The Fortnite AMA (Ask Me Anything) has concluded, here are all of the of the questions answered by Epic Games.
The Ask me Anything Epic Games were hosting has now concluded. Here are all of the questions that were answered including upcoming Season 8 improvements.
Q: Any plans for new server regions ?
A: We are working with various providers on finding a solution for MENA.
Q: Are there any plans on bringing back old, popular POIs such as Risky Reels? I see tons of requests to bring them back every once in a while.
A: Nothing like this is ever off the table 😉
Q: How long does it typically take to think of an outfit and to design it before it arrives in game?
A: Typically it’s around 8-12 weeks.
Q: Any plans to change the shoulder bone of Ragnarok to the other hand?
A: Within Season 8 we plan to have some solutions in place for this.
Q: Wil planes be gone next season?
A: Planes will be vaulted at the start of Season 8. Get your airtime in now!
Q: Epic, will you ever remove the account creation date restriction from account merging? If so, any idea when? Why on Earth did it matter when the account was made to be elgible to merge in the first place?
A: We added the account merging feature to accommodate players that had to create multiple accounts to play on both Sony Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
This requirement went away with the introduction of cross-progression.
We don’t have plans to change details surrounding this due to potential for abuse / fraud.
Q: Can we upgrade the battlepass in season 8 if we unlocked it for free? If so how much would it be?
A: Yes, the Season 8 Battle Bundle will be available at a discount for players who earn a Season 8 Battle Pass via the Overtime Challenges.
Q: Will you been improving the late game fps in things like pop ups, scrims, and customs?
A: There are both short and long term efforts to improve server performance during late game competitive settings. Engineering efforts aside, we are also looking at upgrading the hardware used for this purpose.
Q: Does Epic still use AWS?
A: Predominantly, yes.
Q: Will the “Getaway LTM” ever come back?
A: All LTMS have the potential to come back.
Q: Will respawning enter the game? Perhaps more measures to cancel thirsting?
A: We’ve been considering this mechanic for a while and have been exploring it. Want to make sure we give it the time it needs and fully understand its impact on the game as a whole. Look for further updates during Season 8.
Q: Do you ever intend on slowing down the game in terms of mobility?
A: We’re always evaluating availability of different items, including mobility. Our goal is to have a healthy mix of all item types without overdoing it in any one area.
Q: 60 fps for the switch?
A: I’m afraid that is not in the cards. Same goes for client-side replays, but we have efforts going towards server side replays.
Q: Is double shotgun ever going to be brought back?
A: We do not have any plans to bring back the double shotgun. The main issue is that the high damage of the weapon is balanced by its slow rate of fire, and bypassing that weakness makes it too powerful.
Q: Any plans adding Asian (south East Asian ) server for Xbox ?
A: We are currently working through logistics.
Q: Are there any plans to include mobile players into competitive at this point?
A: All mobile players have the same competitive opportunities as other platforms.
Q: Are there any plans for a ‘classic’ mode? For example: – Original map – Only original weapons and mechanics
A: We tried to capture this vibe with our Unvaulted (Soon to be renamed Classic) LTM. We enjoy having the limited and old item set. It’s unlikely that we’ll have this available with the old map and old tuning values but glad folks are enjoying the LTM when it’s around.
Q: Is there any plan to add saved outfits presets in the locker?
A: Not currently slated for any timeframe but it is a cool idea.
Q: Will you fix the email system so i can complete 2fa?
A: We recently had three distinct issues with token delivery latency via email and are taking steps to ensure this is not a recurring theme. We are working on additional mechanisms for token delivery. Currently supported are email and Google Authenticator.
Do you have a persistent issue with 2FA?
Q: Is Zapatron returning to BR in a near future??
A: The what? 🤔🌩
Q: Will the building in Tilted ever be safe?
A: 🤷♂️ – Is anything ever really safe?
Q: Are you planning on keeping the drift board or will it just be a limited time thing?
A: We’re working on a new single-occupancy vehicle and aren’t quite sure how they’ll play together. The Driftboard’s reception has been really positive though, so we’re actively discussing how long it should stick around.
Q: What’s the best thing about working at epic games?
A: I’m around super inspiring people all the time. Truly learn something new every day. We move fast and are always innovating and doing wild stuff.
Check out our open jobs here – https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/careers
Also free kombucha 😂
Q: Why cant the Net UI display the actual ping?
A: We have a lengthy technical blog coming up on the topic. The quick summary is that there are two measurements of latency worth considering.
There is internet latency and what we want the ping to display. This required some changes to our code to accurately factor out client and server frame times.
The other is client / server roundtrip that takes framerate into account and is a measure of latency of action to reaction. It gets complicated quickly as we are able to do some tricks to reduce this below that number for certain actions.
