Bows sometimes hit short of where they should

General Issues and Bug Reporting
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1

Summary

Arrows fired from bows sometimes do not hit where the path/marker shows it should hit.

Please select what you are reporting on:

Creative

What Type of Bug are you experiencing?

Devices

Steps to Reproduce

Use a bow, fire partial shots and what-should-be-charged shots and see where arrows land and for charged shots on bows with effects (shockwave, grapple) see if the effects trigger. Not consistently reproducible, but occurred first try in a private match on mentioned island code, may require a few attempts to reproduce.

Expected Result

Arrows fired from bows should hit where the path/marker shows and charged shot effects should always trigger on fully charged shots.

Observed Result

Occasional weird bow sounds, delayed bow sounds and unseen delay to bow draw progression, with arrows fired from bows landing short of where they should hit according to the path/marker and charged shot effects not triggering unless delaying your shots until after all bow sounds have played. Also, with the shockwave arrow effect, sometimes a directly hit player is not affected by the shockwave even when it triggers.

Platform(s)

PC

Island Code

4590-4493-7113

Video

Additional Notes

I believe this started around when motion matching was introduced and then updated with one of the v28 (Chapter 5 Season 1) updates in December 2023, possibly the v28.01.01 (December 19 2023) update.
There are a few reports/videos of this issue on the Fortnite BR sub-Reddit /r/FortniteBR, they can be found by searching the subreddit for “bow bug”, sorting by new, then looking at the found posts 4 to 7 months ago (January 2025 to November 2024).
Fortnite STW had a similar (same?) bug before that I believe has since been fixed, but BR/Creative is still affected.
Mentioned island code has a shockwave bow and grapple bow on weapon spawn pads in the spawn area.
I hope this can finally be looked into and fixed as this has been affecting me for a while, thanks.

2

bump, please look into this issue it’s been so long since bows have functioned properly…

1 Like
3

@Flak Could someone please take a look at this issue? It’s been a problem since near the start of Chapter 5 and we’re now a few seasons into Chapter 6… It’s extremely frustrating to run into as once it starts happening in a session it will keep happening and makes bows basically unusable until leaving and joining another session where it hopefully won’t occur right away (but even if it doesn’t occur right away it seemingly is guaranteed to occur eventually in a session).

1 Like
4

this is not a bug, in the clip you are not charging up the bow fully which is why it goes down.
(Every time you charged it up it hit the exact position)

5

It literally shows the path of the arrow (or at least what it should be) and has delayed full draw timing and sounds when this happens. The screen also flashes and the arrow lights up when it’s supposed to be fully charged but as the video shows it lands short many times. This wasn’t an issue before Chapter 5 and this isn’t the only report on the issue.

Edit: And yes, the shots after 1:22 are not fully charged but are me firing partially charged shots based on timing/when the marker lines up with the previous arrows at the top but it again many times landing short of where it shows it should hit and where it should hit purely based off of timing.

2 Likes
6

Except it is a bug. Here’s my clip of the same issue from the Chapter 2 Remix season: https://www.reddit.com/r/FortNiteBR/s/XiQ2W9RHe2.

1 Like
8

Added timestamps to the video description, “normal” shots all have visible and actual draw progress synced while everything else has actual draw progress desynced/delayed.
To be a bit more clear:
Visible draw progress = working/consistent
Actual draw progress = broken/inconsistent
Visible draw progress = animations, arrow path/marker, screen flash, arrow light
Actual draw progress = sounds, actual hit location, charge effect (shockwave/grapple)

1 Like
10

FORT-917470 has been ‘Closed’. We’re unable to reproduce this issue.

11

Seriously? Not even ‘Needs More Info’, just straight to ‘Closed’? This is still an issue… I just went into a private match of the island mentioned in the original post, started the match, grabbed the bows, dropped down into the pit, fired a couple arrows and ran into this issue. Please reopen this and try to actually reproduce this issue.

1 Like
12

After testing this a bit more, the consistency on being able to reproduce this issue may be due to connection or server location.
I can consistently reproduce this issue on both PC and Xbox Cloud on a private match of “The Pit - Free For All” with my Matchmaking Region set to NA-West, where my ping is 4ms on PC and 1ms on Xbox Cloud.
I also tried NA-Central and had the issue occur with only a single arrow on PC and none on Xbox Cloud.
Tried NA-East and did not have the issue occur on either PC or Xbox Cloud.
Tried Europe and had the issue occur a couple times on PC but not on Xbox Cloud.
To be clear, not having the issue occur during some of those tests just means that it did not happen within a reasonable amount of time, as I’m sure the issue would happen eventually within those sessions.
So, this is either consistently reproducible on NA-West for me due to having low ping to those servers or it, for some (unlikely) reason, occurs on NA-West more often than other regions.
@Flak I hope this issue can be reopened and that these extra details may help QA reproduce the issue.

Again, to be clear, how to reproduce this issue and what to look for (what the issue is):

Select “The Pit - Free For All” (4590-4493-7113), set to Private, play. (Can be other maps but may be less consistent.)

Start the match once loaded in and pick up a Shockwave Bow from the south-east weapon spawners near the Random Loadout sign.

Drop down into the pit and keep firing arrows, the issue may occur during partial or full charges. (A full charge occurs when the bow draw animation completes, the arrow lights up and the screen flashes. A full charge can be held. Tested mostly by firing full charges without holding, so firing as soon as the screen flashes.)

When the issue occurs, sounds will be delayed/broken (most noticeable when a full charge is held) and the arrow will land below the shown arrow path/marker or the charge effect (shockwave/grapple/etc) will not trigger if fired before the delayed/broken sounds end.

This issue will not occur on every arrow, only some.

If this issue does not occur before a reasonable amount of arrows are fired (say, 50, though that might not be enough in some cases, one test where it happened cut close with it happening on the 42nd arrow fired), try a different matchmaking region or with lower ping. For me, this issue occurred most (usually with <10 arrows fired) on NA-West where I have low ping (<5ms, in-game latency meter showing Ping: 0).