I no longer play fortnite. However I still subscribe to beaks – you should like, subscribe and hit the bell. He ran some content with this.. thing – the Aerzon Keypad and how he uses it in fortnite. It is not precisely a new idea, a keyboard style input device that is meant to be more comfortable. In the first video beaks from fortnite is primarily concerned with what this thing was, perhaps why you would swap to it, etc. To be totally honest I flicked through it, thought that it looked like a new keyboard/claw style thing and discounted it. Closed tab. Again this is not a new idea, these keypad gaming product things have existed for the better part of two decades in various iterations. They have generally been trash for FPS. You get less keys but you get an 8-way directional thump stick which is useless in FPS. You really need to be able to go A -> D quickly in shooters for many reasons. So you are left with a tiny keyboard with palm rest, maybe a scroll wheel or other widget. Even here these had some limited benefit over a traditional keyboard – if you wanted to use macros the macro assignable keys were generally in a better location than traditional macro keyboard macro keys. The thumb stick on the Aerzon is a true analogue stick – this is potentially even more useless in traditional FPS than the older style keypads 8-way sticks. You don’t need to move like this in FPS, its simply unneeded and the loss of instant input from a button/key is a hindrance. However beaks thinks this is important, coming from a controller background.
Lets preface the rest of this with something important – I have never used this and have no intention of using it or a similar style of keypad. However Beaks leaves his audience hanging on a verdict. Not sure if this is because he does not want to cop flak for recommending such an expensive product or what but the second video is essentially an “update on using this thing” rather than “you should buy it”. Evidently he likes it because he has stuck with it/seems intending to keep using the Aerzon Keypad in fortnite.
Lets just rip this from the Aerzon website because they explain the concept quite well.
We have made a gaming keypad that helps to play PC games tremendously easy. Thumbstick is great for movement and frees your WASD fingers for easier mashing of fully programmable keys.
The primary differentiator here, which I am sure Razer and the other manufacturers will pick up on and integrate into their products in future if the Azeron stays popular – is the analogue stick. All the other things, the crazy looking buttons, the adjustableness, while nice are not all that different to other products. The “keys” sound like the are driven using mouse button switches rather than mechanical switches on a regular gaming keyboard. This might make using it nicer and ergonomics/comfort seem to be a big reason why Aerzon exist. This is not my interest – I want to know if it improves gameplay and gives an advantage. Changing from a cherry key to mouse button style input will change things slightly but is not ground breaking. Interestingly the Aerzon people do not make much brouhaha over the analogue thumbstick. Beaks did, however. The premise is simple – with a keyboard you can move in 8 directions (A, AW, W, WD.. and so on) but with a controller type WASD input you can move.. 360 degrees. If W is 0degrees and WD is 45degrees with an analogue thumb stick you can also move forwards at 42degrees, 15degrees and so on. The Aerzon Keypads analogue thumbstick easily facilitates greater freedom of movement direction than a traditional keyboard WASD setup.
This, combined with freeing up your other four fingers is why it is potentially awesome for fortnite. To be completely honest as soon as I saw it (the second time in the second video) the potential was there. It is obvious. Stick movement on one finger and then free up all the other fingers for building and editing.. and this was before I even realised that the analogue stick was analogue or that existing keypad style gaming peripherals did not have analogue sticks. I have forever discounted these gaming keypads as garbage (and rightfully so) but fortnite might be the one game where it makes sense to a degree, primarily because there are many other binds and players need to press the binds much more often than changing weapons in older FPS. The building and edit keys are similar level of importance as movement, possibly more.
And part of the reason why the Azeron keypad and similar is possibly useful in fortnite is also player movement. Movement is not as important as in other FPS titles. Strafe is very muted compared to forwards and back movement. You do not need to juke back/forth as you would in other titles. When building 90s players typically hold forward and strafe a bit, this is not movement involved. Strafe aiming is not as much of a thing due to weapon mechanics and the slow strafe speed in general.
