A new Fortnite: Battle Royale developer update is coming today to address the game’s field of view, the siphon mechanics, and game evolution, Epic Games revealed. It’s coming as a blog post that will be published “in the early afternoon,” an Epic engineer said.
The confirmation of the developer update came after players in the competitive Fortnite subreddit demanded more explanations from Epic about these three topics, which have been their main concerns during the Fortnite World Cup Open Qualifiers period. Since the qualifiers started, Epic locked the field of view to that of the native 16:9 resolution, removed siphon mechanics from non-competitive modes, and released updates with almost no gameplay changes.
This blog post could announce big changes that the competitive Fortnite community has been waiting for. Now that the game has a permanent competitive mode with Arena, Epic can make changes that are restricted to that mode and to official online competitions without affecting how casual play mechanics work in default solo, duos, and squads playlists. For instance, Epic could add the highly-requested field-of-view slider to competitive modes and disable it in casual play.
But the latest changes haven’t catered to the competitive community, which can be a sign that this developer update isn’t bringing good news either. Not only has Epic made it harder for aspiring professional players to practice by removing siphon from casual play and disabling extended vertical field of view, but it also gave up on nerfing the problem of season eight, The Baller, to let its driver be hit. Instead, the company reduced its health from 300 to 200, which had nearly no effect on how important The Baller is in late-game competitive matches.
Any changes that Epic announces in this blog post will most likely come into effect next week, since this week’s update was released yesterday and we’re one day away from week three of the Fortnite World Cup Open Qualifiers.
