Fortnite: New skins might make the game Pay to Win

Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 4 has been fairly successful, as fans of the game enjoy getting to play around with the various superpowers introduced to the game. Unfortunately, faithful adaptations of the new superhero skins have begun affecting Fortnite in ways that give players a competitive edge.

How your Fortnite Skin affects your gameplay

Mystique's built-in emote lets you disguise as any skin you eliminate for a while! [video by @bnwkr]pic.twitter.com/UYeO1To6TX

— HYPEX (@HYPEX) August 27, 2020

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Skins in Fortnite were intended to be strictly cosmetic ways to adjust your appearance and allow Epic to make a little money off of their free-to-play game. In addition to a randomly rotating generic skin, Fortnite has a plethora of unique and interesting skins, ranging from original creations made for the game, to representations of real life players and streamers of the game, to superheroes and pop culture references.

The skin you choose is supposed to have no impact on your ability to play the game. It is meant to simply be an expression of player choice and creativity. However, skins have always communicated something about the player wearing them.

For example, a player who had the latest version of a Battle Pass skin would tell opponents that there was a reasonable chance that this player is fairly experienced in the game. A streamer skin would communicate that this player likely enjoyed watching Fortnite online as well as playing it.

But these mostly tell opponents something about the player, usually related to how much they enjoy the game and their likely skill level at it. They do not, however, grant that player any new tools or strategies that wouldn’t be available to a player who spent no money and used no cosmetics at all.

Until now.

New Super Hero skins give Fortnite players new strategies

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Fortnite YouTuber LazarBeam recently showed that the new superhero skins grant players some new strategies that are not available to players who don’t spend money on the game. In his video, he highlights how the Mystique, Silver Surfer, and Groot skins each allow players to blend in to locations they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

That might not seem like such a big deal when reading it out, but the added advantage of camouflage is significant enough that players frequently ignore him completely, or even walk right up to him in game without noticing that they are standing within melee distance of another player.

These advantages are likely unintentional, but we don’t know if Fortnite intends to fix them. Many games have struggled to make characters that stand out from the background, with many opting to give player characters slightly different lighting, stark silhouettes, and even highlighted outlines to help distinguish them from the backgrounds.

Hopefully Fortnite introduces some of these changes to help level the playing field.