So lets recap the why: Players can move with one finger (thumb) while freeing up the rest of their keyboard hand for building and editing tasks. If you think this sounds interesting then the Azeron keypad may be for you. The older products that are similar from Razer and elsewhere have never taken off for FPS. This is because the thumbpad is not really suitable for FPS gaming. Some examples of things that are simply impossible on an analogue thumb stick or 8 way D-pad : You cannot press A+D, release one and get instant movement in the opposite direction. You cannot change from W to S instantly, you always have to go across the thumbsticks center. You cannot add A/D input to W/S by pressing a button without taking the time to rotate the stick to the correct position. This, imo, is why they are not good for FPS, particularly Arena FPS that I personally prefer. Having said that Fortnite movement is primarily forward with less side to side or back movement. This is because forward is significantly faster than strafing. So from this perspective using a thumb stick is possibly acceptable here. On top of this Fortnite also has building/editing, which requires a decent number of keys as well as fast inputs..
Fortnite seems to have (purely by accident) created a game that can finally make use of a gaming keypad like the Azeron with thumbstick at a higher skill level. The thumbstick is ok for movement because the movement is dumbed down, meanwhile freeing up four fingers for building/editing makes a huge amount of sense.
I think Beaks 360degree movement bit is off base, not important and potentially a negative. He is a converted console player and misses that aspect. If he could show examples where walking movment in 360 degrees is useful it might shed light on this aspect. Until then my assumption is he likes it purely because of his console background.
The main difference is the Analogue stick and this is the primary reason you would want this product over others if you are considering switching from a keyboard. Obviously the Azeron may be more ergonomic, have different keys/switches from other gaming keypads but overall from a gameplay advantage perspective it is the separate analogue thumbstick. This is the most important aspect of the product. Azeron – if you offered a keyboard style product with an analogue thumb stick I imagine it would take off.
Everything else is icing on the cake, or not, depending on your view of things. Even this analogue thumbstick may only be icing and not really all that interesting. The best aspect is thumb for movement, fingers for building/editing always being free.
This is the question that Beaks should have answered. Based on the above I would say no – you should not drop 120 Euros (~135USD) on a device that you may or may not like whos sole differentiator from a gameplay advantage is an analogue thumbstick. For starters there are other alternatives, while not having analogue sticks will give you a good indication if you can get used to or even like this type of setup without spending this much coin. Plus there seems to be a significant wait for the Azeron keypads. Going into writing this I was not aware that the old style keypad products did not have analogue sticks and was ready to get out the pitchforks straight away. As it turns out the Razer products have the equivalent of 8-way D-Pads, which in my opinion would give users a clear indication of what playing with this type of setup would be like, you may even prefer one.
In the early 2000s I dropped $900AUD on a 9*12inch Wacom graphics tablet, partially for work but the main driver was to see if it could be used for improved aiming in Unreal Tournament. Short version : it was overall a waste of money. If you are interested in playing with this type of peripheral I would strongly suggest looking for a second hand Razer product off ebay or Amazon as they are significantly cheaper.
Razer Orbweaver gaming keypad at amazon
Razer Tartarus gaming keypad at amazon
Razer Nostromo gaming keypad at amazon
The Nostromo was originally a Belkin product that Razer picked up.
There are other Razer products as this idea has been around for almost ten years. Interestingly looking on aliexpress and taobao there are not really any cheap knock off versions of these products. The offbrand gaming keypads that do exist omit the thumb stick entirely.
At this point I had basically finished the article and was ready to post, but went on a bit more of a deep dive on Amazon to see if there was anything else. This turned up a few other options which are not ideal but do have analogue thumb sticks. Depending on your luck these may weigh in at less than the Azeron and they are also keyboard style products rather than.. insane mouse button spider looking things.
The first is an old Logitech product called the G13. This appears to have been out of production for over 10 years but many are available on ebay for reasonable (and unreasonable) prices. It also has ~1500 reviews and a four star rating on Amazon, so it was much loved. Don’t let the crazy prices dissuade you, they aren’t selling at $600USD. This product likely died since before fortnite there was little reason/demand for a thumbstick as movement in an FPS. If you are a fan of the Logitech G13 then the Azeron Keypad is a possible alternative for you.
