Wait Queues of PUBG Mobile

I took a break from PUBG Mobile for a few weeks (fooling around in Civilization V again but that's another post) and this weekend I came back for some of that new season battleground goodness.

I had a few rounds but was disturbed by the wait times for what used to be the most common play modes on the mornings and afternoons. Wait times that used to be ~60 seconds were upwards of 5-6 minutes or more if I had the patience to sit around and wait.

To me this is a sign that the initial popularity of the game is waning. Most likely there are fewer players online filling up the matches so there is more wait for players to end matches and re-queue. The problem is that the longer wait time encourages more players like me with little patience for a long wait to quit and do something else (I only have so much free time people!)

I did not like Apex Legends too much but surely there is a popular game out there I could have fun at. It all has me wondering if I should try the PC version of PUBG again, or some other competitor now that the genre has had time to mature.

Too bad because PUBG Mobile is really well done and I had a lot of fun in it, but if wait times continue to climb I'll have to bail.

Winner Winner...

After trying and deciding Apex Legends was not for me, I went back to PUBG (mobile using emulator) and have been playing that consistently for the past couple weeks. (Consistently for me, natch.)

I really enjoy this game, I feel like PUBG has hit the sweet spot of realistic fun versus realistic onerous, and the four maps really each have a different feel to them without abandoning the core mechanics. Recently they added in weather effects like rain, thunderstorms, and fog. The first time thunder roared I just about jumped out of my seat.

I played a game last night I want to tell you about.

I did a squad game with 3 random strangers. Quality when grouping with randoms is, well, random but the match making usually means they are decent soldiers even if their tactical decisions suck sometimes.

We parachuted and landed together (a good sign, you know its an uphill battle when the squad splits up from the plane at the start) and have a successful looting of a town. We hop in a vehicle and head into the circle. We stop at a small group of buildings to loot some more and the fog gets super thick.

Suddenly I spot an enemy and quickly dispatch him. I run over to loot his crate and I hear the sound of two vehicles quickly approaching. I'm exposed as they roar up, two in a car and two on a bike. The Bikers are closer and I hose them down with my SMG as they jump off, knocking them both (i.e. they are damaged to the point they can't do anything but crawl and must be revived by a teammate) but the other two lined me up as I had no cover and knock me down.

I desperately crawl to a low wall while they try to finish me off but my allies were close enough to take them out and save me. Whew! That was close! Once all healed up we jump back in the car and head to the new circle.

Near the middle of the circle is a hill with some buildings on it, and a lower section with a larger building. We go there and start to set up. Suddenly another car of a four man squad roars up on the main hill and a firefight erupts. I was on the top of the big building on the lower hill and I try to help out, two of our guys are knock, panic rising, but we manage to win the fight and revive our squadmates.

We reset and get into a sniping battle out one side with a guy in a ghillie suit with a suppressed AWM. I get hit to low health, another teammate knocked, one gets killed, but the opponent silhouetted himself on top of a hill in the distance and I was able to wing him. He retreated but came back a few seconds later and this time I was able to knock him, and let the approaching death circle eliminate him.

We;ve been lucky that the smaller and smaller safe zone circles have included our hill and we're getting down to the nitty gritty. There is three of us remaining after the sniper fight with Ghillie suit guy, and there are two other players. While we were distracted on the low hill fighting off to the north, the other two got on the big hill behind us. I'm on top of the big building and can see the top of the hill, but the buildings, bushes, terrain all conspire to make them hard to see, and I'm just behind a small wall that I need to pop over to shoot. Not good.

My teammates are on the ground and try circling to get on the hilltop and I still can't spot the enemies. Suddenly one of my squadmates is knocked and then killed. Now its 2v2 and they have the high ground... and the last circle is on the hilltop. I have to move soon.

Finally I spot one of them near a big cargo container. I popup and fire some shots and wing him, but bullets fly my direction soon after. Time is running out. I run to the stairs with bullets flying around me, the firefights earlier having left my helmet and body armour in shreds. I get to the ground and approach the big hill, I can hear someone moving and its not my buddy, who just got knocked. Oh crap.

