Fortnite Aim Assist Nerf Coming in 7.40 Update

Aim assist has always been a hot topic in the Fortnite Battle Royale community. While aim assist is used for consoles and mobile platforms in order to provide a little help in aiming for players who are not able to use the precision equipment of a mouse in Fortnite by helping the player ever so sightly snap onto a target. However, due to the cross platform play of Fortnite and console and mobile players now being able to play with PC players at any time, many PC players feel that aim assist helps players on other platforms too much. One of the latest issues at the center of this discussion has been the subject of aiming down the sight (ADS) spam that abuses the aim assist mechanic and has led to many players calling for a nerf. 

Fortunately for those who feel that aim assist is too powerful, Eric Williamson, Fortnite Battle Royale Design Lead, posted on Twitter that a nerf would be coming to the feature in the upcoming 7.40 update in order to help stop this issue. 

Aim Assist Nerf Fortnite

The news of the nerf came from Eric Williamson in a Response to a video post by the account of Fortnite: Battle Royale leaks showing the need for a nerf to be applied to the game mechanic. The community member showed off a video of a player killing a player in a cloud of smoke without being able to see him. Unfortunately for the player hidden in the smoke, the aim assist caused the player shooting to automatically snap onto the enemy player by spamming in and out of having their character aiming. This allowed the player to practically lock onto his enemy. 

Here’s a clear example of why ADS Spamming should be looked into/removed. Again, I have no issue with Aim Assist, at all. In the video provided you can see ADS Spamming hitting numerous shots on someone who can’t be seen in a Stink Bomb

RT/Tag @erwil9??

pic.twitter.com/M8pZziSze6

— Fortnite: Battle Royale Leaks (@FNBRLeaks) January 29, 2019

Eric Williamson responded to the video stating that an aim assist nerf change would be coming in the new 7.40 update that should "mitigate" this issue of players spamming the mechanic to gain an unfair advantage. The Fortnite developer went on to explain what the nerf coming to Fortnite would actually entail. 

It's a cooldown - still testing different timing to find what feels fair. Goal is to reduce worst-case scenarios w/ rapid ADS. Aim assist is otherwise unchanged

— Eric Williamson (@erwil9) January 31, 2019

With the aim assist nerf being a major focal point of the upcoming 7.40 update for Fortnite, many members of the community are likely very interested to see if the new nerf will be a satisfactory fix to the ADS spamming issue that has become a controversial topic in the community. 

(cover photo courtesy of Epic Games)