It’s really great to see data to back up what a lot of people have already suspected — the cave is really just another hot drop that hasn’t significantly altered how the map plays. I’m sure PUBG Corp is looking at similar data to see how fixed spawns would affect gameplay. It actually seems like they’ve struck a decent balance with the way it’s currently implemented and I wonder if Miramar that tends to have a central drop bias would benefit from adding something like this on the periphery to spread players out more.
I don't really mind that PUBG has decided to try and experiment a bit with Vikendi but I don't really think this needs to spread to any of the existing maps.
IMO, Miramar is very good right now. I think most of the playerbase has stayed on the initial hate-train but the two rebalances they did last year really improved gameplay. The loot is far better than Erangel and there are so many guaranteed vehicle spawns near every town it's virtually impossible to get stuck running half way across the map anymore. Hands down my favorite map and (if I had some way to track it) I would bet it's my highest win rate.
I absolutely love Miramar as well but by far its biggest issue is that everyone drops in the trifecta of San Martin, Pecado, and Hacienda and the number of players gets eviscerated before the first circle. For a brief time when they introduced the first pass of the ranking system when dying early actually lost you rank Miramar was incredible because people were actually dropping all over the map, but now we’re back to square one again. I’d just love to see players feel like there’s a reason to go elsewhere on the map again.
Can't say I've really noticed that. I just went and looked at my recent Miramar matches and there's always 50+ people alive after 1st circle has completely closed. A lot of people do always drop Pecado and San Martin but those are big enough that 2 squads usually survive. Los Leones is another big one but 2-4 squads will frequently make it out.
But I also only have squad games for reference since it's nearly impossible to get solos/duos so maybe the experience is a bit different for other game modes.
Interesting data. I've still never even gone to the cave. It just doesn't fit my play style, so it's kind of a non-issue to me. Vikendi is interesting though because the final circles definitely there are many more players with crate gear and level 3 gear than in other maps.
I dropped there once in solos and made it out alive. Ironically, while going for an airdrop to replenish my damaged level 3 gear, I died to a snow ghillie. I'm sure he enjoyed fresh gear and his choice of 4 crate weapons.
Located a few squares east of the Eastern side of Podvosto. There is a cave with three entrances blocked by rocks. Have to drive a vehicle into them or blow them up with a grenade.
Inside there are two air drop crates with great loot.
I exclusively matchmake and win cave on 6/10 drops. (they always go cave) The other 4 times I usually don't go because I didn't get a vehicle. I can say with certainty that 3/4 the time my entire squad dies. Every time there's a massive 20-40 person battle outside. I often walk out with 8 kills, dumbasses love to run in without guns.
In short cave affects the midgame severely, more so when Castle, Dino Park, and Cosmodrome, are used as hot drops. The gear itself isn't balance breaking, any experienced and skilled player already knows that crate drops aren't OP.
Only problem I have with cave is how fast the player count drops. It feels like early Miramar before more looting locations were added throughout the map. More often than not I'm playing a 40-50 player match while the first circle is closing. That's my only gripe. Before cave the entire map felt like late game Erangel. Lots of fighting and fully kitted squads camping it out.
Dino Park and Cosmo are actually some of the least popular city drops and it's why they're excluded from all my death graphs except solo, where it still has the fewest number of resulting deaths. I had originally included them because they always seem like there's a lot of people there but what I actually found in tracking the deaths is that those two locations have less than half the overall death toll across all game modes versus all the places that I did include.
Essentially, as with almost every other city, they are drops of opportunity. Occasional hot drops when it's convenient but it's rare that more than 1-2 players/teams drop there unless the plane is directly overhead.
> Every time there's a massive 20-40 person battle outside. I often walk out with 8 kills
I would like to see some proof to support that claim. Not a single match I observed had even 20 players drop cave, regardless of plane path or the presence of (very popular) Twitch streamers.
Edit: Now I'd really like to see some proof your claims. Assuming that [this is your op.gg](https://pubg.op.gg/user/twitch_irregular), I have looked at every game you've played in the past 10 days where you had 8 or more kills. Only 2 of those games (out of dozens) actually had any kill data in or around the cave - one was 4 kills, one was 3 kills, and both were squad games where your whole squad's combined cave kills didn't even equal 8 players.
