Ninja, Benjyfishy, more confused over 2020 Fortnite competitive changes

Big changes to the Fortnite competitive format were announced on January 20 that have the community buzzing, including Tyler ‘Ninja‘ Blevins.

Epic Games have come under fire from the community several times for how they handle incidents of supposed cheating, such as when XXiF was caught teaming, or when it was alleged that Mongraal was working behind the scenes with his coach to learn where enemies were.

Going into the future, the company promises to police things a bit better and introduced a set of bannable offenses. However, the plan might have backfired as there’s been a bunch of pushback from the community about how the devs will be handling those who pickaxe swing at other players.

Swinging a pickaxe at an opponent is a way players signal to each other they don’t want to fight but would rather rotate instead. Other methods players did were emoting or jumping, but it doesn’t look like that will be happening anymore.

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Now, Epic will be looking for and punishing players who do that, meaning that even if players are caught out in no man’s land eons away from the storm, they will seemingly be forced to fight.

Players haven’t been excited about these changes and the reactions quickly came pouring in.

“This isn’t going to work unless movement is added game is gonna be SOOOOOO rng it’s insane if you don’t get zone then you die late game,” said Benjyfishy.

He was far from the only one to share their opinion.

A common complaint about Fortnite in Chapter 2 is the extreme lack of mobility options, with the boat being the only way players can get around quickly, but that’s just effective on the waterways.

Previously, Fortnite had plenty of mobility options like Ballers, Stormwings, Driftboards, etc. but all of that has now disappeared.

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Ninja was able to see Epic’s point of view, but also echoed the same concerns the other pro players had about the lack of mobility.

“I can see where epic is coming from, as a spectator seeing teams and players rotating and not shooting and swinging pickaxes can seem odd but with no rotation items at all professional players understand when the time to fight actually is,” he tweeted. “Also, jumping? Best way to dodge snipes.”

All of the changes are effective immediately, meaning all of the future Cash Cups will already have this implemented, along with whatever tournaments Epic have in the future.

This could end being costly for players who are stuck in their ways, such as those who jump or whip their pickaxe out by habit while rotating.

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How strict Epic will be with these changes remains to be seen and it’s possible they could end up being laid back unless you’re blatantly avoiding fights or things of that nature. You can read through the whole blog post here.