The Truth About Fortnite's Aim Assist Change
The drama surrounding aim assist in Fortnite continues. Aim assist is afforded to players using a gamepad controller on a PC, helping to make up for the more limited range of motion when compared to a keyboard and mouse. However, many people feel that this feature gives players with controllers an unfair advantage.
It makes sense, then, that Epic Games would look into making some tweaks to aim assist options. After all, if people feel like one platform has an advantage over the others, it could discourage gamers from participating in community events and the like. That's why Epic announced its intentions to finely tune combat when it came to using controllers. To that end, has seemingly nerfed some of the aim assist features present in Fortnite with its latest update.
But here's the weirdest thing: Epic Games didn't release any kind of patch notes with its most recent update. In fact, the changes made to Fortnite were only discovered after Fortnite dataminer Lucas7yoshi went digging around for info.
According to Lucas7yoshi's initial post on the matter, "A hotfix was deployed adjusting aim assist on Windows and Mac ... I do not know what these values exactly mean, but after a restart of your game/going into a match they should be applied." This was accompanied by a screenshot of the altered code. A later post from Lucas7yoshi confirmed that the values he had investigated had been decreased. In other words, there has been a clear attempt from Epic to "weaken" aim assist, but this has been done without any kind of announcement on Epic's end.
Aim assist has been a controversial part of the Fortnite experience for quite some time. Back in April, Ninja went so far as to say using aim assist was pretty much hacking. As Ninja put it at the time, "Just played with a controller on PC for the second time in two days. I have competed in several games at a competitive level on both controller and mouse and keyboard. You cannot tell me that with 100% strength aim assist and linear settings that using a controller isn't aimbot."
Another weird thing about this patch is that it comes just a few days after Epic Games seemingly buffed aim assist with a different patch. As shown in a video posted by pro Fortnite player Clix a few days ago, the range for aim assist was extended past 100 meters. A day after that, other players like YouTuber Arv_Python expressed their confusion regarding whether or not aim assist had been nerfed.
Aim assist is already such a hot-button issue for so many Fortnite players that it's kind of wild that Epic Games would even consider making so many changes to it in such a short time. The fact that players weren't informed of the latest changes, no matter how minute they may be, apparently only served to further irritate fans.
In other words, it appears as though Epic is making a ton of tweaks here and there when it comes to aim assist. However, fans are having a hard time keeping up with which direction these fixes are leaning. It really looks like Epic can't make up its mind on how to fix the issues, so multiple changes are occurring right under players' noses. And the question remains: are these so-called fixes ultimately benefitting console players or PC players more?
In other games, the use of aim assist has almost become something of a novelty. During a recent stream, Dr Disrespect showed off how effective aim assist could be during a Call of Duty: Warzone match. The Doc was seemingly quite amused by the ability to pick off enemies without even looking.
The auto aim fixes weren't even the only unannounced change that has been noticed by players. The match-ending storm has also received a few unexpected tweaks. According to a report from Dexerto, "the first circles [of the storm] are now completely random, with massive differences in size and location, compared to the similar patterns that they used to follow."
It has been theorized that this last change has been done as a subtle lead-in to the game's next big live event. After all, the next season of Fortnite is meant to begin next week. While Epic Games has announced that Fortnite: Chapter 2 — Season 3 is scheduled for a June 4 start date, a timer in the game proper has been counting down to May 30. Something big is coming this weekend, so perhaps the aftermath will put the game in a better position than it's been in. Maybe aim assist woes will be a thing of the past when the new season starts. Players can hope, right?