In a dev blog posted on their official Steam page, the PUBG developers have announced some sweeping changes to weapon damage, the attachment system, and the loot table arriving in an upcoming patch.
In the short post, the team explained that there is currently an imbalance of weapon use in the game. Players are often opting for assault rifles over the other weapons in the game in all forms of conflict. Apparently, this goes against the design goals of the team, and in the post they explicitly mention that the team’s “goal is to make it so no one gun will feel objectively better than the others.” While they are being cagey with numbers until the actual patch notes, it seems that PUBG Corp. is about to make some big shifts where weapon damage is concerned.
These aren’t the only significant changes coming down the pipe, as the post also mentions big moves in the weapon attachment system. Currently there are a wide array of attachments for the muzzles, stocks, magazines, and sights of the various weapons in the game. The shifts that will be happening for this system are designed to give players a “wider array of attachment options,” although what that might mean exactly is a little murky.
An additional significant alteration to the game is the removal of the level three helmet from the normal loot table. The developers note in their post that having a level three helmet functionally gives players an “extra life” because even a headshot from the game’s most powerful weapons will not fully down a player wearing an undamaged level three helmet. Using that logic, the team are going to be making the level three helmet into an item that can only be gotten from the plane-dropped care packages that appear sporadically during a game.
Image: PUBG Corporation
To me, this last decision is the most impactful one for the average player. Changing weapon damage and the attachment system universally alters the game for everyone, but changing who has access to level three helmets means that there will be a reduction in mid-level players who make it to final circles on good fundamentals and fading a lucky headshot from a better player. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that’s one of the goals for the change. “We don’t want luck alone to determine who gets items like this,” the devs explain, “so we’re removing it from the normal loot spawn tables and limiting it to care packages only.”
I’m not quite sure how to work out the logic that differentiates finding an item on the ground as more or less lucky than hoping you’re in the flight path of a crate that might spawn an item you want in it (and how lucky you need to be for that crate to be uncontested), but clearly there’s some kind of calculus going on here that’s I’m not aware of.
As Reddit user Ryan_Lim notes in the top comment in the Reddit thread dedicated to the post, “Demotion of Level 3 Helmet to Air-Crate only is basically a buff to pro Kar98k users.” In a game like PUBG, where its systems all have significant impacts on each other, removing gear like the level three helmet from the world means that a skillful (or just a lucky) shot from a powerful gun at a long range is enough to take you out of a given game. I’m also not sure how this figures into the “luck vs skill” ideas evoked in the post. Figuring out how to balance these things together is a difficult task, especially since weapon damage is being operated on at the same time.
Comments
7 responses to “PUBG’s Best Helmets Are Going To Get Harder To Find”
Not sure about the helmet thing. Why not make it twice as rare or something. Also, I hope this means they’re nerfing some of the assault rifles, specifically the m4 which is way too OP at the moment.
It requires more attachments, has a lower dps than most ar (only just edging out the ak, but still losing to the m16). The m4 sees wayyy less use than the m16 and for good reason, outside of not being able to attach X8 or higher the M16 does everything better.
The real change that is needed in ar group is the ak, the poor thing repeatedly gets nerfs to its recoil pattern and damage with no offset. The only thing that it does better than the other ar is close range vs level 3 helmet.
The M4 is equally as good if not better than the AUG at the moment and the attachments are easy to get. The AK is useless without a compensator except really close range, the scar is slightly better at super long range but worse at everything else, similar with the m16. The difference is the best players destroy tap firing with the M4 and no other non-airdrop weapon competes with it at almost every range in every situation (minus snipers at super long range)
The M4 is fine, if anytjing it needs a slight recoil buff when full of attachments. The Scar is the jack of all trades, master of none (it also pulls same dps as M4). M16 has highest lootable ar dps, has great recoil control and highest ar bullet velocity. The aug has standard 5.56 bullet velocity, ridiculously low recoil and second highest ar fire rate. Groza is highest burst dps, second highest sustained dps (only loses to the dps), easy mode recoil, but it suffers from 7.62 bullet velocity.
If anything the vanilla M4 needs a slight buff to its close range as it is outclassed by everyother ar inside of 50m.
got rekt too many times?
Sounds good to me.
Difficult to turn people away from AR’s though. They are the best weapon in most realistic sims due to their effectiveness at all ranges.
It’s hard to imagine an SMG ever being more useful than an AR in a game like PUBG.
I don’t know anyone who thought the guns weren’t fairly balanced already, they should be focusing on bigger issues like their disgraceful net code and abysmal optimisation and 12 month old bugs…