PUBG's pre-match starting island is the pits. And even if being punched in the privates for 40 straight seconds while someone else screams expletives in your face is your idea of fun—watching your performance cough and splutter as your fps nosedives below 20 surely isn't.
The game's latest patch targets the latter (for the former: mute lobby sound. Always mute lobby sound) by introducing multiple spawn areas, designed to prevent players from gathering in the same place at the same time. In turn, this aims to boost server performance. Likewise, weapons have also been removed from the starting island.
"Through the last patch, we were able to improve server and client performance by adjusting the visible distance while the character is in the air," says this Steam Community update. "In the current patch we are spreading out the pre-match starting locations. Previously, all the players would spawn together at the same location awaiting the start of the match."
The post adds: "Lots of interaction among multiple players in such a small area had a high impact on the servers. To solve this, we have introduced multiple areas where players gather before the match start. As a result, the performance, both server and client-side, has improved."
The developer adds that "additional modifications" tied to airplane performance are also planned, which we should expect more on soon.
In the wake of its 100,000-player "single wave" ban—not to mention official banned player figures pushing 1.5 million—PUBG Corp is also testing a new anti-cheat measure said to be "still under development". As always, when the above tweaks are stable on test servers, they'll be applied to the live ones.
