Fortnite developer Epic Games has tried to improve Sniper Rifles with the v7.20 update released earlier today. The company announced several adjustments in the behavior of all weapons of this class in the patch notes.
The noticeable changes
What most players who love Sniper Rifles will notice right away is that the bullet trajectory of some Sniper Rifles should’ve changed a little. Bolt-Action, Suppressed, Semi-Auto and Hunting Sniper Rifles’ bullets will have the same trajectory as the Heavy Sniper Rifle. Epic spared details about how much the trajectory has changed, or if players have to adjust their aim upward or downward with these guns from now on.
Either way, once you master your aim with one of these Sniper Rifles, you’ll have mastered it with all others from now on.
Aiming will be a bit easier with the reduction in size of the red dot in the center of the aim when scoping. Epic says it will “mitigate situations where it appears you’re on your target but still miss the shot.” This will mostly be true when your opponent is up close, since that’s when the red dot actually represents where the bullet is hitting.
The not obvious changes
What Epic implemented as a very important change to Scoped Rifles is that it “fixed an issue where the center dot of the reticle while scoped did not line up with the center dot while unscoped.”
Players spotted the issue in December. Using the aim of another weapon class to then switch to a Sniper Rifle and shoot it without scoping caused the aim to move significantly without an additional player input. A clip players published shows that the misalignment was great enough for a Sniper player to miss a shot when doing so. This hindered new strategies with the Sniper Rifles under situations where players didn’t have time to scope.
From now on, using another weapon as an aim assist for your Sniper Rifle might be a viable strategy.
And despite these changes, which are small improvements for Sniper Rifles, Epic also fixed an issue that let these weapons be fully accurate earlier than intended. The company provided no details, but it seems to be referring to how fast the weapon recovered full accuracy while scoping after a player stopped moving or landed on the ground.
Sniper Rifles will be more consistent in v7.20 and should start rewarding players with creative strategies and good aim—as it always should have been. Players will be able to test these changes once the server downtime for the update ends in a couple of hours.