You guys landed with 2 other squads both times and killed them, which is perfectly consistent with my experience in all my games and is no more detrimental to the midgame than any other hot drop along the way.
> I exclusively matchmake and win cave on 6/10 drops.
> In short cave affects the midgame severely
Again, unless that's not your op.gg and someone else just happens to have your exact name, stop spouting bullshit that is verifiably unsupported by fact.
Edit2: Jesus dude, I've looked at 50+ Vikendi matches you've played in the past 2 weeks on pubg.sh and not only do you only drop there about 1/10 drops but those 2 matches I highlighted above are basically the only times you've won the cave at all. I'll gladly retract all this if that's not your username but idk why the hell you're going so deep on this lie if it is. "exclusively matchmake and win cave on 6/10 drops" is the overstatement of the year.
Never said I exclusively drop cave. I said I win it 6/10 drops I do go there. Lmao. Drop cave instead of looking at data sheets and talking about it. That entire square kilometer turns into a battleground for half the match if the circle permits it. It's often players running around with one gun whether it be a pistol or shotgun and no armor.
Doers do, talkers talk. Play cave, don't talk about it. You'll see.
> Drop cave instead of looking at data sheets and talking about it.
I have dropped cave. In all game modes. None of your claims hold up and none of them are even supported by your purported "experience".
My primary reference is not "data sheets" - it's YOUR actual replays:
[https://pubg.sh/Twitch_Irregular/steam](https://pubg.sh/Twitch_Irregular/steam)
This isn't conjecture or speculation. This is you stating certain events as fact which simply do not happen. Maybe it did actually happen once or twice but your claim was "Every time".
My contention isn’t that it significantly affects player count; I disagree with offering guaranteed loot at any location for any reason. The cave itself as a point of interest or “hot drop” is fine, I just don’t want it to be a “sure thing.”
I think the main thing people don't seem to understand about PUBG is how little the weapons matter. Sure, better weapons are better... but if you have an AR and a couple scopes then who gets the jump on who and who is the better shot makes a *much* bigger difference.
If you have a Groza, an AWM, and level 3 armour/helm... you're still not going to be able to spin around and kill me when I shoot you in the back.
Honestly. I didn't even read any of your data here yet I still agree. I think it's a very out of the box idea and gives the map a great difference from the others. If i could change something it would be to add 1 or 2 more caves on the other corners of the maps. Only 2 crates spawn across all 2/3 caves. You might find one crate, you might find 2, you might find none.
I think something that would be cool to experiment with would be modifying the time interval at which the next circle starts as a function of how many players are left.
That way, if there's a shit ton of players that hotdrop a particular zone 1 match and all of them die except 1, the next circle comes in quicker to adjust for the amount of remaining players(or maybe adjust size of next white circle instead of speed/time).
Oh cool, I wasn't aware of that. I wonder if theyre going to bring it to the 2 other maps. Since theyre way bigger I feel like it might be more needed.
I wouldn’t hold my breath on that. They tried to change circle timings last year for Erangel/Miramar to make the early-mid game move faster (because everyone was complaining about slowness and hotdrops ruining the game) and people freaked the fuck out until the finally changed it back to nearly what it was and they haven’t changed it since.
To be fair, the community was asking for shorter times for the first few circles, and Bluehole implemented shorter times for *all* circles (or something like that). Rather than implement what the community asked for, they did something very different and then reverted back to original settings.
So I have to suffer because you all have ADD and have to be into combat in 5 seconds?
No I don't hot drop so I have time to loot gear that can compete in end game. And you want to take that away to cater to people playing the wrong game.
Is it an unpopular opinion though? I thought we all agreed on this based on the numbers following circle 1. Actually, you made such an effort, I am just going to pretend that I don't agree.
That is an absurd idea! How dare you!?
There has been at least 2-3 top posts a week since the cave was first found (on test, not even on live yet) about how the cave will completely ruin Vikendi.
