A new PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds update is now live on the game’s test servers that implements tentative region locking tests as well as the highly anticipated weapon skin system and some new loot crates.
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The region locking feature that players have repeatedly asked for is only being tested in certain regions at the moment, so it’ll be a while before it’s fully in place assuming the tests go well. Japan and Korea previously had a joint server, but with the new update, the servers will be split into two.
In the notes for the update, the PUBG team cited improving network issues as one of the main drives for implementing the new measures. The notes also explained that the region locking would make it so that other servers would become invisible to players residing in different regions, something that would help with linguistic barriers as well.
“Through this new approach we are aiming to provide a better gameplay experience as it will improve network issues and help with linguistic barriers,” the update notes read. “We are going to run a limited test of this approach as more detailed research and analysis should come before global application.”
Players have been requesting a region locking feature for a while now, specifically for the purpose of locking the Chinese region. It’s been mentioned in the past that a great deal of PUBG’s cheaters come from the Chinese region, but PlayerUnknown himself Brendan Greene has remained doubtful of the region locking measure’s effectiveness while saying that players could still get around the region lock through various methods.
In addition to the lobbies being locked for the two servers, the weapon skin feature has also been added to the test servers. Through this feature, players will be able to select different skins for each weapon that’ll be found through the customization menu.
Two new crates are also now on the test servers, one of them free and the other paid. You can see details on the region lock and weapon skin features below, and the extensive drop rates for the two new crates can be seen through the official patch notes.
Lobby
- KR/JP joint server is now separated into KR server and JP server
- Leaderboard for both KR Server and JP server are added
- KR/JP players will be able to see and play on the server for their respective regions
- Those who can see neither KR sever, nor JP server, can only play in KR/JP server if they team up with a player who can see KR/JP server
Weapon Skin System
- Players can select skins for each weapon
- Weapon skin system UI
- Each weapon category is arranged in alphabetical order
- Weapons can be categorized as follows:
- Acquired: arranged in chronological order of acquisition
- Equipped: arranged in chronological order of last time equipped
- Tier: arranged according to skin tier (descending order)
- You can check details about the equipped skin using VIEW MORE button
- How to equip weapon skins
- You can use WEAPONS section in CUSTOMIZATION menu to equip the skin of your choice
- The ways to acquire weapon skins
- You can acquire weapon skins either through paid crate (“Triumph Crate”), which is a weekly random crate or “Raider crate”, which is a free non-random crate
