In a recently held Reddit AMA, Epic Games fielded questions from fans about the future of battle royale game Fortnite. Players submitted questions about a variety of things, including their desires for the game to start including new respawning mechanics and requesting information on future updates to the game’s communication systems and Season 8 updates.
According to Epic Games, the ability to respawn a downed player had been under consideration for quite some time at the developer. When asked about its possible implementation in Fortnite by a fan in the thread, Epic Games stated that the addition of a respawn mechanic would need to be thoroughly considered as it would likely have a great impact on the game as a whole. In terms of a timeline for the possible feature, fans were told to look forward to the upcoming Season 8 updates for more information.
Epic Games also promised that the Season 8 updates would bring with them a variety of improvements to the gameplay and overall performance of the game. Firstly, the ability to disable motion blur will be brought to console users, though the request for an option to turn off shaders had been rejected as it was considered a detriment to the gameplay. That said, Epic Games has noted that in the future it would be ideal to give players the option to tweak shadows to better suit the individual player’s preferences.
In addition to these visual improvements, Epic Games will also make some improvements to map markers and in-game communication between players while fans of Fortnite‘s vehicles will be treated to new, single seater variants.
The elephant in the room of the AMA thread was the recently launched Apex Legends which has seen both positive critical reception and massive player base growth. Many of the features requested for Fortnite, such as the respawning mechanic and improved in-game communication, can be found in Apex Legends. These mechanics serve as bullet points which the game has used to try and distinguish itself from the crowded battle royale market.