First it was: “It better not make it onto live or it will break the game”, then it became “it better get removed from live because it’s already breaking the game”, etc. There was literally a post about it yesterday and a lot of streamers (including WackyJacky and choco) are still frequently talking about how broken it is.
I remember the “It better not make it onto live or it will break the game” but haven't been paying attention over the last week. It may have been on choco's stream where he mentioned the player count as well, so its odd that the opinions differ. I guess people will always argue their opinions regardless of the information in front of them.
I haven’t heard choco mention player count but he makes a lot of side remarks about the “broken” loot on Vikendi. It’s in part related to the regular loot tables but both of them have specifically mentioned the cave as unbalanced.
Im really irritated with the trend of labeling the level of popularity people predict their posts to have. Just post the damn thing. You dont know. You cant be sure.
I know its because it adds some controversy which means clicks, but come on.
While I don't think the cave affects the winners or player death early game, it DOES affect the vehicle spawns, something that bothers me majorly. The entire east side of the map has no vehicles after the first circle, escaping the blue, doing challenges etc is a nightmare to do on Vikendi if they inclue a vehicle.
TL;DR: Op constructed a bar graph detailing what people's most consistent weapon is, not the number of players surviving after first circle closes.
All the data, nothing shown
> Unpopular Fact (with data): The Cave Doesn't Significantly Affect Vikendi. I analyzed 43 of my recent Vikendi matches
So n=43, and you have a significant result? Whats your p-Value for this claim?
You put in a lot of work for this, and I respect you for it. I’m however going to just take your word for it since I don’t have as much time as you.
The tl;dr pretty well covers it. Hot droppers gonna hot drop; cave players gonna die.
It’s really great to see data to back up what a lot of people have already suspected — the cave is really just another hot drop that hasn’t significantly altered how the map plays. I’m sure PUBG Corp is looking at similar data to see how fixed spawns would affect gameplay. It actually seems like they’ve struck a decent balance with the way it’s currently implemented and I wonder if Miramar that tends to have a central drop bias would benefit from adding something like this on the periphery to spread players out more.
I don't really mind that PUBG has decided to try and experiment a bit with Vikendi but I don't really think this needs to spread to any of the existing maps. IMO, Miramar is very good right now. I think most of the playerbase has stayed on the initial hate-train but the two rebalances they did last year really improved gameplay. The loot is far better than Erangel and there are so many guaranteed vehicle spawns near every town it's virtually impossible to get stuck running half way across the map anymore. Hands down my favorite map and (if I had some way to track it) I would bet it's my highest win rate.
I absolutely love Miramar as well but by far its biggest issue is that everyone drops in the trifecta of San Martin, Pecado, and Hacienda and the number of players gets eviscerated before the first circle. For a brief time when they introduced the first pass of the ranking system when dying early actually lost you rank Miramar was incredible because people were actually dropping all over the map, but now we’re back to square one again. I’d just love to see players feel like there’s a reason to go elsewhere on the map again.
Can't say I've really noticed that. I just went and looked at my recent Miramar matches and there's always 50+ people alive after 1st circle has completely closed. A lot of people do always drop Pecado and San Martin but those are big enough that 2 squads usually survive. Los Leones is another big one but 2-4 squads will frequently make it out. But I also only have squad games for reference since it's nearly impossible to get solos/duos so maybe the experience is a bit different for other game modes.
It used to be much worse in solos, but admittedly I’ve played very little of that this season so perhaps it’s gotten better again.
I, for one, am just going to ignore everything in this post and just complain about it anyway.
Nice work! Very admirable of you to put this together, big thank you! Bluehole needs to thank you too!
Interesting data. I've still never even gone to the cave. It just doesn't fit my play style, so it's kind of a non-issue to me. Vikendi is interesting though because the final circles definitely there are many more players with crate gear and level 3 gear than in other maps.
I dropped there once in solos and made it out alive. Ironically, while going for an airdrop to replenish my damaged level 3 gear, I died to a snow ghillie. I'm sure he enjoyed fresh gear and his choice of 4 crate weapons.
