PUBG's latest update brings map selection, Miramar improvements, muscle car, and more

Bluehole's newly invigorated development streak continues today with a sizeable new update for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on PC, bringing Miramar improvements, a map selection option, major balancing, as well as new weapons, vehicles, attachments, and more.

Update #12, to give the newest patch its official name, is still at the tweaking stage, and only available on PUBG's test servers right now. It's positively heaving with stuff, all ripe for community feedback at this current stage, but its most crowd-pleasing addition will likely be the ability to select a specific map to play.

PUBG's new menu UI option enables players to choose either a single map - guaranteeing that it will be their destination - or multiple maps which the game will then randomly select from during matchmaking. Unsurprisingly, only Erangel and Miramar are currently available, but there's space for PUBG's new tropical-themed map when it arrives later this year.

Elsewhere, Update #12 introduces a new weapon in the form of the SLR. This, explains Bluehole, is more powerful than PUBG's existing SKS, but has notably more recoil. As such, recoil control is crucial in order to use it effectively.

Alongside the SLR, the update introduces more weapon attachments, including the Duckbill, Light Grip, Thumb Grip, Half Grip, Scope 3x, and Scope 6x. These offer everything from increased magnification to better recoil recovery, as outlined in the patch notes on Steam.

And if that's still not enough new stuff to satisfying your yearnings, Update #12 also ushers in the Mirado - a classic four-seat muscle car found on the main city streets and downtown areas of Miramar. The Mirado is designed to complement existing Miramar-exclusive vehicles, says Bluehole, and provides "the fastest way to blaze down a highway".

Speaking of Miramar, Update #12 makes yet more changes to the divisive desert map - following on from improvements made in January - in a bid to offer more interesting, exciting play options. The oasis, for instance, has been increased in size and surrounded by additional buildings, while some "excessive" building density has been reduced in certain city areas.

Similarly, the new update brings a reduction in cover points (such as rocks, drums, and boxes) in dense city and town areas, while better cover opportunities, via trees and rocks, have been introduced in wide-open spaces. Lastly, small building sets have been placed near cities and towns to provide more farming opportunities.

Rounding out PUBG's latest update are some significant balance adjustments across a large number of items and weapons. In a post on Steam last week, Bluehole explained that its intention here is to encourage players to utilise a broad range of weapons rather than just gravitate toward the "strongest" gun. The goal, it said, "is to make it so no one gun will feel objectively better than the others."

Those might be the headline additions and tweaks, but PUBG's Update #12 also features an enormous array of bug fixes and improvements across many other areas of the game - all of which can be found in the latest patch notes. Bluehole notes that it will "be listening and and making changes based on your feedback before pushing this update to live".