The second product is newish and still in production from what I could see – if anything there is a 2016 version and a newer 2019 version. So it is still being updated. Say hello to the Hori TAC Pro Type M2 Gaming Keypad and mouse combo. Bit of a mouthful but there you go. Hori usually make high quality fighting game control sticks, so this is a bit of a departure from what they usually do – however they are a solid brand and the product seems to have decent reviews and support (refreshed recently). It has an analogue thumb stick which is what we are looking for. Obviously you get a (likely) garbage mouse so you are shelling out for stuff you probably won’t use, and it is intended for PS4 (but supported by PC) as a gamepad replacement for FPS there. Personally this would be my choice if I wanted to try one as it looks the most like a keyboard but still gives analogue thumb stick functionality.
The third product is not a keypad or gamepad. It is a mouse. The underlying concept here is to move direction keys off the majority of your non-mouse fingers. The Lexip Pu94 Mouse manages to achieve this by adding an analogue thumbstick to the side of your mouse. In this setup you would be using your right hand for aiming and for moving while your left hand/keyboard hand is freed up for everything else. Personally this sounds horrible but if your goal is to put movement onto a thumb stick.. well it achieves this.
Finally I would be interested to try to DIY something like this using a traditional controller analogue stick rather than this slimline version. This could then be mounted somehow just below your keyboard or to the side of you numpad. Maybe.
Lastly I would be interested in how useful simply putting +forward on a mouse key bind would be, freeing up all your fingers to build/edit when you only need to go forward. Or using pinky finger for forward and having other three fingers+thumb resting on building/edit binds rather than strafe+jump.
So to recap – I am unsure if an analogue thumb stick gives much benefit over an 8 way D-Pad found on the current Razer models but the idea of removing movement from WASD and freeing up fingers for building/editing is solid and if you can get used to it an obvious winner.
When 2 good squads are fighting each other they both end up wasting almost all mats and that’s a big reason why competitive fornite everyone just camps and are scared to fight /discuss
I saved this quote a few weeks ago. Sorry I did not save a link to the post.
Lets be realistic – waste is the wrong word. They spend their resources. It is only a waste in the context of the overall match. Yes they are wasted for end game in this way but it is better to approach this puzzle from the perspective of spending resources and the economy rather than trying to.. stop waste?
Lowering maximum material would potentially have a positive impact on this aspect of the game.
Bear with me. There was a great overview of the competitive scene posted last week (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJBcSG8qnd0) –
There appear to be two problems. The first is lack of reason to commit to fights before end game. This has had discussions and suggestions like “make kills more important” and “use supply drops to get people to fight”. Both are reasonable suggestions at face value. There is risk but make the rewards worthwhile – more shields from drops, only drop desirable weapons, more meds etc. The merits and drawbacks have been debated decently already. Personally I dislike just using kills but it could be possible. However this aspect is not one to focus on just now. It is still an issue even if the material problem is solved but needs to be addressed separately.
The second aspect is materials. In reality this is the “big” problem. The example used in the video above is players taking fights, spending resources to win (or lose or disengage) that fight then having none, or significantly less left for later in the game. In this way the fight is never worth taking because players cripple their effectiveness vs other teams that have not taken material heavy fights. Even with the other teams resources (weapons, ammo, meds, left over mats) they are at a disadvantage. Players may be able to gather resources later, or not. It really depends. For example later circles at the barren area near anarchy acres is different to ending near wailing woods.. And even gathering resources later has risks associated that a team who opts not to fight does not need to face. This can potentially also impact teams ability to setup in desirable locations later in the game as the circles shrink. With the more recent changes to
With this in mind it is easy to see why players are so passive in competitive games. Even if you win an encounter you still end up in the red. If you think back to early days when there were only +50 shield potions you will see the similarities. Once you had a shield you wanted to preserve it as long as possible into late game because the likelyhood of finding another one was quite low. In the same way you cannot spend your materials because you need them available for later.
In other games the risk:reward is dictated and gated by the round (in a game like CS) or item dynamics (quake/ut) where the risk is whatever time was spent to gather stack to contest the spawn. In CS the risk for this round carries into the next via economy to a degree, however the amount of risk is known going into the start of the round based on what your team buys. In Quake you spend ~60seconds stacking to contest the next mega spawn. If you die/take significant damage you need to start again. I don’t play MOBAs or RTS but I imagine a similar idea is there. Perhaps in these games once one player gets too far ahead their advantage snowballs leading them to win the game.
