When is the Fortnite double pump getting fixed? You are a little late to the party, the fortnite double pump nerf was included in patch v3.0.0.
If you are looking for a how to : double pump in fortnite look no further.
Epic solved double pump by forcing the pump reload animation upon switching back to the weapon and not before swapping off. This means players can still get off shots gated only by the weapon switch speed for the number of shotguns they are carrying. If they have four then they can shoot four times in the way they could previously. This is a much higher inventory requirement than previously and it will be interesting to see if players run more than two shotguns.
No other weapons have been effected so you can still cycle two revolvers and still quick swap from bolt sniper or rocketlauncher to other weapons. Obviously sniper and rockets need to be reloaded after swapping back to them and that is different to the fortnite double pump nerf.
Here is the line from 3.0.0 patch notes:
Pump Shotgun behavior has been addressed. Firing the Pump Shotgun and quickly switching weapons will now require you to pump the Shotgun before the next shot.
Say hello to the fortnite double pump nerf, you shall be missed. This line is quickly followed up by:
We will be monitoring any fallout from this and continuing to iterate on how this works throughout the next patches.
Which begs the question – have epic approached this in the right manner? There are a number of aspects to weapon balance and wait times. Reload, refire time and weapon switch speed. The interplay of these three variables creates the ability to combo weapons.
The most obvious is reload, which is how long it takes to put a new magazine in or fill the pump shotgun with individual shells.
Refire time is the next wait time and in some cases is combined with the reload – primarily the bolt sniper rifle. For many players these aspects blur together into one wait time. A fast firing weapon like an assault rifle has a very fast refire time where as a shotgun is much slower. Weapons are balanced around both these delays and these delays should be considered when creating weapons. Obviously the pump animation for the refire on the pump shotgun is to balance out its high burst, however it is also included as a drawback to missing, leaving the player vulnerable. The double pump nerf partially addressed the DPS constraint because players can still carry 2+ shotguns and achieve similar results. The manner in which epic have approached the double pump fix points to little care about the drawback to missing, which is a shame as it is potentially the more interesting aspect of the delay.
The final wait time with weapons is the switch itself. This appears to be the same across the board in fortnite, with the exception of switching to building which is instant.
For this piece the refire delay is the key aspect to look at. We will also look at weapons in existing games, both arenafps as well as modern shooters and compare these to fortnite.
In older games like unreal tournament and quake the refire was the reload in most cases. Arenafps games tend not to have a “reload” or have magazines/clips for their weapons. The refire delay and animation occurs after the weapon fires and must play out in full or part before switching off is allowed. Even in older games with instant weapon switch like quakeworld there is still a delay after shooting a rocket before the player is allowed to change to another weapon. Quakeworld and CPMA are the edge cases here for super fast switch. Newer games like quakelive understand how to balance weapons through refire quite well. The railgun is an unlimited range weapon balanced out by its long reload which makes users who use it at close range make a choice – stay and potentially take damage while the refire time occurs before switching off or give position backing up while refire and switch occurs. The refire time for the railgun in ql is 1500ms and the weapon switch is 400ms. In quakelive we end up with three levels of nuance here. The option to switch off, 400ms, the option to shoot rail and then switch off, 1900ms or the option to shoot more than once. Maybe even four levels if you count having a more appropriate close range weapon equipped.
Modern shooters tend to have primary and secondary weapons. They also have tend to have very fast weapon switch and do not care about the refire time. This is mainly because weapons in these games are high rate of fire modern style assault rifles so the refire is essentially nothing – you are never waiting for the refire animation because it is very fast due to being the fire rate. Switching from primary to secondary weapon is almost always a downgrade. There are some non-typical cases like sniper/AWP swapping to pistols to engage at closer range, but this is mainly because the AWP is a specific longer range weapon and not great at close quarters, so the player takes the pistol as a better option. Overall changing from primary to side arm is trading out a weaker weapon. A player might do this in order to finish a fight without the time to reload their main weapon. For example a 1v2 situation where they down the first enemy, put a few bullets into the second enemy and need to keep momentum so try to end them with their pistol. The fast switch is not overly important here because the player is almost always taking a worse weapon than their primary.
