After the reveal of Siphon feature in patch 8.20, the developers at Epic have reverted this feature suggesting that it was making people play lesser as the gaming got more competitive for 90% players.
Epic introduced a controversial mechanic to game in update 8.20 called Siphon. As the name might suggest, Siphon allowed players to generate (or Siphon) health and shield from the eliminated opponents. This allowed for more aggressive plays among the players as getting more kills meant always maintaining 100% health and shield.
But, contrary to Epic’s belief this update rather made the game too competitive for 90% of population. As the avg. population of Fortnite doesn’t engage in aggressive play and rather like to play game casually. The game also doesn’t feature any skill groups meaning that the games are unranked and low skilled players can be grouped with high skilled players. With Siphon update the high skilled players got a lifeline and were able to play aggressively, which in-turn resulted in frustration among the lower skilled population ( which according to Epic accounts for 90% players).
With the game becoming more aggressive for most players, Fortnite saw a drop in concurrent players. To tackle the drop in players, Epic reverted the Siphon change and made it exclusive for Arena mode. With the Siphon update reverted more players were rejoiced and appreciated the change. In a blog post Epic said:
Everybody enjoyed receiving health and shields for eliminations after we introduced the changes to the core modes, but there was an unexpected consequence: players at large grew more frustrated with Fortnite play, feeling they had less of a chance due to encounters with high-skill players with full health and shields. Ultimately, Siphon increased engagement for the highest-skilled 10%, while the remaining 90% were more frustrated and played less.
Over time, players began to disengage in the core modes, stating that the game had gotten too intense to be enjoyable. The reduction in viable play styles in combination with this feedback was the basis of us removing the Siphon mechanic and the material changes from the core modes.
For players that prefer the sharper experience of Siphon, we do offer an always-available Arena mode that includes these Siphon and materials cap changes.
Although a vocal minority of the player base has been furious about the removal of Siphon from the main game. With many players across Reddit and Twitter calling to “revert the changes”. Epic is silent about the backlash and haven’t issued any official statement about the “revert the changes” calls.
