PUBG Update Adds Survival Mastery and Much More

PUBG players have a lot to toy around with now that the game has a new update out for the PC version. Update 4.3 released this week, and with it comes a new Survival Mastery system where players can show off their survival skills and a lot of changes for the game's shotguns. Matchmaking adjustments and performance improvements among other changes fill the rest of the patch notes that detail everything that's been changed.

Though it doesn't directly impact gameplay – instead, it tracks it – the new Survival Mastery feature is probably the biggest change in the update. Like the Weapons Mastery system from before that kept up with how players perform using different weapons, this system tracks your overall progress throughout your games and helps to better define what type of a player you are. It tracks your aggressive maneuvers like kills and how well you handle your surroundings by looting resources and using them throughout a match. A "Last Match" feature added to the Mastery tab in the menu will show players how they did in the previous battle with a timeline depicting when the most critical moments happened.

Average engagement length, average engagement distance, the items you looted in a game, how far you travelled, your hot drop rate, and how much damage you took in a game are all the stats that are tracked to determine playstyles. After tracking that, the three most prominent of these stats will be displayed under players' Survival tabs.

Back on the gameplay side of things, the shotgun update is the big change to take note of. There's a new shotgun called the DBS that's been added, and the rest of the weapons in that class have been changed according to the notes below:

Gameplay

• Improved shotgun consistency
  • Hit probability increased, especially in medium shotgun range
  • Damage drop-off over distance increased
  • Minimum per pellet damage within effective range of each shotgun increased to 4
    • Except the Sawed-Off, which is 3
    • All shotguns fire 9 pellets total per round
  • Adjusted shotgun balance
    • All shotgun pellets now use more realistic ballistic curves (speed decrease over time)
    • All shotguns had their recoil effects updated
    • Damage multiplier changes
      • Headshot: From 1.5 to 1.2
      • Torso: From 1.0 to 0.9
    • S686
      • Maximum effective range set to 80 m
      • Increased reload speed by 20%
    • S1897
      • Maximum effective range set to 80 m
      • Pump action speed increased by 20%
      • Pump action will no longer temporarily un-ADS the player
    • Sawed-Off
      • Maximum effective range set to 80 m
      • Maximum increased probability range set to 50 m
      • Increased number of pellets fired to 9
      • Decreased damage per pellet from 22 to 20
    • Duckbill attachment: Pellet spread multiplier increased from 0.8 to 1.0

PUBG's new patch is now live on the PC platform.