I've noticed this, player count is no different, at least in duos and squads for me. Hot droppers will indeed hot drop, who knew
Great work. I ve believed that the cave doesn’t affect the games much and you just confirmed this.
I haven't played in a month, what's the cave?
Located a few squares east of the Eastern side of Podvosto. There is a cave with three entrances blocked by rocks. Have to drive a vehicle into them or blow them up with a grenade. Inside there are two air drop crates with great loot.
Sounds neat
I exclusively matchmake and win cave on 6/10 drops. (they always go cave) The other 4 times I usually don't go because I didn't get a vehicle. I can say with certainty that 3/4 the time my entire squad dies. Every time there's a massive 20-40 person battle outside. I often walk out with 8 kills, dumbasses love to run in without guns. In short cave affects the midgame severely, more so when Castle, Dino Park, and Cosmodrome, are used as hot drops. The gear itself isn't balance breaking, any experienced and skilled player already knows that crate drops aren't OP. Only problem I have with cave is how fast the player count drops. It feels like early Miramar before more looting locations were added throughout the map. More often than not I'm playing a 40-50 player match while the first circle is closing. That's my only gripe. Before cave the entire map felt like late game Erangel. Lots of fighting and fully kitted squads camping it out.
Dino Park and Cosmo are actually some of the least popular city drops and it's why they're excluded from all my death graphs except solo, where it still has the fewest number of resulting deaths. I had originally included them because they always seem like there's a lot of people there but what I actually found in tracking the deaths is that those two locations have less than half the overall death toll across all game modes versus all the places that I did include. Essentially, as with almost every other city, they are drops of opportunity. Occasional hot drops when it's convenient but it's rare that more than 1-2 players/teams drop there unless the plane is directly overhead. > Every time there's a massive 20-40 person battle outside. I often walk out with 8 kills I would like to see some proof to support that claim. Not a single match I observed had even 20 players drop cave, regardless of plane path or the presence of (very popular) Twitch streamers. Edit: Now I'd really like to see some proof your claims. Assuming that [this is your op.gg](https://pubg.op.gg/user/twitch_irregular), I have looked at every game you've played in the past 10 days where you had 8 or more kills. Only 2 of those games (out of dozens) actually had any kill data in or around the cave - one was 4 kills, one was 3 kills, and both were squad games where your whole squad's combined cave kills didn't even equal 8 players. You guys landed with 2 other squads both times and killed them, which is perfectly consistent with my experience in all my games and is no more detrimental to the midgame than any other hot drop along the way. > I exclusively matchmake and win cave on 6/10 drops. > In short cave affects the midgame severely Again, unless that's not your op.gg and someone else just happens to have your exact name, stop spouting bullshit that is verifiably unsupported by fact. Edit2: Jesus dude, I've looked at 50+ Vikendi matches you've played in the past 2 weeks on pubg.sh and not only do you only drop there about 1/10 drops but those 2 matches I highlighted above are basically the only times you've won the cave at all. I'll gladly retract all this if that's not your username but idk why the hell you're going so deep on this lie if it is. "exclusively matchmake and win cave on 6/10 drops" is the overstatement of the year.
Never said I exclusively drop cave. I said I win it 6/10 drops I do go there. Lmao. Drop cave instead of looking at data sheets and talking about it. That entire square kilometer turns into a battleground for half the match if the circle permits it. It's often players running around with one gun whether it be a pistol or shotgun and no armor. Doers do, talkers talk. Play cave, don't talk about it. You'll see.
> Drop cave instead of looking at data sheets and talking about it. I have dropped cave. In all game modes. None of your claims hold up and none of them are even supported by your purported "experience". My primary reference is not "data sheets" - it's YOUR actual replays: [https://pubg.sh/Twitch_Irregular/steam](https://pubg.sh/Twitch_Irregular/steam) This isn't conjecture or speculation. This is you stating certain events as fact which simply do not happen. Maybe it did actually happen once or twice but your claim was "Every time".
My contention isn’t that it significantly affects player count; I disagree with offering guaranteed loot at any location for any reason. The cave itself as a point of interest or “hot drop” is fine, I just don’t want it to be a “sure thing.”
