Fortnite Has A Shotgun Problem And Players Aren't Happy

Though Fortnite battle royale's popularity remains very high, Epic has made a number of questionable and outright controversial changes to the game during its lifetime, the most recent arguably being its removal of the pump shotgun. The company offered a replacement in the beloved firearm's place, but the combat shotgun has proven disappointing in a game already lacking adequate shotgun drops.

The pump shotgun, though not capable of the same rapid-fire shots as its tactical sibling, was able to deal a large amount of damage to players, and it had the added benefit of low accuracy requirements. The new combat shotgun certainly isn't a bad weapon, and when players can land a shot, there's the potential to do a fair amount of damage.

Compared to the heavy and pump shotguns, however, the combat requires far more accuracy and often deals less damage. That struggle is compounded by the relative lack of shotguns in the game — players are taking to Reddit and Twitter with complaints about finding typically rare items like the Heavy Sniper more often than they're finding a shotgun.

When players do come across a shotgun, it's typically the lowest-tier grey tactical, which is pretty much useless against anyone with dual pistols, a combat shotgun, or a number of other higher-tier firearms. That's unfortunate given the typically close quarters combat that takes place in Fortnite — coming across a player who has a shotgun when you only have a pistol or AR is almost guaranteed death.

The frustration was put on display in the /r/FortniteBR subreddit on Monday, where users upvoted a post complaining about the game's shotgun problem. User Leo9991 said in the post, 'Right now it feels like there are at least 10 burst SMGs for every Combat shotgun...' A number of other players chimed in with similar complaints, including one proclaiming, 'The loot pool and spawn rates are the worst they've ever been right now.'

As of Tuesday, the most has multiple silver, gold, and platinum awards and more than 2,000 upvotes.