Playerunknown's Battlegrounds adds more ugly clothes
Plus performance
Two new crates of clothing items have arrived in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, one of them paid and one free. I am told they are inspired by 70s and 80s fashion. The odds are still that the crates will give you hideous clothing, just terrible, real awful looks, but at least there's no chance of the game casually handing you one which requires buying a key to open it. The new paid crate is not thrown into the regular reward pool, see, so you'll only get one if you want it. Today's update also includes a few changes meant to improve performance, though it's not clear how effective they are.
The most notable of the performance-oriented changes is that you can no longer see players inside the plane. The door remains closed and, so you know how many people are left to drop, the UI now has a little diagram showing which seats are occupied. This change is meant to improve performance for both clients and the servers in the early game.
Some breakable fences on the Miramar map have been replaced with unbreakable fences or walls, also in the name of improving performance, so do check before ramming into anything you remember as breakable.
How much do these changes improve things? Dunno. I wouldn't expect massive improvements. Some players are actually reporting their framerate has noticeably worsened with this update, though others say theirs is the same and... such is the magic of Internet self-reporting and the wonders of the myriad conceivable computer configurations.
As for the new shinies, they come in the Militia and Fever crates. The Militia crate is free to open, and dropped into the pool of potential reward crates. You've got a 40% chance of receiving a Fever crate when you hand over Plunkbucks for a crate. The Fever crate is an entirely separate option in the menu, and must both be bought with Plunkbucks then unlocked with a key which costs $2.50.
I opened a load of Fever crates on the test server (which gave some free keys for testing purposes) and mostly received unpleasant white turtlenecks, which certainly convinced me not to spend any money on them. There are some nice sunglases and a few colourful odds and ends in there, but the odds of getting anything good are low. The chances of getting each item are listed in the patch notes. Though if you do get something rare enough, you will be able to swap it for a solid gold yacht so who the hell knows.
In March, the developers plan to lay out their update plans for the months ahead, which include a new map. Fingers crossed it has fog because I do miss that Erangel variant, which the devs removed (along with the rainy one) when the game left early access. I realise those weren't popular with everyone, but a map select option is coming so curmudgeons could leave us to stumble gaily through the mist.