In Fortnite if you spend a significant portion of the game gathering resources then use the majority in one encounter you, or your squad ends up screwed later. This is ignoring other aspects like ammo, having players knocked out permanently, positioning, etc.
This seems obvious.
In part this is due to the nature of BR and games with more than two teams. If there were only two teams on a map and the game played the way it does now taking that fight is fine, at least from the material aspect. You know that if you win you do not need to conserve resources for future fights. You would then be judging your materials vs their materials. Even in this scenario I believe the “safe” play would simply be “get as much as possible” since it is impossible to know how much your opponent has – in order to not be out resourced you just get more. This is segueing away from the idea but ties into some points later.
Watching that video and reading /r/FortniteCompetitive/ seems to indicate that fights outside of late game mega-build-mess comes down to who has more materials anyway. When they do occur the winning team is left with nothing, or very little, which seems to indicate that one team “outbuilt” the other. In this case seems to mean they had more materials to utilise during the build fight, or spent their material more efficiently. The team they killed drops nothing of note and they have little left to use. This is important.
The often suggested “fix” to this is more resources. This could come in the way of killed players dropping extra loot or increasing resource gathering from the world. Neither of those really solve the problem unless the extra dropped is significant to the tune of 1000-2000 per kill. This would likely have the impact of forcing teams that opt not to engage to simply farm max everything, meaning they would still potentially have an advantage late game vs teams that are killing, unless they are getting more than three kills per player. Not 100% accurate but lets use it as a starting point. If gathering materials was increased there is still the potential to not have enough and so avoiding engagements and saving materials is still important.
In most games resources are scarce to a degree. Giving players unlimited ammo or other resources is not common. However suggestions of making resources extremely easily available can potentially stifle other aspects of the game. Another point to note is that resources are required to obtain resources and have fights. In a gametype with more than two “players” this impacts options later in the match, leading players to take the safer alternative of not engaging. This is akin to playing a six player FFA in starcraft and then backdooring opponents after they have a fight. Long gametimes with a long resource gathering curve is a bad mix. FFA in other games, like quake or ut is controlled by item spawns, so while a death is a set back a player can still get back into the fight relatively quickly. This is not the case in fortnite currently.
Basically the current economy is the length of the game*.
The late game mega structures are also a potential problem. They are not viewer friendly.
Lets recap quickly:
1) The game lacks interaction drivers in its current state. Suggested fixes include kills=points and modified supply drops.
2) Materials are important and spending resources before end game can put you on the backfoot heavily even if you win the encounter. Remember this is ignoring external influences like other players attacking you while you fight or heal. Purely from a one team vs one team perspective.
3) Early to mid game is characterised by resource gathering for later in the game. Gathering later may become risky (more teams), may be impossible (circle on resource light area, other teams) and also constrains teams ability to take up desirable locations towards the later circles – either because they do not have the resources to or because they are not spending time gathering rather than setting up.
4) Outcome of fights before end game seem to be strongly tied to who has the most resources. If teams are left with little resources and both teams players have build large structures trying to out maneuver each other it stands to reason that the deciding factor in many cases is the amount of resources going into the fight.
Where does that leave us?
If players are constantly avoiding fights due to fear of using resources but using all their resources in a fight then why is the solution to give more resources? Players should be able to carry enough materials that allow fun/impressive build fights but if running out of materials often decides fights then the game needs to limit material maximums rather than giving almost unlimited resources. This way players know how much they have, know how much their opponent has and can work within these parameters during the fight.
In addition to setting a more reasonable limit to the size of a fight it also means that players can material up much faster afterwards. If players were limited to 200 of each resource, or 600 total in any mix, then getting back to that is much faster, even with the current game world. Players do not need to dedicate time to gathering after a fight. This is purely from an economy perspective, not a “it is boring to farm” perspective. Currently there is no economy as players spending large amount of resources outside of late game are putting themselves at a disadvantage. 200/600 are numbers picked out of the air. It is important epic tweak farming and material totals to allow harvesting between fights through mid game while also allowing decently impressive build fights.
This has a number of flow on effects. Fights come to a conclusion faster because there are less materials available. Teams will know how much resource their opponent will have because carrying max is important, which buffs building ability to a degree. More efficient building may be important as waste is a potential problem, however this depends on the cap. For example if materials were capped at 200 then one build piece is a large spend vs one piece with 1000 max.
Lower cap also impacts end game turtling to a degree. If players were previously spending a decent amount setting up on high ground towards the end of the game then choosing to spend a large amount with lower cap before knowing where the circle will be is wasteful. Assuming that the only change is material cap and gathering rate the game will still remain passive. However players will have to pick their risk. If you build solidly you risk wasting materials that you cannot regather in time to be effective late game, however if you do not build heavily you are potentially more vulnerable. A lower cap pushes the cut off for spending material later.
There are different ways to cap materials and they have different trade offs. You could choose to cap each at 300(eg) or have 900 total in whatever mix you like. If per material cap were used then players would need to farm each material at a similar level of importance, which could promote moving around the map more. It would also promote intelligent use of mats. For example if metal is less important due to lower base HP during build fights it might be used more for map traversal. However if players are trying to take high ground on a hill and know there are trees, or brick at the top then using one of these makes more sense as they can top up their freshly used resources. If a total pool is used then the fastest to gather material makes more sense.
It is my opinion that epic have been made aware of the viewer unfriendliness of competitive fortnite via “the divisions”. Their current stance on the matter has been phrased as “we want all players of different styles to win”, however it is more likely that they want to address the turtle meta and also address lack of interaction drivers at the same time. Both problems will eventually appear in pub games. Saying the game is being made more noob friendly is misplaced. Currently the pub meta is not the same as competitive, however this is in part because competitive is not talked outside of this sub and the competitive community. It is not front and center for most players. At some point SBMM will be implemented – I imagine some time between when the influx of new players tapers off and when the lower tier players get sick of being farmed by much better players.
And building being strong will have an impact on lower parts of the ladder as well. If players are not mechanically inclined they will not be able to kill opponents who decide to turtle and turbo build walls forever. Once this becomes the meta for the lower part of the player base it will have a worse impact than it does to better players. There have been comments lamenting players who can build but never shoot on r/competitivefortnite from time to time. Imagine players that can’t build fight, can’t aim but can build boxes to sit in.
So in the longer term this will impact the rest of the player base.
I hope epic can address the issue without destroying build fights entirely. I also hope that they can add incentives to build fight more often in spectacular ways because that is interesting and fun to watch. This is the other aspect I have touched on but not addressed.
Are fortnite shotguns broken?
What is your opinion on the level of broken-ness of shotguns in fortnite?
Leave a comment below with how you feel about shotguns giving 9 damage hits. I am curious about the level of fortnite shotgun broken people think is in the game.
Fortnite services and slated for downtime for the large season 4 update on May 1 at 4:00am Eastern Time (08:00 GMT). The countdown towards fortnite season 4 begins.
Who is excited to see what season 4 of fortnite brings? Super heros? Map wide destruction from the comet? Who knows!
Fortnite demos are stored in your user appdata directory inside fortnitegame.
C:\Users\ %userprofile% \AppData\Local\FortniteGame\Saved\Demos
Replace C with your windows drive or drive where your user data is stored. Currently you cannot change the folder where the fortnite replays are saved.
There is a bug in fortnite 3.5 that prevents you from renaming demos – if you do the game will crash. This has been flagged by epic and will likely be addressed in the future.
Currently (Fortnite 3.5) replays are only compatible on the game version they were recorded on. This means Epics weekly-ish updates will result in a "Corrupted replay" when trying to play them after patching to 3.5.1. Epic are working on this and plan to support Fortnite demos for the duration of each major patch. This means that a demo recorded in 3.5 will work until 3.6.
