Playunknown's Battlegounds sprinkles more buildings, off-road routes and better loot onto Miramar

People are leaving Miramar in droves. A confusingly large number of people apparently prefer the original Erangel map, which is why I've seen player counts dwindle as people leave at the start of a desert match, seeking greener pastures. Nowadays, those kids are even editing game files so they automatically leave a round when it loads up Miramar.

Today's update to the test servers for Playerunknown's Battlegrounds seeks to tempt some of those players back. My guess is if anything's going to do that, it'll be the promise of extra buildings and cover across the map. I haven't tried it myself yet though, so the jury's still out.

Miramar's refresh also includes new off-road routes and improved loot spawning for some areas. The update will bring bug fixes too, and Bluehole are again testing the upcoming new anti-cheat measure - though it's not stable enough for the main game just yet.

The other main change is an update to the replay system which has rendered all previous replays unviewable. That's fine with me, because both of the replays I've tried to watch so far have thrown up error message. Adam tells me it's one of the best additions to Plunkbat, so I hope the new version works for me.

The update is now live on the test servers and should hit the main game soon. You can find the full patch notes here.

I just read back through my first impressions of the desert, and I did get one thing wrong - there are fewer buildings overall, not more. It'll be interesting to see just how radically these new additions shake things up. Getting killed from nowhere when there's nothing you can do to stop it is unequivocally the worst thing about Plunkbat, so I'm hoping being able to stumble towards cover will mean I survive those situations a little more often.

Miramar leaves Alice (ironically) cold, but it's still my preferred map of the two. It's hard to see that changing until I've played at least as many rounds on it as Erangel, seen as how many of my favourite Plunkbat moments involve stumbling across new locations. This sort of got overshadowed by the way Paul Dean and I were instantly murdered by the first people we saw in every round, but the desert sightseeing Playstyle Royale I did a few weeks back was some of the most fun I've had in the game for yonks.

What do you think, gang? Mira-yah, or Mira-nah?