Shotguns in modern shooters tend to take the back seat. This is because they are very situational (close range) and when players can only carry one primary weapon and a pistol they often need more utility than a shotgun offers.
Fortnite is an odd mix of both sub genres. On one hand players can have a up to five weapons, more than modern shooters. On the other these weapons by and large resemble modern shooter weapons. Weapon switch is similar to modern shooters with no waiting after shooting before allowing switch off but players have more than one primary weapon. For example in an arenafps swapping off the shotgun forces the player to wait for the “reload” (refire). Switching off another high damage low rate of fire weapon like the rocket launcher also has the same drawback. Swapping off a high rate of fire, low damage weapon like the quake lightning gun or ut pulse rifle beam waits for the next “tick” then plays the weapon switch animation.
If fortnite were an arenafps players would be able to chain all their heavy hitting, high damage, low rate of fire weapons together and the rate of fire would be determined by the switch speed. This makes no sense.
The fornite double pump nerf causes further problems because it applies to one weapon only. Meanwhile other weapons that are added like the heavy shotgun benefit from fast switch, without the expected drawbacks of high damage, slow rate of fire weapons. Other weapons like the revolver are currently quite useless for it, however if the shooting model changes this may also make other weapons more viable.
Epic should address this as fast switch works in modern shoots due to limited primary weapons. Weapons with slow rate of fire make little sense when you are not punished by the low rate of fire and can carry more than one primary weapon. The current switch time is around 400-450ms.
The weapon switch time needs to be taken into account in conjunction with the fire rate. A short term solution to this is to allow all or most of refire to occur before players switch weapons. Using the pump shotgun players would need to fully pump the weapon for their next shot before they switch off. The revolver needs to wait until it is ready to fire again. The ARs and SMGs need the pause between bullets to finish before they swap. And so on. This buffs some weapons, nerfs some and increases the “danger” of using weapons like the pump – which is what the long refire is intended to do. It also changes the order in which players would want to use their weapons – high ROF weapons swapped to high damage low rate of fire upon landing shots makes more sense in this setup. However players who wish to gamble could still open with shotguns, relying on hitting their first shot otherwise being left vulnerable.
For the examples below we will use the orcz fortnite weapon stats. Not 100% sure if these are correct or are kept updating but we only need a set number of examples for demonstration.
An assault rifle with a firerate of 5.5 has a refire time of 180ms. In the proposed example when the player changes to another weapon while firing the gun performs whatever remains of its current refire cycle then switches. If the base weapon switch time is 400ms and switch weapon is pressed exactly as a bullet fires the weapon switch becomes ~680ms. The tactical shotgun fire rate is 1.5, giving it a refire of 666ms. When switching after shoting the switch time becomes 1066ms. And so on. These numbers are getting quite large so perhaps the base switch time could be lowered.
Perhaps weapons that have single shot magazine such as rocket and sniper would allow switching off faster as they are unusable until the refire animation is played after swapping back to them. Also perhaps weapons would not need the refire time if the current magazine is emptied as there is no “next shot”. Thus if a player was to empty their AR magazine and then swap off the switch time is simply the switch time with no refire added.
This then resembles arenafps switching which is much closer to fortnite than modern shooters are. This would make the fortnite double pump nerf un-required and also have more sensible weapon switching going forwards. Without looking at the overall switch scheme weapons will always need to be looked at individually. The heavy shotgun can be used in the same way as double pump. Revolvers and hand cannon can also be used in the same manner, however because of weapon inaccuracy they are less useful. If a new, more accurate shooting model is picked up then it they will also need to be looked at.
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Fortnite Battle Royale
Still exists – absolutely nothing fixed a few months after.
It has changed patch to patch since the original version. It is not as “good” as previously but still solid.