With the current update 7.1, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) received a new season and numerous innovations. These include a ranked mode and bots. We at MeinMMO have exclusively spoken with one of the developers and learned more about it.
Who did we speak with? Regarding the innovations in PUBG 7.1 and Season 7, the MeinMMO team conducted an exclusive interview with Brian Corrigan, the Head of NA for PUBG. Brian primarily answered our questions about the new Ranked mode and the bots.
Bots are supposed to protect newcomers
What is the deal with the bots? I, Jürgen Horn from MeinMMO, have already had experiences with the bots while testing the Stadia version of PUBG. However, I found the utterly stupid AI teammates rather annoying. The victory against such wooden dummies even ruined the battle royale feeling for me, as one can loot and shoot carelessly. The bots are hardly a threat.
Therefore, I also asked Brian why the bots are in the game and what their purpose would be. The developer gave an interesting answer:
The reason why bots are in the game is really simple. Although we have been a PvP game since the start, the game became almost inaccessible for new players as we saw experienced players’ skills increasing significantly.
Despite constantly having a large influx, we noticed that new players were not given the chance to rise. They were cannon fodder for more experienced players.
PvE gives us the opportunity to match new players early on with less experienced opponents, allowing them a fair chance to catch up and rise over time, just as experienced players did when the game was new.
Do the bots really need to be there? The less dangerous bots are in the game to not ruin the fun for new players right away. Well, that makes sense. Still, they annoyed me as a non-newbie more than they provided fun at the end. Therefore, I asked how one could get rid of the bots or if they would be a fixed constant in all PUBG rounds now:
You can choose whether you want to play in normal mode with bots or only against human players in the ranked mode. In normal mode, players will see fewer bots as they rank up in each queue.
Highly qualified players should see no more than 20% PvE, compared to 80% PvP in peak matches. This means that in early blue zone phases, there is an 80% chance that the opponent you see is a human.
In later phases, this number increases even further, as PvE has little impact in late game scenarios.
So anyone who wants to play completely without AI bots can simply sign up for the new ranked mode. But what’s the catch?
What’s behind the Ranked Mode
Why is the Ranked mode only coming now? Ranked modes are nothing new in themselves, and since PUBG is introducing such a mode 3 years after its release, I wanted to know from Brian why that was the case:
Ranked play is common in some genres, but within BR, it is still relatively new. When you’ve built such systems many times before, you develop a sort of formula. For PUBG, we had to rethink how matchmaking works, the rules, and the ranking algorithm.
We had to do this for a game that was already three years old, had several prevailing play styles within the community, and boasted an esports program that used rules not available to the general player base.
All of this took some time to work through. We also needed to find a solution for the survival title system that existed in the game before Season 7, which looked like a ranked mode – although it was mechanically a progression system.
What is so special about ranked play in PUBG? PUBG is thus a complex, evolved game that had to be revised only for the ranked mode. But what exactly is the highlight of the ranks in PUBG?
PUBG has a large global player base, and over time we have fostered the development of several prevailing meta play styles. For this reason, players who preferred different metas focused on different statistics to measure how “skilled” they are at PUBG. Some players prefer placement, while others focus on statistics like K/DA [Kill/Death Ratio] or ADR [Average Damage per Round], etc. With the ranking, we’ve finally provided an official answer to this fundamental question: What does it mean to be good at this game? Furthermore, the ranking system of PUBG is one of the first true ranking systems within the genre, and it is the first combined with a truly global esports program.
Brian Corrigan is satisfied with the development PUBG has taken and still sees the battle royale original as a relevant title in the future. And this despite the intense competition from games like Fortnite, CoD: Warzone, and Apex Legends. In addition, there is also the very popular PUBG Mobile, which was developed in just 4 months and is supposed to further advance the brand.
