At the end of last year, PUBG mentioned that a ping-based PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds matchmaking system would be put in place. This was partially in response to players getting frustrated with the volume of Chinese players on English speaking servers.
While the community would rather have seen Chinese players ineligible to play on English speaking servers, it was not something PUBG wanted to pursue. The statement from PUBG reads:
In December 2017, we announced that we were considering introducing a maximum ping limit to improve the game environment for our players. This update has been delayed as the team’s resources were focused on cheat blocking and prevention. PUBG is now introducing an experimental method that we hope will get even better results than the one we were considering before.
Unlike the method considered earlier, we are going to divide the matching pool depending on ping. This means that the users with lower pings will be prioritized during matchmaking. The team is expecting to improve the overall play experience by splitting the matching pool rather than restricting connection depending on ping. Preparations are underway to test this method in some regions, with first trials planned to start this week. Specific dates will be shared when ready.
At this stage, it’s impossible to tell how successful this method of matchmaking will be but the test should at least give PUBG some idea. The community is still calling for a region-lock on China in the hope that it would cut-down on cheating,
In March PUBG plan on revealing more content updates for 2018 but at the moment they are focusing on performance improvements on the test server. However, they have said that a new map is coming to the game as part of this release pipeline.
