5 Things We Want to See in the Next Fortnite Update

Fortnite Battle Royale has seen its Chapter 2 Season 3 release on June 17 kick off with new POIs, Whirlpools for Glider transport, ride-able sharks and tons of new cosmetic content. As is with any release, there were many implementations and items on fans’ wish lists that did not make it into the game this time around. 

As a developer, it’s impossible to make everybody happy. Especially when you are a global phenomenon with the entire world seemingly playing your game at the same time, discrepancies of what fans and pro players want will rear its ugly head. While Epic Games undoubtedly does their best when it comes to introducing new content and balancing existing playlists and gameplay, here are the top five things we would like to see come Season 4 in the future.

Five Things We Want to See in the Next Fortnite Update

1. FOV Slider

FOV stands for Field of View, and many FPS games and Battle Royale titles implement this feature to help players increase the viewable screen real estate - which then becomes a great boon and competitive advantage. Epic Games has been asked by fans for quite some time to implement this feature, but has balked time and again due to concerns of creating an unbalanced playing field.

Adding an FOV slider would greatly help players with peripheral awareness, yet the developers are concerned that gamers on lower-end PCs, console and mobile would be unable to use this stably and thus create an unfair advantage for mid to high-tier PC players. Although FOV adjustments would be amazing, it is understandable the developers' position seeing how as you increase your FOV, the more rendering must be done by the hardware to accommodate the added items on screen. 

While games such as Apex Legends offer FOV graphic settings across PC as well as console, Fortnite is in a predicament seeing how mobile is part of the cross-play pool and implementing the feature on handheld devices might not be plausible. Something we’d love to see in the immediate future, but doubtful in the state Fortnite finds itself in currently.

2. Removal of SBMM in Casual Playlists

To be clear, Epic Games did remove Skill Based Matchmaking in its Squads Playlist - for about three days. In an update in May, Epic Games removed SBMM from Squads for a time, although it was still present in Duos. Later in the week, it was inexplicably back in Squads, where it remains to this day. Seeing as Fortnite now has a dedicated competitive mode named Arena, the presence of SBMM in casual playlists simply makes no sense.

Removing the mode from casual modes completely would make the most number of people happy; sweats would have Arena and the plebs everything else. While the concern is that high-skilled players would simply queue up into casual lobbies to wreck unfortunate 8 year olds, having dedicated modes for dedicated skill levels would be the best way to have everyone on the same page without splitting up the player base too much. 

3. Remove Mythic Weapons and OP Weapons from Arena

Fortnite Arena is the dedicated mode for competitive players. A sweat-fest where the most dedicated go to showcase their talents - which is why it is incredibly frustrating to play a high-skill playlist only to die to a weapon designed intentionally to destroy you with minimal skill involved. 

Mythic weapons are over the top armaments acquired by mini-boss fights and while you need to risk your neck to get them, the result once you get your hands on one is that you become a super-soldier with almost no equal in the right situations and player hands. Seeing how Arena is supposed to be a competitive mode for players to experience a ranking system full of growth potential in a tournament-style environment, introducing OP weapons into the mode seems to be a bit counterproductive. We’d like to see mythic weapons where they belong - in casual playlists.

4. Developer Patch Notes and Better Communication

Epic Games made the controversial decision to quit releasing patch notes for Fortnite updates once Chapter 2 got underway. Keeping players in the dark regarding changes only serves to hurt the community rather than attempt to shelter it - just ask Infinity Ward about stealth patches in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

While Epic Games does have the right to not release their patch notes, data miners and other individuals with access and insider information will continue to do so anyway - their potential fears of alienating players or losing them altogether as the result of a few changes is unfounded. When you run a concurrent player count of 78.3 million any given day that is the least of your worries.

5. Test Servers and Live Beta Tests

PLAYERUNKOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS gets a lot of heat and seems to be tossed in the mud much these days, but one area they have excelled in has been developer communication and the implementation of test servers to let players try out upcoming and suggested changes to the game ahead of their release. Such a move not only gives players the feeling that they are involved in the state and changing dynamic of the game, but also imparts a level of responsibility as skilled players could influence whether some proposed change is simply too OP or not strong enough.

We’d love to see Fortnite implement something like this - in turn having more data to make informed decisions while building on the developer-player relationship at the same time.

Whether any of these proposed changes ever see the light of day is anyone's guess. With Epic Games looking to keep Fortnite alive and well despite strong challenges from newcomers such as Call of Duty: Warzone, Valorant, and others, Epic Games would do well to stay ahead of the game and give fans what they want.