PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is quite often a game where you do pretty much nothing. You might go an entire round without seeing a sign of human life before some youth with ungodly talent injects some lead into your brain from across the map, or you might camp out on a grassy knoll waiting for a motorcade to roll on buy so that you can pop a few shots into it.
It sounds dull, but when danger is mere seconds away at any given time, it becomes a tense experience that I have begun to blame for my sudden increase in white hair growth. The plus side here, is that players can still earn some in-game currency to spend on loot even if their latest session has gone pear-shaped after half an hour.
That’s both good and bad because of course, the more unscrupulous side of the community has taken advantage of this. PUBG is currently home to tons of Away From Keyboard (AFK) players, people who leave their character hiding in a remote bathroom in an effort to farm some coin which can then be used to buy loot crates to sell on the Steam marketplace.
I’ve run into a few oblivious players myself, and while I’m not complaining about having free crossbow practice target dummies, it is a problem that developer Bluehole aims to tackle soon. “We have the team working to analyse what’s actually going on there,” producer Chang-Han Kim said at a PAX panel via PC Gamer and VG247.
We know that the portion of players that are AFKing.. isn’t that high as of now, but we do want to create a tool or vehicles to prevent players from just trying to earn BP [Battle Points] and not playing the game. It could be us just adjusting the balance of BPs being earnt after each game or just from a structure point of view, preventing AFKs as a whole. We haven’t fully decided on a direction for that yet.
I’m kind of worried. My own PUBG style of play borders on camping and cowardly tendencies to keep my head low as I pursue the ever elusive chicken dinner. If these measures eat into my Battle Points, I’m not the only pacifist in PUBG that’ll be weeping.
Last Updated: September 5, 2017
Gavin Mannion
September 5, 2017 at 10:45
A game like PUBG is designed for camping, but they can just do a popup every minute or so of you not moving to say you need to move a bit else you will start losing coin…
I guess it depends on how AFK the people actually are, but just turning around should be enough to keep that timer from taking your cash
Quentin Huggett
September 5, 2017 at 12:21
Not really, the circle mechanic is supposed to stop the worst kind of camping and it does for the most part.
Viper_ZA
September 5, 2017 at 11:01
Will really enjoy having a local server, could smell the chicken last night… 🙁
Ottokie
September 5, 2017 at 11:37
If you don’t jump out the plane then you should DC.
schitsophrenic-toothbrush
September 5, 2017 at 13:30
Any chance that PUBG will ever come to PS4? I really want to play this damn game!
Skyblue
September 6, 2017 at 09:43
Unlikely now that MS are throwing money at it.
Geoffrey Tim
September 6, 2017 at 09:59
It was planned, but as @disqus_RTVUEcBB6N:disqus pointed out, Microsoft is now publishing the game, so it’s unlikely. They do, however, also publish Minecraft, so we’ll see.
RinceThis
September 5, 2017 at 13:46
God that header… Yes, pun intended…
HairyEwok
September 5, 2017 at 15:10
Only reason I play so passively is because of the lag. I have to get the first shot out or else I’ll die.
Dresden
September 5, 2017 at 18:19
When I read the title I thought you meant they will deal with the scumbags that get kills off of the people that drop out of the plane at the end because they are AFK or disconnected.