While the Fortnite community is generally pretty docile compared to most other fanbases, Epic has just proposed something that’s riling everyone up pretty intensely.
That would be a short blog post that describes what may be sweeping changes to the Fortnite metagame and endgame specifically, one that places less emphasis on the very thing that’s made the game so unique: building.
Here’s an excerpt that is the kind of statement that has players worried:
“Fortnite is constantly evolving. Our goal with any changes is to keep the game fun and interesting, keeping it feeling fresh and new. It’s important to support a variety of late game strategies, that don’t boil down to “just build lol”. We strongly believe that the evolution of Fortnite supports a wide range of play styles and counterplay. Currently, the superiority of shotguns, rockets, and uncapped building are such a dominant play style in the final circle that most other strategies are being drowned out.”
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So what’s going on here? In short, Epic feels like too much of Fortnite boils down to lategame battles where the most build-savvy player with the quickest shotgun trigger finger wins. And in between, rocket spam tears down structures to reset to catch someone out.
Epic has already taken steps to change this. The recent nerf to rockets means that you can now only hold 12 max, dramatically reducing the potential for rocket spam. Next up, it seems like shotguns may be up for yet another nerf, and the one possible upcoming fix Epic spells out in this blog post is the idea of capping resources, ie. at a figure below the current 999 max.
Fans are…not taking this well. The article is currently underwater on reddit with 55% of people downvoting it. The general sense there and elsewhere on social media is that nerfing building in Fortnite is a very bad idea.
I have to agree unless it is handled very carefully. Epic is definitely playing with fire here. I’m not quite sure how Epic can look at 125 million Fortnite players and the game’s explosive popularity and think “hmmm let’s dramatically change some of the core mechanics of the game and see what happens.” That’s how you go full Digg 2.0 and ruin a good thing.
The only way I can see a building nerf working, and not really being a nerf, would be if say, materials were capped at 500, but you got more materials from farming. What that would do is make build battles shorter in the lategame, but also reduce the need to farm all the time which is…not one of the most exciting parts of the game at present. I mean, my first choice is probably not to change anything, as I think the game is in a fairly good spot right now, but if something has to change, maybe that should be it.
The problem is that if Epic does a hard shift to drastically reduce building battles in favor of “other counterplay” options, they run the risk of becoming…just like any other shooter. Building is what makes Fortnite stand out from its competition, and I actually think that Epic should be exploring building more than it has been so far. I think there’s a ton you can do with editing that has yet to be tapped, I think we need more things like traps and bounce pads that play off of building. I don’t think we need just…less building. That’s a recipe to have people start fleeing the game.
While I know Epic doesn’t like sitting still when it comes to Fortnite, I do worry that severe nerfs to shotguns and building will drive more players away than it attracts, and changing things just for the sake of change is not always a good thing. If your game has become this popular with something akin to the current meta, maybe don’t go blowing the whole thing up.
Without specific changes suggested or implemented, it’s hard to know exactly how this plays out, but I would definitely caution Epic to be careful here, and not to go overboard trying to make things more “accessible” to those bad at building, or it could have disastrous consequences.
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