Keep this in mind if you have kills you want to recam as you will be unable to once Epic push an update so record asap. Epic comment
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Epic have finally changed shooting mechanics and made an attempt at addressing bloom / cone of fire. Right on! As of the Fortnite 3.4 patch some weapons will benefit from first shot accuracy. Epic ran shooting test 1 a few months ago and were planning on running a second test. Apparently there was much discussion internally and they appear to have skipped the second test and gone straight to live. The weapons that now have first shot accuracy are : Suppressed Submachine Gun (silenced smg), Tactical Submachine Gun (smg), Pistol (semi auto piston), Suppressed Pistol (Silenced pistol), Revolver, Hand Cannon (Deagle), Assault Rifle (AR / colt / m16), Burst Assault Rifle. This is the majority of the hitscan, single bullet weapons. Shotguns are not impacted by the first shot accuracy change.
When a player aims down sights and does not move the crosshair will "snap" in on the center point. When this occurs the crosshair arms become transparent in order to give the player greater visibility on their target. It is very simple. Currently all weapons appear to have the same amount of time to full accuracy and this does not change between standing or crouching. Tap firing and waiting for crosshair to reset between shots will yield superior accuracy.
To balance this out Epic have added damage fall off in order to limit engagement range. This changes between weapon "types".
Will play and keep tabs on players feelings and expand on this as needed.
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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 does not have a traditional score board like most online shooters. You can see your connection speed when selecting your matchmaking region in the settings menu. The ms number reported here appears to be the raw ping to the aws data center.
This is not the sort of number given in games and is not very useful beyond selecting the best region lobby to join.
You can access your in game ping through the menus. Browse to HUD and enable the option. You will now get a read out of in game latency, packets and data usage. Because Fortnites netcode is primarily client side the latency does not matter all that much. You do not need to lead your shots more. At higher latency or lower packets (eg early game) you may have hit registration problems, but overall having a solid 150ms in netstat should not be a huge handicap.
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UPDATE: The release of Patch V.2.4.0 has been delayed so we can further improve stability and hammer out some remaining bugs. Once we have an updated ETA, we’ll be sure to let you know.
Hey Fortnite players,
You’ve probably run into a few issues playing Fortnite this past week. We’ve since solved a lot of those issues, however, we’re still working to solve a couple of building-related problems. We know this is affecting a lot of you and are working to resolve this as quickly as we can. We greatly appreciate all of youra h patience and understanding. As a token of our appreciation, here are some goodies! Find out more here.
On top of that, V.2.4.0 brings in bug fixes for Battle Royale and some fun new additions for Save the World. Amaze your friends with stories of past adventures around the Cozy Campfire, or try out the new Expedition types!
Minigun
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Introducing the Minigun! Control the battlefield with sheer firepower with this new addition to Battle Royale.
Cozy Campfire
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Heal yourself and allies with the all-new Cozy Campfire addition to Save the World. Stay warm and healthy as you share stories with your friends around it.
BATTLE ROYALE
WEAPONS
MiniGun
Found in Chests and Supply drops
Fires almost as quickly as SMG
Uses Light ammo
Suppressed Pistol
Reduced drop chances of Epic variant by 20%.
Reduced drop chances of Legendary variant by 33%.
GAMEPLAY
Added “Controller Auto Run” option.
This enables/disables the auto run feature on controllers.
Auto run, which was introduced in v2.3.0, is enabled by double clicking the left thumb stick on controllers.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a few landscape areas that were barely below floor height before.
This sometimes caused the majority of a structure to appear underground.
Players can now shoot through the Soccer goal.
GENERAL
Added “3D Resolution” slider to Video options on PC and Mac.
This new preference allows you to set the resolution of the 3D world, without affecting the user interface.
The range goes between 640×360 and your selected Display Resolution. Using a lower 3D Resolution may greatly improve frame rate.
When selecting an overall Quality option, an appropriate 3D Resolution will be chosen automatically.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a client crash that would get triggered by an audio cue.
Fixed an issue preventing players from unmuting other players in the lobby screen.
Fixed an issue causing an incorrect character model to display on the lobby screen.
Fixed an issue causing entire walls to highlight when looking at a door.
PERFORMANCE
Bug Fixes
Fixed client hitching which could occur when the Chug Jug was found in game.
Made engine performance improvements to how we process collision overlap events.
Reduced network bandwidth usage when players are walking, and when they are standing still
UI
Spectating
Added spectator count UI to the HUD. This appears in game as a small eye in the lower left corner when there are active spectators. Better off not knowing? There is also an option to disable the feature under game options labeled “Show Spectator Count”.
