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New PUBG PC test patch overhauls all grenades, takes M24 out of crates, brings big performance improvements

Sherif Saed avatar
News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor
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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is due for another big patch on PC this week.

This week's PUBG update actually hit test servers early yesterday, but PUBG Corp. only came around to revealing the details later that day. Patch 14, as the developer is calling it, comes with a number of key changes.

The biggest is the overhaul of all throwables, that includes frag grenades, flash grenades, and molotovs. Frag grenades have been greatly buffed, in both their effective range and damage.

Stun grenades will now not only impair a player's vision, they'll also do the same to their hearing, and ability to shoot accurately (no ADS). These updates to stun grenades come with a new set of animations that should make it easier to tell if your target has been stunned (hand over eyes).

Molotovs are also getting an increase to their area of effect, but the most interesting addition is that fire will now spread along wooden surfaces indoors, such as floors and walls. The flames can spread further when you throw more of them.

The M24 sniper rifle, which has long been a crate-only weapon, can now be found as normal floor loot. To compensate for its increased availability, the patch is lowering its damage from 88 to 79. PUBG Corp. says the intention is to provide an alternative to the Kar98k.

Apart from the mechanical changes, the update brings a new anti-cheat detector developed in-house. You'll now see it launch alongside the game, and it offers a compatibility mode in case the default, security mode gives you issues.

As far as performance, and following up from the recent developer letter, patch 14 makes a few updates that should result in increased performance for all. That includes improving character model rendering, optimising character movement while skydiving, and the biggest one, increasing "the speed at which the server transfers data about objects."

The update will hit live servers following four hours of maintenance that kick off today at 7pm PT / 10pm ET, which is 3am BST on May 31, which is also when the new leaderboard season is set to begin.

Check out all the patch notes below.

Gameplay

  • Increased frag grenade damage and effective range
  • Frags previously had to be within 2.6m of player models to deal lethal damage. They now deal lethal damage within 3.5m, moderate damage from 3.5m through 8.5m, and low damage from 8.5m through 10m.
  • The maximum effective range of stun grenade has been increased to 20m
  • Depending on distance from the explosion, the direct effect can blind the player for a maximum of 5.5 seconds, and a minimum of one second (when 20m away).
  • Depending on distance from the explosion, the indirect effect can blind the player for a maximum of three seconds.
  • Characters blinded by a stun grenade now cover their faces. This is a new animation.
  • Spectators are now also blinded when spectating someone hit with a stun grenade
  • Stun grenades will now briefly blind and deafen the thrower if they explode behind their back when cooked.
  • You’ll now be unable to ADS while blinded.
  • Molotov cocktails now have new effects and their damage has been increased.
  • Molotovs can now deal indirect damage and burn damage (as damage over time), depending on whether or not you're standing directly in the flames. If you're in the flames you'll take both types of damage.
  • Indirect damage (taken when standing in the flames) has been increased from 10 to 12.5 damage per second.
  • After catching fire, players will take burn damage as damage over time (10 damage per second) for a total of four seconds.
  • You’ll now be unable to ADS while taking burn damage.
  • Flames now spread further along wooden surfaces in houses
  • Flames from Molotovs spread further if another Molotov is thrown on top of the flames.
  • A new animation has been added for character models who are suffering burn damage. They’ll attempt to pat out the flames using their hands.

-Weapon and attachment balance:

  • Reduced vertical and horizontal recoil of the SCAR-L
  • Decreased basic damage of the M24 from 88 to 79
  • M24 will no longer dropped in care package. It spawns in the world
  • The tactical stock and cheek pad are now less effective at improving recoil recovery rate. It now improves ADS speed.
  • Light grip no longer affects weapon basic recoil control or recoil recovery speed
  • Light grip now decreases first shot/single shot recoil by about 15%. Animation kick reduction has been changed to 20% (from 30%).
  • To make the Vector a little easier to find, we’ve increased its spawn rate at the expense of the spawn rate of the UMP-9 (overall SMG spawn rate remains the same).
  • Increased world spawn rate of DMRs.

UI/UX

  • Added a UI message showing when healing items can’t be used.
  • Average swimming distance has been added to player stats, on the career screen

New anti-cheat tech

  • We’ve added a new anti-cheat solution, developed in-house at PUBG Corp
  • Expect to see a new popup when you start the client.
  • It’d be more helpful for us if you run the anti-cheat tool using Security Mode, but if that gives you problems, please choose Compatibility Mode.

Performance

  • We’ve improved the character model rendering process to prevent some small frame drop issues.
  • We’ve optimized character movement and animation while skydiving to improve framerate when multiple players are nearby.
  • We’ve made some improvements to our network code to reduce network latency.
  • We’ve increased the speed at which the server transfers data about objects (items, doors, fences) to address the fact that sometimes items spawn in late after players parachute in.
  • We’ve improved some inefficient processes with the way the server updates certain frames on vehicles and character models. This should resolve resolve some abnormal physics affecting vehicles.

Sound

  • You can now toggle the new HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) sound feature in the options menu (for opponent’s gunshot sounds only). The feature, which simulates fully three dimensional sound even for two-channel stereo headphones, was explained in greater detail in our dev blog last week.
  • Reduced the volume of the care package airplane.

Leaderboard

  • The total rating points gained/lost per match has been increased, to better define the skill difference between players.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed some issues causing abnormal collisions in spots on Erangel and Miramar.
  • Characters should no longer get stuck while vaulting in particular spots around Erangel.
  • Fixed an issues allowing characters to pass through objects in certain locations on Miramar.
  • Improved the accuracy of the throwing trajectory indicator for stun grenades
  • Fixed a visual glitch in the inventory screen that occurred when attaching a choke to the sawed-off .
  • Fixed an issue that was resulting in some strange collisions if players ever jumped on top of a vehicle which had players in it.
  • Scope zeroing on the crossbow is no longer incorrectly enabled and set to an incorrect value by default.
  • Fixed an issue causing stun grenades to appear to bounce around for while after breaking a window.
  • Fixed an issue where the cheek pad’s vertical recoil control attribute was excluded in in-game tooltip.
  • Fixed an issue which prevented the cheek pad from adding 10% vertical recoil recovery when attached to the SLR.
  • Fixed an issue when hip-firing for an extended duration, the gun would appear to be lowered
  • Fixed an issue that caused the effect from stun grenades to appear differently depending on graphical settings

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