Playerunknown's Battlegrounds first 50v50 event start tonight
Round up the laaads!
When two stag or hen parties chance upon each other down Espionage and merge, the ground trembles at the might of their combined banter and windows the length of Victoria Street rattle to their roars. I cannot begin to imagine the consequences if twelve parties should join forces. We'll find out this weekend in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, as the stag & hen battle royale will tonight launches its first 50v50 event mode. God help the people of Yasnaya Polyana. You can buy some new threads too, as the devs are whopping a wad of Plunbucks in apology for that recent server-sorting screw-up.
This weekend's event is the first appearance of 'Platoon Mode', where the 100 players are divided into only two teams. Each side is made of five ten-player squads, all filled in with automatch, and simply trying to murder each other to bits. Players not in your own squad will be marked so you don't accidentally murder them.
The event will start at 3am on Friday the 19th of October (or for Pacific timezoners, that's 7pm tonight) then run until 3am on Monday the 22nd (7pm on Sunday for Pacifists).
50v50 modes are my favourites in Fortnite Battle Royale and I've already enjoyed Plunkbat's events with eight-player squads (though the banter did get out of hand), so I'm keen to see how this goes. Round up the laaads.
This first Platoon Mode sounds a pretty simple megamurder but more complex may follow. The next patch will add Custom Match options for 'War Mode: Conquest', a 50v50 mode where teams will compete to capture and hold objectives to score points. Presumably that'll come as an event mode later too.
Update #23, now live on the test server, will also introduce a new weapon. The Skorpion is a 9mm machine pistol capable of full-auto fire, which looks like it can become quite nifty with an added extended magazine, Uzi stock, and foregrip. Maybe not great, but nifty.
That update will also make the blue zone wall less opaque, walking back a recent change that made it a lot harder to see players out in the blue. And it'll fix some bugs, tweak some things... it's not a major update, just a small bit of progress. I'd expect Update #23 to probably hit the live servers next week.
I had half-hoped they might have big improvements up their sleeves to make a bold statement after the launch of Cod Blopout but ah, slow and steady it is. Though sometimes it's more 'one step forwards, two steps back.'
Following the recent messy addition of automatic region sorting, where a bug meant players could be sorted onto distant servers where they lagged, developers PUBG Corp are handing out an apology gift. Log in by Monday the 23rd and you'll receive 20,000 Battle Points plus a new hat: a black beanie with shiny red headphones over the top.
"We sincerely apologise for the negative experience caused by our recent server connectivity and matchmaking related issues," they say. I spent my apology Plunkbucks on Plunkbags that mostly gave me the same pair of sandals, which I can't say I found a great comfort.