Fortnite’s new weapons are broken and there’s only one way to fix them

Fortnite’s new weaponry has left the community at a crossroads, with some demanding a change in the loot pool to fix it. Here is our take on how Epic can fix the broken weapons meta.

Battle royale video games have become a dominant force in the gaming industry, with intense, last-man-standing action that tests players’ survival abilities and strategic thinking. Today, games such as Fortnite, Apex Legends, Warzone, and PUBG dominate the genre.

In 2017, I played my first Battle Royale game, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), which introduced me to a new type of gameplay that was different from my previous experience with classic FPS shooters like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Call of Duty.

A 100-player lobby and the opportunity to be the last one remaining sounded appealing to me. One of the primary factors that makes these games so appealing is the wide variety of weapons available to players, each with its own set of strengths, weaknesses, and distinguishing features. 

While playing such games, I noted that you had to scavenge weapons off the ground or unlock chests to alter them with attachments throughout the fight. However, this method felt time-consuming, and it diverted my focus from defeating my enemies to modding these weapons. Then I discovered Epic Games’ Fortnite.

A breath of fresh air, this Battle Royale title simplified guns in video games for me by offering a considerably smaller weapon assortment. This smart decision allowed players to focus on creating complicated structures using resources during combat without complicating matters with overly complex weapon load-outs.

Unfortunately, over time, the number of weapons in Fortnite has increased, and now the game’s guns are as complicated and flawed as those in other Battle Royale games. Don’t panic, though. We know the only way to improve them.

The good ol’ guns of Fortnite

When Fortnite originally launched, it offered its players only six types of weapons: assault rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, pistols, sniper rifles, and explosives. That’s what makes Fortnite’s learning curve so simple, allowing it to appeal to a much younger demographic of players.

To make gaming easier, Fortnite weapons were initially devoid of customizable attachments, unlike previous Battle Royale titles, and the game educated its user base on weapon classification and use cases for each scenario.

For example, you’d use a standard Assault Rifle for medium-range pray and spray, a Shotgun for close combat and dealing heavy damage to your opponent, an SMG for spraying bullets at an enemy from close range, a Sniper with an in-built scope to deal one-shot damage to an enemy, or an explosive weapon like grenades or rocket launchers to deal blast damage to structures or enemies from afar.

Furthermore, a weapon’s damage and efficacy increased in proportion to its rarity, which in Fortnite spans from Common to Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Mythic, and Exotic. A weapon’s rarity determines how much damage it can deliver to an opponent.

This simpler strategy enabled players to concentrate on construction and refining game skills to survive to the finish and organize their map rotations during the Battle Royale round. However, it wasn’t long before Fortnite started to ape competitors like Apex Legends and Warzone by introducing customizable weaponry.

Shoot to Thrill – or Craft maybe

Fortnite made its first move towards weapon customization when it introduced Crafting in Chapter 2, allowing players to create a variety of bows from materials found on the island.

While upgrading weaponry was previously possible in the game via Upgrade Benches, crafting gave gamers optimism that they might be able to customize their weapons in the future of Fortnite Battle Royale.

The crafting gimmick continued for a few more seasons, allowing players to improve weapons depending on the things they obtained, customize them with enchantment powers, and even boost their firing rate.

However, gamers wanted bespoke attachments in the game, and weapon mods were introduced in Chapter 5 Season 1. It allowed players to customize their weapons during a match by adding custom attachments to their base weapon.

Weapon mods allow players to customize their favorite guns to fit their playstyle using a mod bench. While their introduction was initially popular, the downsides became apparent later in the season.

These mod benches require players to pay gold and allow them to customize their weapons to fit their playstyle. While this introduction had certain advantages, the disadvantages became apparent later in the season.

Players were fed up with their opponents, eliminating them with a Sniper Rifle at close range or a shotgun with an attached sight at medium range. This threw the game’s weapon balance into disarray and, quite simply, shattered the Fortnite weapon meta.

As players reach the completion of Chapter 5 Season 1, they’ve been increasingly critical of the present loot pool, with some even suggesting that the Weapon Mods system be completely removed in the following season.

Take me back to the classics

While the whole Fortnite community is outraged by the game’s poor weapon balance, gamers like myself wish we could return to simpler times when all you had to do was classify weapons in your loot pool based on their use case in a fight and only worry about upgrading them for heavy damage.

On the contrary, the game needs these significant changes to grow its gameplay; nevertheless, if the penalty of doing so is the loss of the joy and simplicity of old Fortnite weaponry, I’d rather play a creative map that allows them.

Furthermore, you felt powerful in the early seasons of Fortnite, when you had a gold Pump Shotgun in your arsenal. The identical weapon is now a Mythic Frenzy Auto Shotgun, which can only be obtained by defeating a boss on the island.

For someone who plays Fortnite practically every day, I’ve never been more tired by the weapon loot pool than I am this season. I’d rather if Epic Games made weekly vaults/unvaults of weapons from the past and released quests particularly designed to employ such weapons during gameplay.

Classic Fortnite weapons were significantly more balanced, easier to use and manage – whether you played with a controller or a mouse and keyboard – and featured a gratifying shooting sound that you could hear from a distance when shot.

To solve the faulty weapons meta that Epic is now operating in Fortnite, the return of the classics is required, and gamers can only hope to roll back the clock once again when a new season begins in the coming days.