Q: Will you been improving the late game fps in things like pop ups, scrims, and customs?
A: There are both short and long term efforts to improve server performance during late game competitive settings. Engineering efforts aside, we are also looking at upgrading the hardware used for this purpose.
Q: Have you considered any improvements in team communication? Currently, it’s not very effective. Also you have to stand still to use squad commands. At least let us use the commands while moving
A: There are some improvements coming in Season 8 that will help with map markers & team communication, and we’re always mindful of how we can make these areas better.
Q: Why is it when I farm a brick wall it gives me wood?
A: Not all things end up resource tagged perfectly. Sounds like a bug we should address.
Q: Do you have any plans to bring back bouncers?
A: Not at the moment.
Q: Will you make it easier to edit on mobile?
A: We just added a Targeted Edit button with last weeks patch, try that and keep giving us your feedback! (patchnotes here: https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/patch-notes/v7-40 )
Q: Do you guys miss prison as much as i do?
A: Yes
Q: How do you guys react to all the “bring back ___” tweets?
A: Only OGs appreciate the “bring back ___” tweets
Smash that like button ❤️️
Q: Could you add the option for all consoles (including Nintendo Switch) to lower graphic settings and removing things like motion blur and shadows?
A: We are adding an option to disable motion blur (off by default) in Season 8.
Disabling shadows currently provides a gameplay benefit. This is not our intention and we are tweaking the way shadows are rendered to both brighten them and also make characters stand out better. This is going to be an ongoing effort starting with v8.0 and we will evaluate other options if this doesn’t end up working.
Q: If you complete 13 overtime challenges, you get the battle pass for free & it’s originally 950 vbucks, will we have the option to purchase the bundle if we want to? and will it be full priced if we’ve already earned the free pass. Thanks!
A: Yes, the Season 8 Battle Bundle will be available at a discount for players who earn a Season 8 Battle Pass via the Overtime Challenges.
Q: Ranked.. when?
A: We believe the key pillars for competition are:
- Compete whenever you want
- Measure and communicate your skill
- Be challenged
Pop-up cups are a first small step in this direction, expect lots of iteration.
Q: Do you intend on improving the gameplay sound?
A: In the last few weeks we’ve started reviewing our gameplay audio and found there’s a lot of room for improvement. Season 8’s update will contain:
- Improved Weapon firing sounds:
- All player weapon fire sounds are now 2D stereo, giving them a much fuller and natural sound.
- All 3rd person weapon sounds from other players are now mono and run through the new reverb, which gives much better point spatialization while still sounding ‘in the world’.
- Reverb
- There is now a global reverb available.
- We are setting it up as an ‘opt-in’ feature, so we will be adding the reverb to categories of sounds as we go.
- Currently, weapon related sounds are set up with reverb. In the future, we will be able to have different reverb settings for different areas of the map.
- ADS / Crouch Foley
- New sounds have been added for going into and out of ADS on each weapon, as well as sounds for going in and out of crouch. This gives a better sense of player ownership of actions.
- Improvements to upstairs / downstairs footsteps for better tactical awareness.
- Improved hit notification audio
- Improvements to sound and mix of 2D hit notifications when players land shots on enemies. This includes a new clearer “shield break” sound.
- Cleaned up the “weak-point” harvesting crit sound
- We increased the dynamic range and shortened the length of this sound; it is still clear but much less fatiguing.
- Fixed an issue preventing footsteps from being heard in some situations.
- Even more improvements coming later in Season 8!
Q: What is the reason for not separating SEA servers? We have to play on 150 ping in pop up events
A: We are hosting our Asian servers in Tokyo and Singapore.
The majority of players in the general region are best served by our Tokyo data center, and we dynamically route players to Singapore if there are enough players in queue who have better ping to that location.
Generally, this allows us to more dynamically deal with fragmentation as platform * playlist * region results in a lot of buckets and regional populations swing by as much as a factor of 30-40 between daily peak and valley.
Having said that, we recently made some changes to our matchmaking wait times to help improve the experience of players with a better connection to our Singapore data center and have some other changes in development to further improve the situation. We are aiming for them to land in March.
Q: Can you add a button to the item shop to confirm purchases, to prevent accidental purchases?
A: We are working on ways to eliminate accidental purchases. In the meantime, we have a refund token system to help.
Q: Who has the most wins at Epic Games headquarters?
A: [EPIC] Tense (Mitch Meara): 577 in default playlists
Q: What was the hardest location to replace/get rid of?
A: Dusty Depot since that was the first time we had to make the decision to take the plunge and change something at a larger scale. Generally everything we change has a bittersweet aspect to it for somebody.
Q: Just one word for season 8?
A: Bananas
