Fortnite removes item rarities, upsetting fans

eurogamer.net:

Fortnite fans are upset over the game's removal of cosmetic item rarities, which graded the game's vast vault of character skins, pickaxes, back blings and so forth with various different 'quality' levels.

Typically, these tiers have also corresponded to how much cosmetics cost in the game's item shop — with Uncommon (green) skins typically 800 V-Bucks, Rare (blue) typically 1200 V-Bucks, Epic (purple) typically 1500 V-Bucks and Legendary (gold) typically 2000 V-Bucks.

In a blog post yesterday, Fortnite acknowledged the disappearance of item rarities thus: «The Shop has evolved significantly to support multiple types of cosmetics and items across games, so we're retiring the old Battle Royale-inspired system of colors and tags for cosmetic quality.»

One caveat to this is that specifically-branded series of cosmetics (such as «Icons» for real-world people, «Gaming Legends» for crossovers with other video games) will remain.

Epic's statement references how Fortnite's item shop now sells lots of different things which may have been rated the same (ie. «Epic» rarity) but priced differently — especially with the introduction of music tracks and virtual instruments for Fortnite Festival, cars and vehicle effects for Rocket Racing, plus digital Lego parts and sets for Lego Fortnite.

It's also notable how the overall quality of Fortnite cosmetics has naturally improved over the game's eight-year life: older, more intricate skins rated «Legendary» are often similar in detail to newer (more affordable) skins now rated «Rare».

That said, this is a big change, as fans hold value in the rarity of the cosmetic items they have collected or paid for. And, at the very least, without the ability to sort your cosmetics by rarity they have become much harder to sift through.

It's perhaps unfortunate that the change, made yesterday, coincided with three top-priced character skins