PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ blue zone is now deadlier than ever thanks to a new patch, and the further you are from the safe zone on the map, the more damage you’ll take over time. That won’t apply to the first circle, though, which means you’ll still be able to hike a fair distance in the blue zone early on and live to tell the tale.
In case you weren’t aware, PUBG’s map has an ever-tightening play area. Anyone caught outside of that area is said to be in the blue zone, and gradually takes damage over time. Developer Bluehole announced last week that the blue zone would become more dangerous, although it didn’t specify the exact mechanics. Now we know. The patch has been running on the test servers since Monday, and now it’s live for everyone. It’s roughly a 2GB download (fairly beefy, but that could be because you have to re-download existing assets).
– Blue zone DOT (Damage over Time) increases the farther away from the play zone you are
– This does not apply to the first blue zone— PLAY BATTLEGROUNDS (@PUBATTLEGROUNDS) October 24, 2017
The objective of the patch is to encourage more players to prioritise the safe zone, which should lead to more focused firefights. I think the way it’s implemented should just about work: it will mean that players head for the circle earlier, which could speed up the action.
The wording on Bluehole’s initial announcement suggested the patch was only for the test servers and wouldn’t be live on the main servers until the game fully released (it said it “would merge improvements, bug fixes, and other features, all at once to the test servers, which will then be implemented cumulatively for the 1.0 release”), but there you have it.
What do you think of the change?