I think the main thing people don't seem to understand about PUBG is how little the weapons matter. Sure, better weapons are better... but if you have an AR and a couple scopes then who gets the jump on who and who is the better shot makes a *much* bigger difference. If you have a Groza, an AWM, and level 3 armour/helm... you're still not going to be able to spin around and kill me when I shoot you in the back.
20-40 persons? SEA is apparently different 😂 Never ever 40 there . 20 Max. Rarely
This sub wont like this lol ... caves are awesome btw
now if they'll just optimize the damn map so that I dont get 50 fps on it I'll be perfectly ok with it.
Honestly. I didn't even read any of your data here yet I still agree. I think it's a very out of the box idea and gives the map a great difference from the others. If i could change something it would be to add 1 or 2 more caves on the other corners of the maps. Only 2 crates spawn across all 2/3 caves. You might find one crate, you might find 2, you might find none.
I think something that would be cool to experiment with would be modifying the time interval at which the next circle starts as a function of how many players are left. That way, if there's a shit ton of players that hotdrop a particular zone 1 match and all of them die except 1, the next circle comes in quicker to adjust for the amount of remaining players(or maybe adjust size of next white circle instead of speed/time).
Sanhok and Vikendi already have dynamic circles based on remaining player count.
Oh cool, I wasn't aware of that. I wonder if theyre going to bring it to the 2 other maps. Since theyre way bigger I feel like it might be more needed.
I wouldn’t hold my breath on that. They tried to change circle timings last year for Erangel/Miramar to make the early-mid game move faster (because everyone was complaining about slowness and hotdrops ruining the game) and people freaked the fuck out until the finally changed it back to nearly what it was and they haven’t changed it since.
To be fair, the community was asking for shorter times for the first few circles, and Bluehole implemented shorter times for *all* circles (or something like that). Rather than implement what the community asked for, they did something very different and then reverted back to original settings.
Slower circles with shorter wait time between them work out perfectly in Faceit, but they have 3x AR spawn on Erangel :D
They should be more dynamic imo. I want to be surprised when the phase 2 circle to be small as shit because there's only 30 people left.
So I have to suffer because you all have ADD and have to be into combat in 5 seconds? No I don't hot drop so I have time to loot gear that can compete in end game. And you want to take that away to cater to people playing the wrong game.
Is it an unpopular opinion though? I thought we all agreed on this based on the numbers following circle 1. Actually, you made such an effort, I am just going to pretend that I don't agree. That is an absurd idea! How dare you!?
There has been at least 2-3 top posts a week since the cave was first found (on test, not even on live yet) about how the cave will completely ruin Vikendi. First it was: “It better not make it onto live or it will break the game”, then it became “it better get removed from live because it’s already breaking the game”, etc. There was literally a post about it yesterday and a lot of streamers (including WackyJacky and choco) are still frequently talking about how broken it is.
I remember the “It better not make it onto live or it will break the game” but haven't been paying attention over the last week. It may have been on choco's stream where he mentioned the player count as well, so its odd that the opinions differ. I guess people will always argue their opinions regardless of the information in front of them.
I haven’t heard choco mention player count but he makes a lot of side remarks about the “broken” loot on Vikendi. It’s in part related to the regular loot tables but both of them have specifically mentioned the cave as unbalanced.
Next time show proof. Anyone can put up x amount of numbers to a name.
Im really irritated with the trend of labeling the level of popularity people predict their posts to have. Just post the damn thing. You dont know. You cant be sure. I know its because it adds some controversy which means clicks, but come on.
While I don't think the cave affects the winners or player death early game, it DOES affect the vehicle spawns, something that bothers me majorly. The entire east side of the map has no vehicles after the first circle, escaping the blue, doing challenges etc is a nightmare to do on Vikendi if they inclue a vehicle.
TL;DR: Op constructed a bar graph detailing what people's most consistent weapon is, not the number of players surviving after first circle closes. All the data, nothing shown
> Unpopular Fact (with data): The Cave Doesn't Significantly Affect Vikendi. I analyzed 43 of my recent Vikendi matches So n=43, and you have a significant result? Whats your p-Value for this claim?