PUBG Update That Makes The Dreaded Blue Circle Even Deadlier Is Now Live

Earlier this week we reported that the team over at PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds were preparing for another wave of patches that would bring beloved vaulting and climbing into the game, as well as making that deadly blue circle even deadlier. Welp ... bad news, PUBG players ... that dreaded circle change is now live; this is what you need to know about the differences and how players should accommodate. Hint: get away from the blue circle.

How the new patch works with the blue circle is that the further players are away from the "safe zone", the more damage they take. For those that are familiar with this Battle Royale style game, there was a steady damage hit to players while outside of the blue "safe zone" that eventually led to death if they couldn't make it in time. The team behind the survival game upped the ante a little bit making it to where the further you are away, the more damage hits are taken.

The whole point of the new patch, according to Bluehole, is to coerce players into thinking beyond just running and gunning. This forces players to not only think about their safety (and that of their teammates), but to prioritize it.

The original patch preview notes said that it would only be available for testing, but they have since reworded their statement to avoid confusion. This patch has been testing since Monday and is now live for everyone. To catch up, here are the original preview notes:

"First Test Servers: Focus on the Vaulting & Climbing Feature

We have decided to run the first test servers prior to the PC 1.0 release in early November. Vaulting and climbing feature is the main content of this patch, and it needs a minimum of three days of extensive testing. We ask you to play in the test servers, and try this feature out. We will make a separate announcement about a detailed schedule and the contents of the first round of test servers soon. We will do the same for the second and third rounds of test servers which will follow.

Optimization, Bug Fixes, and Upcoming Announcements about Test Servers

Our Development team has been working diligently to push out the official release by the end of this year. We plan to solve many of the bugs from the current live servers, and we are also constantly working on optimization. You will be able to experience bug fixes, optimization, and many other improvements in the test servers that will be run prior to the official release.
Please keep in mind that the live server build and the developing PC 1.0 build are not easy to integrate or merge together. Even if some of the issues are resolved during internal development, these changes cannot always be reflected upon the live servers immediately.

As mentioned above, we plan to run the test servers at least three times before the official launch. However, the announcements for what is being implemented into the test servers may be delayed and often published on short notice. This is because we are constantly trying to implement and fix as many things as possible, and we want to make sure that our announcements to the community are as accurate as they can be.

We also pay close attention to your feedback and bug reports. Some of the issues you brought up have already been fixed in the internal development build. However, as stated before, it is not always easy to merge the changes to our live build, because our development build and live build are separate. If we had kept rolling out weekly patches, our official launch schedule would have been delayed. Therefore, we have decided to merge improvements, bug fixes, and other features, all at once to the test servers, which will then be implemented cumulatively for the 1.0 release.

Early Access – Week 31 – Patch Notes

Gameplay

• Blue zone DOT (Damage over Time) increases when characters are farther away from the play zone
• This principle does not apply to the first blue zone

Bug Fix

• Resolved a bug where bullets would sometimes ignore armor"