Team Liquid’s Vivid baffled by The Baller’s nerf in Fortnite

Team Liquid / Epic Games

The decision taken by Epic Games to quickly ‘nerf’ The Baller in Fortnite Battle Royale hasn’t gone down too well with Team Liquid’s Noah ‘Vivid’ Wright, as the professional players was left baffled by their response.

The developer decided to cut the spawn rate of the game’s newest vehicle by 50% with the v8.11 content update on March 20, just over a week after it was first added to the game’s battle royale mode. 

Article continues after ad

However, the decision to promptly make such a change has left Vivid questioning the reason to introduce the Jurassic World-style hamster balls in the first place. 

Epic GamesThose using The Baller in Fortnite move around with a plunger and it also has a boost mechanism.

In a post to Twitter, the pro player questioned Epic’s judgement. “Please stop with the 50% vehicle spawn rates for crying out loud,” he tweeted. “I’m sorry but it’s just not a good answer.”

The move suggests that the idea behind the vehicle must be flawed, having halved the amount of them that now spawn across the map, which has left Vivid wondering why they introduced the Jurassic World-style hamster balls in the first place. 

Article continues after ad

“You make a vehicle and then nerf it by making it not spawn?,” he added. “Don’t you think the fundamentals of the damn vehicle are improper if your solution is to make it not spawn?”

The Baller can still be found around the battle royale map, but is clearly much rarer than it once was. Whether or not Epic will reverse the decision in the future, or perhaps make a change to the way the balls move around, is unknown. 

Article continues after ad

Clearly, though, Vivid isn’t happy about the move.