Season 9 brings big changes to competitive Fortnite

Fortnite has received another major update with the launch of Season 9. Despite being halfway through their biggest competitive event yet, Epic is still adding masses of new content to the game. Last weekend saw an event allowing players to chose an item to bring back from the Vault. This coincided with the volcano finally overflowing, making big changes to the game’s map. Some well-loved items have also been vaulted. These changes will really shake things up before the finals of the World Cup start.

Epic has made an important adjustment to the way Duos work and how they handle disconnections in the World Cup tournaments. These changes will prevent a Duos bug which has been allowing players to rack up points without any risk. Disconnects from games will now leave the player active in the map for a full minute. This will make any disconnected player easy pickings for a free elimination. These changes will help to make the game fairer and prevent exploitation.

Some players would have liked these changes to be retroactively applied to scoring, something that Epic won’t be doing. Actually implementing such a major change would require major changes to the rankings for all previous rounds of qualifiers. It would be an adjustment bound to cause more problems than it solves.

In-Game Changes to Fortnite

Season 9 of Fortnite that will be the build that will be in use for the first portion of the World Cup Finals. This makes the major changes that have taken place a lot more important that they usually would be to competitive play. This has even included a change to the game’s most popular location. Tilted Towers has long been known as the spot for a bloodbath, it has now been replaced by a futuristic version of itself. It will be interesting to see if players develop new strategies for this version of Tilted towers or if the spot remains the most dangerous place on the map.

I personally don’t like the new map in season 9 — Tfue (@TTfue) May 10, 2019

Players who are still bitter about the Baller haven’t had any good news from this update. It is here for a little longer at least, although the clinger has been removed. The most confusing change has been the Pump Shotgun. This beloved item has been vaulted for the crime of being used too much. In their blog covering the update, Epic has revealed that the pump shotgun currently accounts for over 26% of eliminations.

While that number is very high, it isn’t because the item is unbalanced. The pump shotgun is just the type of gun that is only used in close-combat situations where one player will be eliminated. It’s strange that a core balanced weapon like the Pump Shotgun has been vaulted while wackier and unbalanced items remain in the game. If the shotgun is still missing when the finals begin, it will be interesting to see how competitive players adjust their playstyles without it.