Let’s talk about the event pass for PUBG, shall we?

For those that don’t follow the game, the event pass costs $10 and lasts for 28 days. During that time, you have a large set of objectives/achievements to go after, some daily, some weekly, and some that run the length of the pass. Each time you complete one, you earn XP, and the more XP you earn, the higher your level and the more rewards you unlock. All rewards are cosmetics, some permanent, some temporary.

Here is why I like it. Of all the ways devs can come up with to fund a game you like, selling cosmetics is the best. They don’t effect gameplay, and they don’t consume too much dev time, all while usually making your game look more interesting and variety, regardless of whether you buy or not.

The event pass is also basically PUBG adding an optional subscription to the game, and again I’m a big fan of that model vs invasive F2P models. Combine the two and its a home run IMO, with the only people really upset about this being (guessing but not really) kids who can’t afford it and now either have to go to their parents for some money, or head to Reddit and bitch about it.

The different missions that come up can, should you choose, spice up your game a little. For example, normally you want to just kill someone, but if a mission asks you to do so with a pistol, suddenly that’s on your mind now. And it’s a risk/reward thing; if you mess around too much trying to force the issue, perhaps you go too far and get yourself killed in what would otherwise be an easily winnable situation. I did exactly that last night, where I needed to kill someone with a pan, so instead of finishing off someone with a gun, I went swinging, giving an enemy teammate just enough time to kill me. Of course this being PUBG, you care only until the match ends, and then queue up again and nothing really matters (so much so that ranked play isn’t even enabled on the newest map, and basically no one cares).

The addition of the pass, and the new map, as made playing the game with a squad a lot of fun again, and I could see that continuing going forward. Development should increase in pace thanks to the extra funding (and the motivation to keep people paying month to month), and because everyone now has some long-term (monthly) goals to go after, its additional encouragement to log in and play a few rounds nightly.

The execution isn’t perfect yet however. Sometimes you won’t get credit for a mission even though you did it, and some of the missions have been a real fun-sponge of a mess (get top 3 without killing anyone, how fun…). Luckily changes have already been made, both in fixing broken missions and removing/editing the funsponge stuff.

Good first step for PUBG, and one that I expect to only improve in the coming months.