a vehicle or good loot.
But some players are taking a different approach. Rather than landing at the best spot, they’re waiting until the game forces them out of the plane – so they can pad their stats by knocking out all the AFKers who land with them.
Where AFKers land is pretty irrelevant in terms of winning the actual game. If you’re AFK at the start, you won’t have any items, and knocking them out just wastes time that could be spent getting a better location or loot.
But if you’re the kind of person who cares about your stats, the AFK camping strategy has one huge benefit: it makes your kill/death ratio look miles better, which bumps your name up on the leaderboard.
You can see a little of this behaviour in a video from Edberg, where he and his partner immediately rack up two kills each in the first few seconds of the game:
A more extreme version was captured by Crater_Games on Twitch, who ran into what looked like a farm of AFKers.
In the grand scheme of Battlegrounds, it’s hardly the biggest problem. But besides the chicken dinners, the leaderboard is the only other reward mechanic that Battlegrounds has. Player ratings are calculated on two metrics: your win rating, which increases in proportion to your placement at the end of a match, and your kill rating. Kill ratings are affected by your kill/death ratio at the end of each match, and the combination of a kill rating and win rating influences your overall ELO.
Right now, your ELO isn’t factored into matchmaking. Matches are done completely at random, so you could end up with first-timers or run into squads of experts. But down the road Battlegrounds will get ranked playlists (as well as tiers for player ratings, like the Bronze/Silver/Gold etc. in Overwatch) that match up players according to their ELO.
When that happens, the impact of AFK camping will have some tangible value. For now, people can just pad their stats while getting a bit of extra variety by leaving your starting location up to the whims of the RNG gods.
Update: Just wanted to clarify that the first video is only meant to illustrate how landing with AFKers happens. There was no suggestion that Edberg and his partner have been gaming Battlegrounds or doing anything else untoward; just wanted to make that clear. The original story remains in full above.
Comments
5 responses to “Battlegrounds Players Are Padding Their Stats By Landing With AFKers”
Ive always done this every now and again. Usually more than one person tries to do it so it turns into a boxing match between two or three non afk people. The trick is to pretend your afk till the last moment!
I’ve dropped with the AFK’ers before because I was grabbing a coffee, quickly sped to the ground, grabbed a car, and ran over the one jerk trying to punch everyone else out, then proceeded with my match as per usual.
They should make the plane drop afk players in the water.
It sometimes does.
I’ll admit to doing this, but for the money, not the stats. When you’re not so good, you can spend 20 minutes in a game just to get like 50 coins. With the lootboxes starting at 700 and increasing that much each subsequent box, sometimes you need a break from not getting any money.
I have done this and had it done to me so I can’t complain. I do it sometimes as I have had afk-ers wake up on me and then come a hunting me. Can’t have that.