PUBG will add map selection sometime after its launch from Early Access

With Playerunknown's Battlegrounds exit from Early Access coming in just a few days, changes and tweaks are still underway on the test server, which is hosting 1.0's new desert map, Miramar. If you've been playing—and a lot of you have, seeing as how PUBG's test servers are the 5th most played game on Steam—you may be happy to learn that sometime after launch you'll be able to choose which map you play on when you join a PUBG server.

Originally, the plan was for map selection to be random, as it was back in the days when Battle Royale was a mod: You'd join a server, but you wouldn't know what map you'd be playing on (granted, there were more than just two maps for the mod). The idea was to throw players into a situation and force them to adapt. You didn't wind up on your favorite map, or one you know really well? Too bad. Just suck it up and tough it out.

It sounds like PUBG players want to choose which map they're playing on, though, and it's tough to blame them—when Evan and I tried out Miramar we both decided it was superior to the original map, and neither of us want to play on Erangel anymore. It's all desert, all the time from now on. In today's test build patch notes, PUBG Corp announced that it's been listening to player feedback and has, somewhat reluctantly, agreed:

"So we came to the conclusion that it is best to allow our players to choose which map they want to play on," the patch notes state. "However, we have 3 team modes and 2 perspectives - TPP and FPP. Adding map selection will result in there effectively being 12 game modes in total. You also need 100 players to fully experience Battle Royale. When all these factors are combined, it could be very difficult to offer a seamless experience 24/7 to players looking for matches. In some regions with smaller player bases, many issues are already expected to occur; queueing times could be extremely lengthy, matches may not start at all, matches may start with a number of players that is much lower than 100 in off-peak times."

"Despite these circumstances, our development team has decided to listen to our community’s feedback. We need some time to address the anticipated problems and technical issues, so maps will not be selectable right after PC 1.0 release. However, we will do our best to add the feature and required systems as soon as we can, so you can enjoy Battle Royale in the map of your choice."

In other test server patch notes, a replay menu has been added to the lobby screen, meaning that after a match you can watch a recording, pause the action, move the camera around in 3D space, and even follow other players. I've been playing with it this morning—it could use some fine-tuning but it's pretty cool. If a toggle is added to hide all UI elements, it could result in some really nice screenshots and videos.

The game will save your most recent 20 matches for replay, then begin overwriting the oldest recordings. If you've got favorites, you can lock them so they'll stay on your list, however.

Mirimar's initial blue zone size has been tweaked as well, and some weapons have been rebalanced a touch. Read the full notes right here.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.