Epic Games are planning significant adjustments to vehicles in Fortnite ahead of the upcoming $30 million World Cup tournament, which could cause further headaches for professional players.
What is the Fortnite World Cup?
The Fortnite World Cup is the biggest event that Epic has ever hosted, pitting the best solo and duo players from around the world against each other to earn their share of the largest prize pool ever offered for a gaming competition.
Qualifiers for the biggest tournament in esport history are just around the corner, with the first event taking place on April 13. Qualifiers will end on June 13 with $1 million up for grabs every week until the grand finals in New York on July 26-28.
What changes are coming to vehicles in Fortnite?
According to FortniteNews, an anonymous source has received word that Epic will implement major changes to their vehicle mechanics in a future update – possibly the upcoming v8.30 patch, which is likely to be released on either April 9 or April 10.
The update could see notable amendments to the way vehicles handle and are controlled which may have a massive impact on the World Cup event, given how vital mobility items are in lobbies containing mass amounts of professional players.
Epic Games confirm changes (Updated April 8, 2019)
An Epic Games engineer, who goes by the name of DanDaDaDanDan on Reddit, has responded to our original story and confirmed that changes to vehicles are on the way.
However, it seems there will be a period of testing before changes are implemented in-game, based on their comment posted to the Fortnite Competitive subreddit.
“We’re working on harmonizing controller input for vehicles,” they posted. “For example, exit is the same button for all vehicles and we’re working with Creative Mode content creators to create a test map to allow everyone to easily see whether they want to use a streamlined or the old scheme.”
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Will the Fortnite World Cup be affected?
A lot of top players base their landing spot around vehicles and a massive change could send shockwaves through the Fortnite competitive community after Epic claimed that no game-changing updates would happen before major tournaments.
Morale is already low due to the ban on stretched resolution and many professional players are also unhappy with the current points format of the in-game tournament which allows players to farm points by aggressively chasing kills.
Now that it’s been confirmed that changes are set to take place, there’s still zero mention about when they are to be implemented.
While the game’s developer has confirmed that major changes won’t take place before tournaments in the past, their reputation for constantly modifying the core mechanics of their game just ahead of competitive events will leave some players fearing the worst, still.
Last updated on April 8, 2019.