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Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 4 has introduced a number of changes to the game, with some weapons being vaulted (for the first time), and others being brought back, and some new ones being introduced. However, one change reintroduces more randomness to the game, but how is this change being received?
Fortnite changes chests from a guaranteed spawn to a 50-70% spawn rate
Want to know what items might feature in the shop tomorrow? Check out our predictions for tomorrow's Fortnite Item Shop
Chests are a vital part of gearing up in Fortnite as they are one the few ways to get higher rarity weapons, and they already have a lot of randomness baked in. In addition to fighting other players to be first to get to a chest, you also have to hope the chest drops something usable as well. The inconsistent spawns only increase the variability, and that has a lot of players upset.
It can be frustrating to land at a contested location only to find that your chest didn’t spawn while an opponent’s did, as every additional layer of RNG can give you the feeling of having a game stolen from you.
But is it really all that bad?
Fortnite didn’t always have guaranteed chest spawns
Fortnite used to have random chest spawns back in the day anyway, and it wasn’t all that bad. It was simply another layer to the game that you had to consider, and it made certain landing spots riskier. If a location only had 1-2 chest spawns then landing there was a risk since you couldn’t know if either of them would be there.
It created another layer to think about when making the early decisions, and it encouraged players to gather at locations with a higher population of chests. This made major POIs more competitive, and widened the dichotomy between the high-population major locations and the low-population minor locations.
With guaranteed chest spawns, a minor location with little to offer aside from 1-2 chests might be enough to get you started in a game, and may have contributed to the overall stagnation of the games. Additionally, guaranteed spawns meant that everyone always had higher rarity weapons, which further limited which weapons were viable and which were not.
Guaranteed chest spawns also contributed to the development of fixed loot paths in Fortnite
The early game of Fortnite had a tendency to get very repetitive as it used to be. You picked one or two spots that had nearby chests and learned to get to them as quickly as possible. You could almost play the opening moves by rote and you’d almost never have to make an actual decision until you already acquired most of your kit.
Randomness might not always be ideal, but it does enforce decision making and adaptability. Suddenly you might want to divert your usual drop location in order to pick up a floor spawn so that you can fight back if you don’t get the chest you hoped for.
We can’t know if this change will stick around for long, but if it’s a direction that Fortnite wants to return to then at the very least it’s not all bad.
The Battle Bus is heading into Fortnite! Check out the final Fortnite item shop today!
