Imagine yourself on the streets Los Leones, the largest city within the desert map of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds. You’re rifling through the weathered, abandoned buildings, collecting precious loot in hopes of coming across the ever-elusive level three-helmet or 8x scope – when all of a sudden, explosions begin randomly crashing down around you. Before you can do anything, a final blow takes you out, promptly ending your quest for a chicken dinner. It’s then that you realize: you were in the red zone.
How did this happen? Surely, you took note of the mini-map that showed your icon embedded within the red transparent circle, and heeded the warning of the on-screen notification stating the red zone would be starting soon. Obviously, you took note of the “Warning! Red zone has started!” message, and took shelter within the nearest building. No? You didn’t try to avoid the red zone at all? It may be time to rethink your strategy; a sentiment shared by Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds lead designer and director, Brendan Greene.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Greene stated that there is no reason a player should die in the red zone. Greene also conveyed confidence in the reason for the zone’s in-game existence, which has endured some pushback from some of the PUBG community’s louder voices:
“It is an overwhelming voice already! And people say there's no reason to it but it provides audio cover, it really looks cool when you're fighting in it. And really, you shouldn't be dying to the red zone. If you're dying to the red zone then, I'm sorry but you're not a very good player. It's like, you know there's a hundred meter safe zone around the edge of it, if you're in a building there's a very little chance of you getting hit, it's there for a specific reason, it looks really cool and it provides tension. If you're trapped in a fight in the red zone, it's exciting! People say that it has no reason, but it does. It's there for a very specific reason which is providing audio cover and even when it's a little bit in the distance it provides enough cover to run a little bit, so, there are reasons. But, that said, if there is an outpouring of hate towards it, we may consider it.”
Greene continued to state that although the red zone serves a purpose, the decision on whether or not to remove it from the game – as with all other in-game features – will ultimately come down to the collaborative efforts between the community and the development team.
“We really want to keep iterating and keep trying stuff, and we have our Test Server, we have our Experimental Test Server now so we can roll out stuff earlier. And it really is about using our community and getting their feedback early on so we can just keep testing and keep moving forward. So the process we built up last year we're just refining now and carrying into the future.”
The team at Bluehole and PUBG Corp. will ultimately make the final decisions as to what will make PUBG the best game that it can be. However, it is refreshing to hear that the game’s leadership and development team take community feedback to heart, especially as the game continues to build itself out since exiting Early Access late last year, and announcing its 2018 roadmap last month .
At any rate, for those hoping that the red zone is going away any time soon, you may just want to start heeding the on-screen warnings a little better…or, maybe, just avoid being anywhere near the red zone altogether.