The aim assist debate for Fortnite among the community is seemingly coming to a close. Epic plans to sunset the "Legacy Look Controls" for controller players on March 13, 2020. The battle royale supports cross-platform play, one of the first games to do so, which is why fans have often argued the fairness between precision aiming on a mouse and keyboard, and aim assistance on a console.
In a recent Tweet, Epic explained that it has made improvements to the in-game aim-assist for Fortnite. Therefore, it is removing the "Use Legacy Look Controls” setting and players will have until March 13th to manually turn off the controls. If players do nothing, their old sensitivity setting will be saved.
The argument about the advantages and disadvantages between PC and console have been raging on since cross-platform play started on Fortnite. Along with aim assist tilting in favor of controller players, some have found that gun recoil seems inconsistent between the two platforms.
PC players do have massive advantages as well. The precision aiming allowed with a mouse is arguably not possible with a thumbstick, which is why aim-assist is a concept in the first place. Additionally, even though the controller allows for custom binds, it doesn't compare to the configurations that can be pulled off with a keyboard and mouse where PC players can usually build and edit circles around controller users. Lastly, Fortnite has historically performed significantly better on the PC, both in terms of graphically fidelity, settings, and overall performance.
At the 2019 Fortnite World Cup, where Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf took home $3 million, the number of PC players who qualified for the event far outnumbered the players who used controller/console, even though anyone on any platform had the opportunity to qualify.
Time will tell if the new aim assist changes will be an improvement or not. Currently, just as the debate was before, PC fans on Reddit and social media are happy that this new change looks to finally address the "overpowered" controller players, as they cannot laser players through bushes or smoke anymore. Meanwhile, those console players are saddened that they are at an even larger disadvantage now against their PC brethren. Some are even wondering if cross-platform is fair at all under some circumstances and if it should be cut off, as Epic did with turning off cross-platform on Nintendo Switch.
Fortnite is available on Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One