Hello, and welcome to the Patt’s Thoughts — a irregular concept, where I am going through what happened over the recent days, and provide my thoughts on these. This time, the focus points would be announcements that happened on PUBG scene throughout the August.
To include Erangel 2.0, or not ?
Let’s start by talking about the New / Erangel 2.0 - It has been a month since the map was added to the public server, and it has received generally positive reactions from the players, as it updated the visual effects while adding some new spots on the islands. Pro players have been hoping that New Erangel will replace the old version heading into the Phase 3, and there have been rumours that this may happen during the phase ( although this have been corrected the next day ).
At the end, the decision came from the PUBG Esports team - Erangel 2.0 will not be included in the comp play as early as at the Global Championship. For me this is a reasonable and understandable decision - while PUBG Corp. would also like to include New Erangel in esports as soon as possible, they also want to be sure that the map will be working in the comp settings without or with minimal issues, especially as Erangel is being played over a hundred times during each Phase.
However, as players and coaches have pointed out on Twitter, there have been two statements from PUBG Esports - one coming from the Erangel decision, and one from their Sanhok announcement - that have been deemed as unintegral with their Erangel call :
“We want to provide enough time for professional players to train and to adapt to the new Erangel, so that they can fully understand the new map and perform at a high level.”
“There was a gap between the live settings and the esports setting, but this was inevitable for us to achieve our initial goals. However, we are now determined to narrow that gap.”
A lot of player’s feedback have been linked to the last month’s introduction of Sanhok - a map that in their opinion is considered as not ready for competitive play, and was announced with no test scrims being played before the statement ( at least in the EU AFAIK ). In their opinion, if Sanhok will be played during Phase 3 anyway, then why shouldn’t they play on New Erangel too ?
Players have also been pointing out that the first statement may be misleading, as the new version is still in a overwhelming majority being played in the same way as the old one, and at the time of writing ( August 23rd ) they’re playing on the old Erangel only during the scrims and pro leagues, while playing their public, Faceit and GLL games all on the updated Erangel.
C9 dropping out and skins situation
Another big thing that have happened in August was the end of Cloud9 involvement in the competitive scene, as they’ve decided to drop their roster after GLL Grand Slam. In the eyes of community, that have been both a shocking decision, and a warning sign for PUBG Esports, as C9 was holding a roster with popular NA players and streamers like Prophie and Kaymind, and while they’ve been struggling at the global events this year, C9 have finished 2nd in both NPL Phases and NPL Royales played so far, earning 120,000 USD in prize money from them, and any Top 10 finish for the squad in Phase 3 will guarantee them a spot at the Global Championship. However, even with all of those, it looks like C9 haven’t been making profit ( wouldn’t be surprised, considering they were renting a gaming house for the team in LA ), and have decided to cut their losses due to that.
However just a few days after this announcement, PUBG Esports have unveiled the Phase 3 skins, released to promote and support the pro leagues - a set of baseball bats. The feedback coming from the community about them have been, that while the skins aren't bad in their design and concept, baseball bats / crowbars are very rarely being picked up by the players, and they may not catch the eye of more casual PUBG fanbase, hurting the revenue that the teams will receive from them in the process.
On a good side of that though, that have led to a feedback thread being opened by PUBG's Esports Director, Jake Sin, and a lot of ideas have been posted by the community. Hopefully, no matter how the baseball bats skins will turn out financially in the end, I think that this brainstorm will lead to improvements in how the teams and players of the comp scene will be supported financially, and help the scene grow in the following months / years.
Rapidfire thoughts
SEA invites to the PGC - While I’m not a fan of spots to a major events being given based on the events from months ago, with SEA teams having visa issues in the past, giving Divine and Armory Gaming a spot allows them to already apply for US visas, and to plan in advance in case some of the players will not receive them, making that a good decision.
CS:GO Berlin Major - I’ve been thinking to go for one of the playoff days for a few months now, but those plans have changed many times and now I’m still not certain about going there. As for predictions, I would like to see NaVi winning the major for once, but I’m concerned if they’re capable of beating Liquid, Astralis and/or Vitality in a playoff series right now.
Sanhok in the pro play - After seeing some of scrims and PCL games, currently it looks like Sanhok will feature a lot of three-way teamfights, teams getting screwed if they’re forced to change the island after early-game, and teams that got central compounds getting strong in the late-game. Time will tell however how will Sanhok meta look exactly.
