Fortnite Lead Developer Reveals Plans to Buff Pump Shotgun in Next Update v5.30
Fortnite Design Lead at Epic Games, Eric Williamson, has revealed the development studio’s plans to amend shotguns in the next update for the popular battle royale game.
Since receiving a hard nerf, the community has been vocal about the changes to shotguns, many saying that while they were perhaps too powerful before, the update went too far in tipping the scales.
With the v5.0 update, the developers added an ‘equip’ time to shotguns, delaying how quickly shotguns could be fired after equipping them from another shotgun.
This was done to prevent the common ‘double pump’ meta, where players would constantly and quickly switch between two pump shotguns during a gun fight, bypassing the ‘pump’ action.
It became frustrating to deal with, and so the equip timer was introduced, but now the pump shotgun in particular has dropped significantly down the pecking order of weapons, and Epic wants to amend that.
Williamson took to Twitter to give a rare inside look into what the plans are behind the scenes at Epic, ahead of the next update, v5.3.
They plan to ‘reduce the equip time slightly’, but Eric doesn’t go into specifics. It is likely to only shorten by a matter of milliseconds, but this could make all the difference in a close gunfight.
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As for the other shotguns (double barrel, heavy and tactical), they will all remain untouched for the time being. The double barrel is the most recent addition to the game, and players have been generally pleased with its balancing.
Tactical shotguns are still considered fairly weak, and will almost always be dropped in favor of a heavy shotgun, which are currently considered the top dogs in the category.
But that used to be the domain of the pump shotgun, and could well be again, if the reduction in equip time is significant enough.