Fortnite Battle Royale removes guided missile launcher

Epic have removed the guided missile launcher from Fortnite Battle Royale as part of a hotfix bringing some other much-wanted changes too. Guided missiles have proved controversial since Epic added them at the end of March, often feeling frustratingly powerful and tricky to fight against. So those are gone for now. Epic have also fixed an issue which could interfere with firing while peeking, and removed some of the newly-added weapon switch delays. In short, less jank, less annoyance.

"We've gotten a lot of feedback around the Guided Missile, in particular concerns over fairness and strength of the weapon," Epic explained on Reddit yesterday. "We share your concerns, so we've put the Guided Missile into the vault while we figure out the next steps for its future."

While the Guided Missile was rare, it was mighty powerful, especially in team modes. Players could hide away in their fort, safely directing missiles to hunt down enemies and smash their defences. Sure, players are vulnerable while directing missiles, but with strong cover or squadmates watching over, they were in a really strong position. It's a bummer to go up against someone who's risking little while raining explosives.

As for weapon switching, Epic have removed the equip times from Snipers and Crossbows. Delays were recently added to many weapons to stop players from queuing up a stream of powerful weapons to dodge the drawback of their long reload times. But those two weapon types, Epic say, "do not benefit as much from quick switching." The devs also note that they will improve weapon equip animations in a future update because "it's possible to fire sooner than the gun appears ready, so they feel more sluggish than they really are."

Epic also acknowledged that, while fixing another issue, recently introduced a bug which meant people peeking over buildings and edges "would accidentally end up shooting your own structures." That's being rolled back in update 3.5.2 this week while they work on a fix which doesn't have that side-effect.

Oh, also, I should mention the revamped 50v50 mode which was due to launch last week. Given the server problems the game was experiencing over the weekend, Epic chose to delay that and should launch it tomorrow.

Annnd in version 3.6 Epic will fix the problem blocking people from building through fences.

Okay, that's it, that's enough for this update on Fortnite updates.

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