Fortnite Devs Explain the Turbo Building Changes Following Backlash

Following the recent Fortnite update, players have found something new to rally against. Much of [...]

By Eric Garrett

Following the recent Fortnite update, players have found something new to rally against. Much of the controversy surrounding the massively popular Battle Royale title as of late has been in regards to the mechs that were added upon the beginning of Season X. However, the new update nerfed Turbo Building, which caused the community at large to express their outrage over the decision made by the devs at Epic Games. That said, the developers have now responded to the backlash with an explanation behind their choice to nerf Turbo Building.

In a new post on the Epic Games website, the Fortnite devs went over what has been changed, why they did it, what they don't want to impact, and what is next. As you may know, the reason they provided in the patch notes was to level the playing field for players who may not have favorable ping. However, in the new post, they expanded their reasoning behind the Turbo Building change. Here's what they said:

Why Change Turbo Build?
We did so as a first step addressing several problems:

  • Rapid Turbo Building favors players with low ping in disproportionate ways.
    • Taking walls (racing with another player to place a wall before them)
    • Turtling (continually rebuilding a wall that is taking damage)
  • Turtling disproportionately favors defender
    • E.g. holding mouse button vs. squad shooting at 1x1
  • Building piece placement accuracy
    • Easy to accidentally place multiple pieces "at once"
  • Spam building
    • Easy to spam build
    • We want building to be a bit more deliberate

They then go on to mention how they "don't want to dramatically impact" a few things, including "how responsive building feels, the ability to perform 90s, and the ability to waterfall." Luckily, the Fortnite devs also touched on what players can expect in future updates, which includes:

  • Replace initial building and turbo building delay with rate of fire logic
    • First placement is instantaneous
    • No way to build faster than a building piece every 0.15 seconds
    • Note: By itself this doesn't address defensive agency of turtling / low ping benefit
  • Enforce rate of fire for contested pieces
    • If a building piece is destroyed:
      • Server waits 0.15 seconds before allowing rebuild
      • Players attempting to rebuild the destroyed piece during that 0.15 seconds are added to a list
      • There are several potential ways to pick the winner we're exploring:
        • Coin flip between people not currently owning the building piece
        • Coin flip between everyone trying to build
        • Favor person currently owning building piece
      • At end of delay, place building piece
    • Ensures that building piece replacement ("taking walls") is not ping sensitive
    • Ensures a minimum time between a wall being destroyed and replaced

Fortnite is currently available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and mobile devices. For even more on the popular Battle Royale title, check out some of our previous coverage.

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