When it comes to unpopular developer decisions in games, things always tend to run more smoothly if the player base feels acknowledged.Fortnitedeveloper Epic Games seems to have realized this, and has decided to roll back a controversial change to the game after an uproar from its players.
Recently,Fortnitereceived two pretty significant nerfs:one to its BRUTE mech, which went over relatively smoothly, and another to turbo building, which caused a veritable online riot. Turbo building lets players churn out quick “90s” (placing and building a structure) without going through the manual effort to do so, and Epic Games basically hobbled that feature by increasing the time of turbo builds from .05 to .15 seconds–meaning it took longer to build another structure anyway.
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Since reaching higher ground in .05 of a second can be the difference between winning and being shot down, experienced players were not impressed by the change. Epic Games' thinking behind the decision was to even the playing field a bit and make building more deliberate, but that changed within 24 hours as it became clear that a slow turbo build was pleasing nobody. “Hey all,” Epic shared on its website earlier today, “TheTurbo Build delayadjustments we made yesterday to subsequent structure pieces placed have been changed back to their previous value, 0.005* seconds. Your ability to perform “90s” and “waterfall” should feel exactly the same as it did before yesterday’s changes.”
Many well-knownFortniteplayers outright threatened to stop playing the game and switch over to something else, or at least boycottskins and other in-game purchasesuntil the nerf’s removal. Epic’s fast response to this shows just how weighty all those voices became, though it still implemented the “Next Steps” mentioned in yesterday’s initial turbo build changes post. Namely, there’s a delay of .15 seconds before another structure can be placed where one was just destroyed. In addition, a random roll between two players building in the same spot will determine which structure is built.
If nothing else, this whirlwind of controversy and gameplay drama shows that Epic Games is still willing and able to listen to its player community, which is heartening. Perhapsthe nerf shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but hopefully, most players will be appeased by the brevity of this setback.
Fortniteis currently available to play on mobile devices, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
