Posted: 28 Mar 2019 01:15 AM PDT

Today we're excited to announce the launch of our third Survivor Pass, Wild Card!

Survivor Pass: Wild Card offers a mixture of great new cosmetic items with a spy film theme, allowing players to drop into their favorite map dressed to kill!

Wild Card works in much the same way as our previous Survivor Passes, with the main pass allowing everyone to earn rewards for free. Players who want access to more rewards, including several great new cosmetic pieces, can purchase the Premium Survivor Pass for $9.99. Doing so immediately earns you the Floral Bomber Jacket item and gives you access to some additional rewards for completing premium missions.

Players have 10 weeks to complete as much of their pass as they can, earning rewards and coupons as they achieve new levels. You will earn either a Blue, Yellow, or White coupon with each level up, which can be exchanged for random crate keys in the Coupon Shop. For those who wish to skip ahead or supplement their current level, level packs are available for purchase once again, immediately granting you the rewards from those levels.

In addition to what we've done previously with Survivor Passes, we've adjusted the difficulty of missions overall, and have added a new series of challenge missions that revolve around your skills with certain weapons. Completing these missions will unlock a special skin for that weapon, so be sure to complete these if you're looking for a stylish new way to show off your Tommy Gun, Beryl M762, S686, UMP45, or M16A4 skills!

Survivor Pass: Wild Card is available now and runs until 7pm PDT on June 4th. Complete your missions, earn XP, and dress to kill!

For more details, please visit Survivor Pass Microsite.[pass.pubg.com]

Update #27 - Now Live

Posted: 28 Mar 2019 01:02 AM PDT

PUBG's latest content release, Update #27, is now available on live servers and we're excited to announce with it the launch of our third Survivor Pass, Wild Card! Read all about it here.

Check out the patch report below for a rundown of what to expect in this update!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTA2zRGLthw To see all the changes included in this update in detail, head over to our patch notes.

This update brings the brand new Survivor Pass 3: Wild Card! With up to 60 rewards available. In celebration of the PUBG 2 year anniversary, we've also be added a free 2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY CAP to the store.

Survival Title System Season 3 has also now been launched! Survival Points from Season 2 have been soft-reset, meaning you don't have to start completely from scratch. Players who reached the threshold to claim season rewards will receive them soon.

Major changes have been made to the Flare Gun, including quality of life improvements. We've added the new MP5K SMG to Vikendi, bumped up the loot on Erangel, made lots of changes to weapon balance, including making the M16A4 stronger, and also reduced aim punch.

If you want a more detailed explanation of the gameplay balance changes being made, as well as the loot changes to Erangel, read out dev letters below:

Dev Letter: Patch 27 Gameplay Balance
Dev Letter: Erangel Loot Rebalance

We can't wait to hear all of your feedback!

- The PUBG Team

Dev Letter: Patch 27 Gameplay Balance

Posted: 27 Mar 2019 06:01 PM PDT

Hello everyone,

We recently released Update #27 on the Test Server, which included lots of changes, including the new MP5K SMG, Survivor Pass 3, and changes to the Survival Title System for season 3. In addition to these, we made quite a few changes to gameplay balance and wanted to go a little more in depth on our thought process behind those in this Dev Letter.

Update #27 is the first major balance patch of 2019. We introduce balance patches such as these to keep the game evolving and prevent gameplay from becoming stale. Our goal is to release a pretty major balance patch roughly once per quarter, to provide a more diverse PUBG experience and keep the game evolving and feeling fresh.

Let's take a look at some of the major changes implemented with this balance patch.

Aim Punch

Aim punch is a type of camera shake that is triggered by getting hit and momentarily offsets player's aim point, and is used to simulate the realistic effect that being struck by a bullet would have on your aim. We have done multilateral analysis of our aim punch system, including taking in lots of player feedback, and concluded that it needs to be adjusted to generate less impact on gameplay while keeping the effect to some degree. In the past, getting shot applied a considerable penalty on long range aiming, especially when using high magnification scopes. With the update, players are now able to readjust their aim and find their target faster. For short range aiming, previously, aim punch could potentially lead to losing the entire fight just because you were hit first, which would sway your full auto burst away from the target. With these changes, players should see fewer instances of this, as the effect of aim punch has been reduced by around 50% of what it used to be. However, remember that aim punch penalties are harsher when not wearing armor, so be aware of this if your helmet or vest happen to break.

Attachments

In terms of attachments, we decided to undertake a couple of actions to reduce the loot clutter in the game. As of this patch, Pistols and SMGs now utilize the same attachments, significantly reducing the overall attachments in the loot pool. This change will also be accompanied by a greater number of AR and SR attachments spawning in the world. Along these same lines, we merged shotgun and bullet loops into one single item that can be used on both shotguns and sniper rifles. Finding this type of attachment should now be much easier, especially when you need it on your Kar98k or lever-action rifle. Since this change has removed several items from the game, we have filled in that loot gap by increasing the quantities of overall items spawned. While the quantity increase was evenly distributed across all other items, a few items that are more highly desired received a greater amount of increase, such as ARs, heal/boost items, and equipment. Exceptions to this quantity increase were level 3 helmets and flare guns, which could drastically alter the game experience even with a small quantity change. The main purpose of this adjustment is to provide a better gameplay experience by increasing the quantities of major items while keeping the items that have a huge impact on gameplay to the same level.

Weapons

We've also made a few changes in the weapons department. SMGs will now deal more damage to limbs to improve their short range effectiveness, whereas sniper rifles will deal significantly more damage to the torso, being able to one-shot kill unarmored targets (except for Win94). Apart from that, we decided to swap around the calibers of two sub-machine guns; the Vector and UMP. This is to make them more realistically accurate damage wise, as well as to improve the usability of the Vector by giving it a larger magazine capacity. While the damage of the Vector has been reduced slightly to 31, it still remains a very capable weapon, now with an increased default magazine capacity and being able to fire up to 33 rounds quickly with an extended magazine. This change also means that very long bursts with the Vector will now be a little easier to control. Last but not least, we've added the tactical stock attachment to the Mutant and the M16A4, making them easier to use as "tapping weapons." The latter also had its recoil reduced on the initial shots of burst mode, making it more deadly in CQC scenarios.

First Aid Kits

Finally, we decided to change the way the first aid kit works in the game. Instead of restoring you to 75% health immediately after the use timer, the healing will now apply over 2 seconds. This change will make it a little more difficult to immediately re-engage a target after you've applied a heal, so finding good cover is recommended before you take the time to heal. If you are on the attacking side of things, this gives you a little more time to close the distance on a recovering enemy while they wait for their health bar to fill. We are looking forward to seeing how this changes the dynamics of firefights and are eager to hear your feedback on how this feels as a player.

These balance changes put more emphasis on PUBG's core gameplay elements, and are intended to boost playability while offering a fresh gameplay experience. We expect there to be a lot of varied feedback for this update and understand that balance changes such as these can be a touchy subject. As always, any and all feedback is welcome and will be the basis of which we decide future directions for PUBG. Hop in-game, check out the changes, and let us know your thoughts!

Thank you,

--PUBG Dev Team