PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds will soon add map selection—four months after introducing its second playable arena, Miramar.
As detailed in this Steam Community update, developer PUBG Corp says it made the decision after "a lot of discussion and serious research", and a great deal of player feedback.
At present, map selection between Miramar and Erangel occurs at random—similar to how creator Brendan Greene's previous Battle Royale mods operated prior to PUBG. In December, the developer announced maps would "not be selectable right after PC 1.0 release", however now suggests work on the feature is "almost complete". It'll launch in full after a stint on the game's test server.
"We analyzed tens of millions of matches and sorted the data by server, mode, and time to make sure map selection wouldn’t break the game for anyone," says the Steam update. "We wanted to make sure that we could create a solution that worked for every region’s players, even the ones with a naturally low server population."
The post continues, suggesting players in different regions have different preferences and playstyles, and that the developer's feedback was sourced from players all over the world.
The post adds: "Ultimately, we created a version of map selection that we think is unlikely to cause issues for matchmaking. That said, we’ll still have to keep a close eye on it, since it could become problematic as new maps continue to be added."
Here's how map selection looks in practice:
PUBG Corp notes that the UI featured there is subject to change.
Add Map Selection, you say? OK! We’re finally bringing the ability to select a map to PUBG. We plan to roll this update out on Test Servers soon. Learn more about how this feature will work and our process developing it: https://t.co/3V7XNJLSZkApril 19, 2018
