Playerunknown's Battlegrounds shotguns new event mode, quietly adds team deathmatch custom mode
Chick-chack!
A new event mode starts in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds tonight, and it focuses on something close to my heart. For three days, the Tequila Sunrise squad mode will arm everyone with only shotguns and melee weapons for a showdown on Miramar starting with a smaller safe zone. I'm delighted. I'm a sucker for the tension and risk/reward of weapons which fire slowly but can spit wild damage, and often found clinging to my over-and-under shotgun for as long as possible. Let's do this.
In other Plunknews, a team deathmatch mode with respawning, named War, has popped up unannounced in its Custom Match options. Those rounds are fiddly to get into but hey, it's there now if you really want it.
Tequila Sunrise will flood Miramar with shotguns, melee weapons, and level 3 equipment, all spawning three times their rate. Miramar would usually be a map far too big and open for such long-range weapons, but rounds in the event will start with the first safe zone smaller than usual. The safe zone will be visible while the plane is still in the air, rather than waiting until everyone is down, so squads (and it is only for squads) can pick their spots better. And no, no airdrops will fall during this.
The event will start at 3am on Friday here in the UK (which is Thursday evening in America), then end at 3am on Monday (Sunday evening over there). More details and timezones in the announcement.
Plunkbat's event modes are less spectacular than Fortnite Battle Royale's so far, but it's a less spectacular game so I'm not disappointed we're not all running around with rocket launchers. I would like to see them bring back and build upon that 8v8 mode too, which unusually combined two random four-player squads into one megasquad. That strange feeling when your hen night merges with a stag do. My dream is for eight-player squads locked inside VW vans.
As for War Mode, that squad deathmatch is now live in the Custom Games mode, appearing unannounced and out of nowhere. It's just here. It goes down in small sections of the map, dropping players in already armed with random equipment, then you try to murder your way to the frag limit. Respawns are in waves on a timer, with the plane flying over to rain players down every thirty seconds.
This isn't that big a deal for now because playing Plunkbat's Custom Matches is such a mess. Only certain people are allowed to host servers, most of them are private, and there's no matchmaking so you need to find an open server that hasn't yet started a round. But if you do want team deathmatch, it is now playable in some form.
Here's some War action from "norovnog". I didn't hear any terrible swearing but this is an online game and they are playing with team chat on so oh god I'm so sorry if people are awful on it the Internet is terrible:
