Epic pulls Fortnite's controversial guided missile weapon from the game
Silos needed.
Epic has pulled the guided missile weapon from Fortnite Battle Royale just two weeks after adding it to the game.
In a post on the Fortnite reddit, Epic said it shared concern expressed by players about the fairness and strength of the guided missile. In response, it put the weapon into the vault "while we figure out the next steps for its future".
So, what was the problem with the guided missile? In our experience, it was one of the least fun weapons to use because it was so low risk. Unlike other weapons in the game, the guided missile could be fired while the user remained in cover, which meant your risks were limited to the fact you were busy controlling the missile.
For me, Fortnite is at its best when someone does something amazing during the endgame, typically a bold advance that involves boosting into the air and swooping around behind a defence. This is fun and incredibly satisfying to pull off because you're at enormous risk as you do it. Guided missile-fuelled endgames, however, involved a lot of cowering behind a parapet.
Still, I hope Epic figures out a way to make the guided missile make sense within the wonderful world of Fortnite, and based on its statement, the studio will give it some serious thought.
Elsewhere, Epic said it unintentionally introduced a bug around peeking over structures and edges, which meant you would accidentally end up shooting your own structures. The studio said it'll roll back this change in v3.5.2 this week.
And finally, Epic made some changes to weapon swapping. The studio recently introduced weapon equip times to help balance quick switching between different weapons with low rate of fire (shotguns!).
Snipers and crossbows do not benefit as much from quick switching, Epic said, so it's reverting the equip times changes for those weapons. It's keeping the delay for the remaining weapons with the new behaviour, so that's shotguns, revolvers, hand cannons and rocket launchers.
Here's an interesting note: Epic admitted the weapon equip animations are "somewhat misleading" as it's possible to fire sooner than the gun appears ready. This makes them feel more sluggish than they really are. "You may notice this on a few weapons," Epic said, while promising to improve weapon equip animations in a future update.