Fortnite Now Has Extra Storm Zones, and Fans Hate It

Epic reworked Fortnite’s Storm behavior for the new season and added more zones. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect.

Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2 went live last week and has since had an overwhelmingly positive reaction. People are loving the new weapons, map changes, and vehicles – not to mention the Battle Pass!

However, one update that flew under the radar to begin with is starting to wind some players up. It concerns the revamped Storm system.

Here’s how it works:

Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 4 Storm Zones

There can now be up to 12 zones or Storm Circles in a Fortnite match. This means that if they go all the way to Final Zone, they can last a few minutes longer than before. Often it won’t make it that far and games will end early, especially in pubs.

First Zone is now much bigger, in fact, it nearly covers the entire map. Therefore, wherever you land, you shouldn’t be too far from safety and can spend a bit longer looting.

The Storm is also way less threatening now, and you don’t start taking significant damage till later in the game. These are the new values:

Zone 1: 1 DPS

Zone 2: 1 DPS

Zone 3: 1 DPS

Zone 4: 1 DPS

Zone 5: 1 DPS

Zone 6: 2 DPS

Zone 7: 5 DPS

Zone 8: 8 DPS

Zone 9: 10 DPS

Zone 10: 10 DPS

Zone 11: 10 DPS

Zone 12: 10 DPS

Moving zones at the end of a match behave differently too. They don’t go as far away, making rotations less important and leaving more players alive at the very end – which can get messy.

What’s the Problem?

For competitive fans, the issue is longer mid-games and shorter end-games. “I'm totally down to change things up but this change has 100% missed the mark. Mid games are longer, slower and more boring and end games are shorter more chaotic and impossible to follow” explained popular streamer AussieAntics. Essentially, this is exactly the opposite of what you want as a viewer.

Many pro players have called Epic out on the new moving zones, saying that they make end-games less skillful and more “campy”.

Casual players have been affected too. While some enjoy the new Storm behaviour as it makes completing challenges easier, public matches seem to die out really quickly and there are only ever a few enemies left in the larger later zones.

It doesn’t seem likely that Epic will revert the changes though. The @FortniteStatus Twitter account recently posted, “Due to the increase in game length, we have increased the time between tournament matches that use a "scheduled" start time”. So, they appear to be going ahead with the new values in mind.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out!