This week Epic Games added a new Bouncer trap and also nerfed some of the shotguns as well as decreasing material available on the map. I will be writing about what I think of these changes and how they will affect the game. I have yet to play with these changes, but I am a fan of the game and enjoy playing it so these are my opinions as a player.
The new Bouncer trap is found in stacks of three and can be found in all loot sources (chests, houses, llamas, etc). They are to be placed on floors, ceilings, and walls. The will propel any player that is close enough to it in the direction it is facing. The player being propelled will also receive the same kind of effect of the Hop Rocks that were added in the Season 4 update so they won’t take any fall damage. However, the effect doesn’t last long so the player won’t get the perk of being able to jump higher. I’ve seen clips and videos of people using these new traps in different ways, and they do seem to hold the potential of being practically useful in some scenarios.
Shotguns, specifically the pump and tactical shotguns were nerfed. Previously when the game was first introduced, the tactic “double pumping” was extremely overpowered. The tactic involved having two pump shotguns in a player’s inventory switching between them for every shot being able to shoot very fast for shotguns. Epic Games increased the draw speed for the shotgun a while ago. This made double pumping impossible or at least ineffective although they were still capable of dealing up to 237 damage in one shot. A few weeks ago, they decreased the draw speed, but not to the point of the original speed. However, this week they decided to nerf the pump shotgun again by reducing the damage. Now, the pump shotgun is no longer capable of dealing a one-shot kill no matter the rarity. Although this will definitely change some scenarios, I still think the double pump strategy will still be an effective one. The tactical shotgun though I feel didn’t deserve the nerf it got although it wasn’t as bad as the pump shotgun’s. I thought the tactical shotgun was fine as it was, but I guess if Epic Games wants to there’s not much anyone can do.
A few other changes to mention are the damage trap changes and the material availability nerf. The damage traps used to do 125 damage but were nerfed to only do only 75. In this recent update, the damage traps now deal 150 damage which is double of what it used to be which surprises me. However, I don’t think this will change too much of the current trap meta (most effective tactic available). As for the material changes, the number of materials you get from llamas were reduced from 500 to a mere 200 per resource. The chances of finding resources on the floor have also been reduced by 33% as well as the amount of material you get by 33%. These changes to materials I find was completely unnecessary. The double pump nerf I can understand since it was a little overpowered, but I fail to see how building which is a crucial aspect of the game is overpowered. As long as you have materials usually the player with better building skills would win at least in the late game. Reducing the material availability will only make building in early game as well as build battles less common forcing players to farm for materials a lot more often.
Overall, this update has its ups and downs in my opinion and I’m very interested in seeing how these changes will affect my play style as well as others’.