Hi, as someone who was really excited for the first-person perspective to arrive in Fortnite I’ve been pretty disappointed with how its been handled. Seems like Epic has given up on it, most likely because “not enough player interest”? But how can you expect for players to be interested if the feature is so limited. Well here’s my input as someone who has tried really hard to use first person.
Items without first person support shouldn’t put you in third person.
This is the biggest issue really, since there’s a lot of items without first person support (mostly consumables), but there’s lots of games that need these extra items for gameplay. Like none of the healing items (bandages, medkit, etc) have support. Getting put into third person just breaks any balance (since you can see behind walls unfairly) and immersion.
This leads to me trying to find workarounds - mostly using the orbit camera for a “fake” first-person camera to switch to when unsupported items are held, but this causes issues with cameras switching frequently, they bug out sometimes, get stuck, etc.
Solutions I can suggest:
- “Hide player’s head option” for orbit camera device (this would allow us to position the camera inside the player’s head, while avoiding visual issues with the head going in front of the camera)
- “Disable camera when holding unsupported item” option for first person camera device (this would let us way more easily set up workarounds without needing to constantly check for held item using conditional buttons, and having to remove/add the device ourselves. This would still by default put the player into third person as its the default camera, but if we have a second camera on the player with a lower priority it should switch to that).
Thank you for reading this. I understand first-person isn’t a huge focus and you can’t add proper animations to all weapons & items, but these few changes would make first-person way more usable than it currently is. There is player interest in it, but the experience has to be a bit better for players to really enjoy it! I really hope you consider these suggestions 