Fortnite Battle Royale’s first three seasons have suffered from the identical downside: the western aspect of the map was too good. Resource wealthy areas in easily-defendable terrain drew gamers away from the low-lying fields of the east. Epic kicked off season 4 by addressing this imbalance: they dropped a comet on the map.
Every recreation of Fortnite Battle Royale begins with the identical resolution: “the place are we dropping?” For most of Fortnite’s life, the selection has been simple. Western areas like Shifty Shafts, Pleasant Park, and Greasy Grove all present tonnes of loot alternatives and canopy. There’s additionally ample excessive floor, making for matches the place your resolution to take a hill is simply as essential as your means to carry it.
By distinction, the Eastern aspect of the map typically felt like one thing of a lifeless zone. There are the identical variety of named places – 9 on both sides of the map – however the disparity in what they’ve to supply is big. The whole Eastern coast is taken up by Wailing Woods, Lonely Lodge, and Moisty Mire; places which can be heavy on constructing supplies, however in any other case tough to traverse and lightweight on weapons – you already know, the stuff you truly have to win the sport. The East’s different places are sometimes smaller than these within the West, and people towering hills I discussed earlier make manner for rolling fields, the place gamers are simple prey for opportunistic snipers.
Everything modified when the comet landed. It crushed Dusty Depot, leaving a smouldering crater, and threw up a handful of recent places – Risky Reels, which fills a number of the hole on the beforehand empty North-East coast; a mansion south of Lonely Lodge offers loads of loot and supplies; and Moisty Mire now has a movie set at its centre, providing extra loot and making all the swamp simpler to maneuver round.
On high of that, the craters, each these on the new Dusty Divot and the others dotted across the map, now provide ‘Hop Rocks’. These consumable objects provide a brief anti-gravity increase once you choose them up – nice for low-gravity shotgun duels – letting you cowl an infinite quantity of floor rapidly. They solely final for 30 seconds or so, however in case you use them proper, you possibly can jet throughout the lethal open fields to security much more rapidly (and elusively) than earlier than.
Dusty Divot isn’t simply there to offer high-altitude thrills. Its placement on the map is essential, filling a spot between Tomato Town, Retail Row, and Salty Springs. In the mid-game, it occupies the same function to Tilted Towers’ draw for many who dropped at Greasy Grove, Shifty Shafts, or Pleasant Park. In the only day since its arrival, gamers have lingered within the new space effectively into every match. Only time will inform whether or not or not that comes right down to novelty, in fact, however the potential benefit and high-speed gunplay provided by Divot’s wealthy seams of Hop Rocks might provide another ‘must-drop’ location on the Eastern aspect of the map, at the least partially cancelling out the inevitable pull of the West.
The season 4 modifications don’t remedy the entire map’s points, and could have little influence on the late recreation. But that’s not what they had been supposed to do. Instead, they’re a wise try to enhance the early- and mid-games. They provide a extra constant unfold of locations to land with out worrying that you simply’ll spend your whole recreation sprinting to the refuge of the protected zone, in addition to a set of recent experiences for the sport. If Dusty Divot retains its present reputation, Fortnite’s season 4 modifications might show an infinite low-gravity leap ahead.
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