I circle the slope of the hill and spot the first bad guy only meters away! We both open fire with SMGs but my aim is better and I knock and kill him. 1v1, circle is closing. I run to the top of the hill. Suddenly bullets fly past my head! I drop prone in tall grass and bushes and the next salvo missed me completely... and I see movement to my left. I open up on the pixel that is the player I can see and hit markers pop up. I have you now. A second later and I've won.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner.

Emulating Success - Part 2

In my efforts to try out PUBG Mobile on the computer using the Android OS emulator Bluestacks, I was reading for tips to try and improve the lackluster performance of the game when I came across recommendations that said that the program Tencent Gaming Buddy was the better emulator to use for PUBG Mobile. Since Tencent is the company that publishes PUBG Mobile, that seems like a good path to pursue before fighting with Bluestacks some more.

I downloaded the program and PUBG Mobile, hooked my account up, and... I was blown away. The performance was far smoother with higher graphics settings, as smooth as my phone is on low settings. The keyboard mappings controls were slightly less polished than on Bluestacks but some playing with the customization options soon allowed me to feel 90% comfortable while playing the game.

I think the big difference is that the Tencent Gaming Buddy program is a custom program for Tencent games and is not a full blown Android installation, removing a double step that the full emulator has to make to go from game to Android OS to Windows to graphics hardware.

I have already deleted the Bluestacks PUBG Mobile installation; I may still use Bluestacks for other less intensive games and apps if the need arises.

Emulating Success

Last year I tried to get into Player Unknown's Battlegrounds but found that my old reflexes meant that I could not compete in a way that felt good. I lost almost every firefight even if I had the drop on my opponent. The hyper-realism in weapons operation combined with the long time between combats and harsh penalty added up to make the experience frustrating.

However I loved the concept and decided to try out PUBG mobile on my phone since it was free. What I found was a near perfect replication of the maps and gameplay on an interface that rewarded fast reflexes less than the PC version. The end result is that I can compete satisfactorily enough to enjoy the game and not feel like I've wasted 20-30 minutes every round.

The big downsides are comfort and battery life. No matter what accessories I use to enhance the experience (see image below) its never going to feel as comfortable as a big computer screen with mouse and keyboard, and my old Samsung Galaxy S6 battery struggles to allow me to play for more than an hour at a time.

So I decided to download and try running Bluestacks, an Android emulator for the PC. Basically you start it up and its running Android in a program window and you connect with a Google account and you have the play store to download apps and run them on your PC. You can even connect to the same account you use on your phone to synchronize game accounts. I installed PUBG Mobile on it, ran it... and was not impressed.

Now, before the calls of "cheater" and such erupt, allow me to point out that PUBG Mobile detects when you are using an emulator and groups you in matches only with other players using emulators! I'm not taking advantage of poor people on phones with my mouse and keyboard. I would not use an emulator if this were not the case (and I know its working because the game pops up a message informing you that it detects an emulator and will be doing just what I said).

First off, the good: mouse and keyboard integration are spot on, it does not feel unnatural or hacked in. Playing the game on the bigger screen from my comfy chair is nice. No battery to worry about either.

Now the bad: my PC is 4 years old and not bad but the performance of the game was not great. I turned down the graphics all the way and experienced lots of choppiness. I tried some tuning to improve it and its playable, but nowhere near as smooth as on my phone. I had some crashes too, not a lot but at least 1 in a two hour play session.

I'm going to see if some help from the internet will make things better, but overall I'm disappointed. I thought for sure the more power of the PC's video card and SSD and RAM would make this game sing on the PC but so far I've decided to stick with the phone. If anything changes, I'll update the post.

Appendum: as a counterpoint, I also ran Clash Royale on Bluestacks and it ran quite smoothly with no noticeable lag or choppiness, so your mileage per game may vary.