"Fortnite Battle Royale" has received some massive changes at the start of its ninth season. Epic Games has removed eight weapons from the popular video game, forcing players to change the way their strategies and weapon loadouts. A weapon that was vaulted at the start of the season was the Pump Shotgun, which caused many players to be upset since it was their go-to weapon in the game.
According to the "Fortnite Battle Royale" developer, this weapon was credited for 26 percent of total eliminations. The shotgun was an essential part of everyone's loadout, so it's not surprising that the majority of eliminations came with it.
Epic Games has recently talked about this weapon, its delay, and potential unvaulting. At the moment, the Pump Shotgun is not available in the Battle Royale mode, but that could change.
Shotgun delay and unvaulting
Epic Games held a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) on May 31, 2019. In this thread, "Fortnite Battle Royale" players asked game developers different questions about the game and the developers answered them. These questions were mostly related to the competitive aspect of the game, but some of them were about casual play as well.
Reddit user Pmoney98 asked an interesting question about the shotgun delay which was added to prevent the "double shotgun" meta. Considering that two current shotguns in the game, Combat Shotgun and Tactical Shotgun, are semi-automatic, the shotgun delay is obsolete and irrelevant, which is why the player wondered if the development team had plans to remove it.
"We’re looking into possible tuning iterations here - the main thing we want to keep in mind is that the Pump Shotgun is still available in Creative (and always has the potential to be unvaulted), so we want to make sure that any adjustments take its unique characteristics into consideration," was the answer the Reddit user received.
We can expect Epic Games to completely remove the shotgun delay from "Fortnite Battle Royale" in one of the upcoming patches. However, there is also a possibility of the Pump Shotgun coming back. Considering that the community is not happy with the Combat Shotgun, mostly because of its effective range, it won't be surprising if the Pump Shotgun returns to the game with Season 10.
After all, there are two semi-automatic shotguns in the game right now and the Heavy Shotgun, which is also semi-automatic, will most likely come back at some point in Season 9. Having a more powerful shotgun with a slower fire rate would make a lot of sense, and as the "Fortnite" developer revealed, any vaulted weapon has a chance of returning to the game.
Boom Bow changes
"Fortnite" creators have revealed that the Boom Bow will receive a few changes with the v9.20 patch. This update will most likely be released on Tuesday, June 4, and it will be another major update that will require a client update and server downtime.