Bug Fixes
Removed an unnecessary button prompt on the left side of the news widget.
Added a border highlight around item shop tiles when selecting them on consoles.
Fixed an issue allowing the old trap picker radial menu to open. This radial menu is no longer used for selecting traps.
Fixed an issue causing weapon icons to not display properly on the hotbar in some cases.
Fixed a few spots on the map and minimap that were rendered as black spots.
Fixed the floor under the hero not showing up when previewing emotes in the locker or item shop
Fixed emotes being offset if they were viewed in succession.
ART/ANIMATION
Optimized the colored rarity effect on weapons and items to improve overall performance.
Colors may look slightly different.
Bug Fixes
Corrected the drinking speed animation for the 15-second Chug Jug item.
AUDIO
Bug Fixes
Improved spatialization of loot chest audio by increasing the audio volume if you’re aiming at them.
Removed the static audio from living room televisions.
Fixed a directional audio issue when another player switches to a shotgun.
Removed footstep audio from dance emotes.
WORLD
Bug Fixes
Fixed the missing collision on a window asset in Tilted Towers.
Fixed the landscape appearing jagged at medium-range distances.
Fixed flickering artifacts that are sometimes seen on the rivers while riding the Battle Bus.
Fixed an issue causing two items to spawn in the same location near Lonely Lodge.
Fixed some seams in the terrain south of Anarchy Acres.
Disabled the collision on the vines in Moisty Mire.
KNOWN ISSUES
Problems building on consoles.
Visual building selector issue that sometimes makes the wrong structure type appear in the UI.
SAVE THE WORLD
HIGHLIGHTS
Context Sensitive menus are live!
More options are available when interacting with items in the Hero Squad, Survivor Squads, and Armory. Schematics and people can be directly added to the Collection Book now!
Cozy Campfire
All allied players and Defenders in a 3×3 tile area around the Campfire are healed over time. Lasts until the fire has consumed its Durability. The Cozy Campfire trap schematic is available through the Event Store.
Two New Expedition Types
People Runs: A free to run expedition that lets you gather a small amount of People (resource).
Trap Runs: These expeditions will let you gather traps through expeditions.
Balancing changes on some existing expeditions.
Improved rewards, with slightly lower power costs.
We’re continuing to iterate to make this better! Please tell us what you think!
HEROES
Bug Fixes
The Anti-Material Charge hitbox will more reliably hit enemies in front of the Outlander on startup.
Fixed the healing visual effects not properly being removed when a player is healed from BASE M.D.
Additionally, the healing effect is now periodic instead of being applied as soon as you touch the affected BASE.
MISSIONS
Bug Fixes
Husks from encampments will no longer spawn under the terrain.
UI
Bug Fixes
Fixed problems working with the in-zone transfer UI for severely overflowed Storm Shield storage.
Please note: In a near future release, it will not be possible to claim expedition rewards while Storm Shield storage is overflowed. Respecting the storage limit is important to protecting player items.
Updated the frag grenade tooltip to reflect the recent changes to Keep Out and Cluster Bomb.
Cluster Bomb: Releases 6 cluster explosions around the impact site that will each do 25% of the original damage.
Keep Out!: Leaves a residual energy field, doing 15% of the initial grenade blast damage every 1 second, over 10 seconds.
Update the Cardio Feedback perk tooltip to properly display the base healing amount of 15 instead of 13.
Fixed many incorrect tooltips
GENERAL
Removed a few llamas from the store rotation: Double Llama, Fiver Llama, Six Pack Llama, Niner Llama.
The 3, 7 and 10 versions of this Llama still exist. This was done to focus on a smaller number of variants of this llama type.
Rebalanced the amount of starting ammunition for ranged weapons when picked up in the world.
KNOWN ISSUES
Players are sometimes unable to select card choice when opening an Upgrade Llama.
Items in the collection book cannot be evolved after leaving a zone.
When inspecting an item located in the players inventory the display image may not appear properly.
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Where do you want to start learning and improving your Fortnite Battle Royale game? Maybe you would like to be a better builder, maybe better at combat. Perhaps you want to improve your looting or world navigation. With these guides you will be able to get ahead of your opponents and better understand the game.