Playerunknown's Battlegrounds gets foggy next week
Shroud us from our enemies
A new foggy map variant will descend upon Playerunknown's Battlegrounds [official site] in next week's update, developers Bluehole Studio have announced, along a new rifle. I'm still excited when a Plunkbat round launches and I discover it's on the dusk or rainy variant, the latter for how it changes the importance of sound and the former for looking just so darn pretty. Gloomy fog shrouding distance areas sounds great. As for the early access FPS's new gun, it'll be the Ruger Mini-14 - the rifle that B.A. Baracus and the gang carried in The A-Team.
The next update will arrive some time next week, Bluehole tweeted. Patches are less frequent now, remember. "Some of the key features of the new build include a new weapon, foggy weather condition, FPP leaderboards and multiple bug fixes," they continued. They added that the Mini-14 "will be available all over the island of Erangel" (yes, that's the name of the current map), so that's a regular weapon rather than another crate drop.
The regular real-world Mini-14 uses 5.56mm ammo and often comes with a 20-round magazine, which is what this looks like. Another 5.56mm rifle would be a curious addition as Plunkbat already has plenty but not that much 5.56 ammo (relative to AKMs and 7.62 ammo, at least), enough that my Plunkpals and I are often short of 5.56, so I'd hope drop rates would be tweaked as this goes in.
I'm just glad it's not another mega-fancy rare gun that'll burst your head from a mile away. My favourite parts of Plunkbat are close-range fights with scrappy weapons, UMPs and shotguns and Vectors that are made good enough with attachments. Like in Kane & Lynch 2, it's a little boring when fancy guns get involved. Okay, my most recent win was powered by a stacked and silenced SKS, but I'd rather it'd been the Vector I had ditched for that gun.
My dream Plunkbat mod will remove the fancy guns. It will be named Crapbat.
In the meantime, a foggy map variant sounds nice. I do like how the endless downpour of the rain variant creates cover for noisy shenanigans, and I'm keen to find out quite how thick the fog is. It's fine if it's just pretty but being game-changing could be magic.
Other Plunkbat features still somewhere over the horizon are climbing and vaulting, changes to stop AFK farmers, and new maps. Climbing and vaulting are what I most want as they will hugely reshape how many Plunkbat fights go. And oh god, please let Battlegrounds bicycles be real.
The makers of chief Battle Royale rival H1Z1: King of the Kill are currently focused on differentiating it from Plunkbat by leaning harder on speed and action.