Playerunknown's Battlegrounds adds Vikendi night variant
Silent night, deadly night
The moonlit version of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds map Vikendi has launched in the main version of the game, after a week on the test server. Green rays of aurora borealis dance across the sky, the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, and the mid-sized snowy map doesn't play too differently but it does look jolly nice. This update also reworks item spawn rates on Vikendi, making assault rifles more common while SMGs and DMRs become less so. Vikendi and Erangel get a new SMG too, though the tracked snowbike also due to hit Vikendi in this update has been delayed.
I only played a little moonlit Vikendi during testing because being sorted onto the Asia test server means it's all kinda a mess and hard to get a feel for. As of this morning, the random weather variant is now in the main game and around the world, thanks to the honking great 9GB update. But I do feel confident saying it's pretty.
Vikendi's snowbike was on the test servers and supposed to launch with this update, but developers PUBG Corp have held it back "due to some gameplay issues that need to be fixed." They're probably referring to how it can sometimes freak out fling its rider at great speed to their death. The snowbike should launch in a future update "once the issues have been resolved."
See the Update #25 patch notes for full details on the update's balance changes (including making armour more durable), new weapon sight attachment, and rejigged item spawns.
I'm still hoping for more weather variants which make big changes to how Plunkbat plays. Erangel's sadly-removed fog variant ruled out long-range murder and brought many terrible surprises from bumping into a squad you couldn't even see, creating tense circles towards the end when 20 players cram into a tiny space with no idea where anyone else is. The dynamic weather system introduced with the Sanhok map, drifting between rain and fog and sun and cloud, is nice but not the same.
A few other things are currently on the go at Plunkcorp. They're testing a free-to-play version for slower PCs, though it's only in testing in Thailand and may not even launch properly there let alone worldwide. They're also investing reports of a pret-ty serious invisible player bug.
If you're still Plunking hard, you might enjoy gloating with the site which shows your kills on (or from) Twitch streamers.