‘Fortnite: Battle Royale’ Rocket Surfing Will Stick Around, Silenced SMG Coming Next Week
Fortnite: Battle Royale players will continue to be able to hang ten from rocket launchers. Epic Games announced they will not remove the hilarious but unintentional gameplay feature in its multiplayer shooter for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC while also revealing a stealthy version of the submachine gun is coming next week.
Video games have featured emergent gameplay for decades and it usually comes in the most unexpected ways. A quirk of the physics system in the original Tribes allowed players to “ski” and gain extra momentum, which eventually became an integral part of gameplay. Meanwhile, the odd physics of the original Halo had players experimenting with different ways to blow up a Warthog.
The Fortnitemares event introduced the Pumpkin Rocket Launcher to Fortnite: Battle Royale and some steamers discovered an exploit that allows one player to shoot a rocket at the feet of a squadmate and send them for a ride across the map.
There is the obvious risk of death as the rocket will eventually hit something and explode or the surfer might fall to their death. Still, it turned into a way for players to make surprise attacks on enemy bases during a match and funny enough to be featured on the official Fortnite Twitter channel multiple times.
It’s for these reasons, Epic Games announced they will not be removing rocket riding from Fortnite: Battle Royale.
“It’s emergent gameplay that we’re frankly fans of,” Epic Games Lead Systems Designer Eric Williamson said in a Battle Royale dev update video. “So, we’re going to try to support it as a proper feature of the game unless we find any game breaking issues. It’s here to stay.”
Meanwhile, Epic Games has another update to Fortnite: Battle Royale planned for Monday, November 20. The update will be deployed at 9 a.m. ET / 6 a.m. PT and will add a brand-new weapon, the Silenced SMG. This variant of the existing SMG will come in Common, Uncommon, and Rare qualities and give players the opportunity to stage sneak attacks without attracting attention. This could be a potentially deadly combo with the Bush Potion camouflage.
The existing SMG will also receive some tweaks to make it more viable. The damage of the standard and Tactical SMGs is being increased along with the magazine size from 25 rounds to 35 rounds. The Assault Rifle will be adjusted as well to increase accuracy and reduce recoil.
Finally, public test servers are coming to Fortnite: Battle Royale so the developers can test different changes to gameplay without impacting the live servers. The first tests will be to evaluate changes to weapons and accuracy. There are no details on when those will be dropping yet but it sounds like the public test servers will be coming soon, likely after Thanksgiving.
[Featured Image by Epic Games]
