In a game like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, it’s always important to be aware of your surroundings. You can be caught off guard from nearly any direction, and so it’s important to have good enough sound design that you can tell, and that’s why PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds directional sound is getting a fix.
Directional sound is a pretty big mechanic in Battlegrounds, since you’ll be relying on it heavily in order to find out where bullets are coming from. Bluehole recently made an announcement that they would be tweaking that mechanic in order to help players better understand where shots are coming from. This is a crucial fix since you can be downed in a few shots without knowing where the bullets are coming from.
The changes to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds directional sound will at least give players a fighting chance to try and figure out where bullets are coming from, giving them the chance to get out of the way and possibly even return fire.
Bluehole did however make one misstep in not saying that they had made changes to the sound design, leaving players somewhat confused as to why the sound in the game seemed different from what it usually did. Directional sound previously only affected things like explosions, cartridges, and movement, rather than gunshots, one of the most important parts of sound. However, now gunshots will be audible in different ways from each direction.
The PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds directional sound update will allow observant players to tell whether bullets are coming from in front of them, behind them, or above and below, along with a variety of other directions. While the system isn’t perfect yet, it will likely get some more improvements as more patches come out.
In the meantime, you can log onto PUBG and download the patch to experience how it sounds to your own ears.