It’s a curious game in that the optimal strategy—assuming you’re playing for your chicken dinner—is to avoid conflict almost always until the very end game. Run and hide, and keep hiding as much as possible until the circle is tiny and you’re one of the final handfull, and that is so even if you’re an exceptionally skilled FPS gamer. Why? Because engaging in a fight means you have a decent chance of getting killed; hiding means you survive almost certainly. And even if you win, every other surviving player also benefits from your win. Winning a fight does mean better gear, but only after you risk standing on the corpse after a noisy fight: generally looting obscure areas in peace will get you kitted out at much less risk than looting your victims’ corpses.
Why do so many people get killed so quickly, then? Why doesn’t everyone run as far away from the plane’s path as possible, and then avoid conflict as much as possible? I think it’s because most people aren’t playing to win. They recognize that they have a very small chance of winning even with optimal play, and are, then, instead playing to have fun. Running around shooting at people in the military base in the first two minutes of the game is fun. Patiently hiding and painstakingly running to the circle’s edge repeatedly for half an hour only to wind up being two-shot by a sniper you never even see is not so much fun.
So most players play five minute games full of gunplay rather than thirty minute games which usually culminate in sudden disappointment.
I find the tenseness of trying to not be seen fun. That style of gameplay is also pretty realistic from the standpoint of how it would be in ‘real life’. When people are roaming around with guns trying to survive, not being seen if probably the best bet when possible.
These are also the reasons I enjoy Escape From Tarkov. Successful run for me is getting some loot (or not) and getting to the exit safely.
You know when you are playing a single player FPS and you’re sneaking too and fro trying not to be seen and then it dawns on you - this is a ‘quiet’ moment. It’s designed to be a quiet moment in the gameplay. Why am I sneaking around? The devs haven’t put anything or anyone around here, it’s just traversal until the next action set piece, which will be broadcast like a beacon so I can’t miss it, or I’ll be funneled to eventually. And bam, your suspension of disbelief is destroyed and you realise you are just playing a video game.
PBUG is not like that. The 20 minutes of looting and sneaking, whilst maybe not involving any enemies, is super tense and engaging because there actually could be an enemy around any corner. There could be one behind you right now waiting for the right moment to strike. Heck, in many cases there is one! Rather than a developer trying to trick you into believing their world is dangerous and you need to be on the lookout at all times, in PUBG the world actually is dangerous because the mechanics force players together over time and an encounter is deadly and final.
I could never be bothered with the H1Z1 et al, that just became griefers’ wet dreams, so this is my first experience that I can recall of this nature and it is really cool.
But aren’t there a million better games for running around for a few minutes gunning down people? :)
Finally got a kill, after I heard somebody pull out in front of the house and tried to set up an ambush. The ambush went bad, but I somehow survived with a sliver of health. That felt so good that I then took @sharaleo’s advice of trying to force early conflict to get better at shooting. The result was a lot of very early deaths, and not much improvement. Most embarrassing was being punched to death while armed. This could actually use a quick 1:1 battle mode for training.
Is there a trick to figuring out where you’re being shot at from?
There is a firing range coming, that will help immensely for getting a feel for the weapons.
Nope, not that I can distinguish. Audio cues are the best - play with stereo headphones for sure. Don’t think it is coming, either. And as much as you may like it now, the opposite would piss you off as well when sneaking up in someone is ruined by them spinning to head shot you because the game told them exactly where you were. Just need to be on the right side of that equation! :)
So map awareness becomes the name of the game. Where did the plane fly, where did people likely drop, so which direction are likely they coming from on their way to where you know they are going to (the circle).
The map is also chock full of relief, so hug the landscape for cover whenever you can. Exploit 3rd person view to peer over defilade without exposing yourself. Use Q and E to switch the camera shoulder position to peek around corners, also without exposing yourself (though be mindful that looking around corners in this fashion does not mean you have line of fire (indicated by the red aim marker that appears in these cases).
Also, at some point you will forced into situations where you need initiate a fight. If you find yourself between other players (solo or teams, spotted or otherwise) and you are all heading in the same rough direction with say a circle closing in, you are going to be screwed at some point in a crossfire as an engagement starts and the third party comes looking to clean up. Instead you need to force a fight, hide or vacate, preferably in a vehicle. Happened to us tonight, instead of going back and forcing a fight with the guys we knew were behind us, we pressed on and got pinned between them and the folk we knew were 300m in front of us down steep enbankment. Two men down in seconds, luckily the others escaped in a jeep.
Is there a group or something? Outside of this (and just the briefest bit of LOTRO) I haven’t played a multiplayer game since around the launch of WoW.
Definitely my best game so far, playing stealthy and using positioning to get non-camping kills.
I’ve no idea how I got shot because the blue was to my left and back, and I had just wasted a guy camping upwards near some containers with my silenced SCAR. I should probably have moved from the east instead of going to the west of the buildings since west was nearer the flight path, but I had heard shots near the buildings in the east so I thought I’d have a better chance going around from the other side. Oh well, maybe next time.
Got a friend to buy the game as well, and this was our (and his) fifth run, with previous runs getting, besides the first where we died outside the circle, #2, #5 and #6. In this we got lucky with the circle in the end, and the other duo had to get out of a shed, while we had crawled near them waiting for that. Still, as seen, I barely managed to survive as I downed one guy and when the other guy started shooting at me I panicked and proned while somehow also unequipping my weapon. When I found out, I pressed 1 with my shaking fingers and just started shooting in his direction as I was proned and didn’t see anything.
I can’t remember the last time I felt this good playing a game as when the chicken dinner message appeared.
^Yeah, looking forward to the patch notes tomorrow.
I got my second #2 in solo yesterday, where I lost to someone with an interesting strategy, where he drove a jeep into the final circle and used it as cover with the blue circle to his back. Then when I had to get out of my tree cover to get into the next circle, he shot me down. I was stupid though, in that I forgot all about using my grenades…
The patches notes will be interesting for sure, but did you watch the video? That targeting issue is pretty major. Might explain away a lot of what people (myself included) have been perceiving as lag up until now. Not that there aren’t lag issues as well, but it may not be affecting the gunplay as much as previously thought.
