Epic really hasn't been having much luck when it comes to adding new items to Fortnite during its current chapter. After waving goodbye to the Shockwave Hammer, the studio attempted to introduce the Kinetic Blade. Now that has been vaulted too, possibly for good, and players aren't happy about it for a number of reasons.
The Kinetic Blade was vaulted from competitive playlists first and then all modes shortly after. Largely intended to be a weapon that allows players to traverse the island more easily, a glitch that allowed you to damage and eliminate players while very far away naturally posed a problem.
While Epic will want to stamp out any glitches it finds as quickly as possible, this particular problem was a pretty tricky one to take advantage of. In order to make a Kinetic Blade effective at long range, players needed to disconnect and then immediately reconnect their internet at just the right moment. Clearly, enough of you were willing to do that to make Epic remove Kinetic Blades from Fortnite entirely.
A number of players have taken to Reddit to bemoan the vaulting, largely because it's the latest in a long line of changes some of you think have made the game less fun. Also making the list is the nerfing of grenades and Heavy Snipers. Grenades have been capable of dishing out 100 damage in a single blast for the past five years. Epic put an unexpected stop to that this week, nerfing that 100 to a far lower 40.
Epic also appears to have forgotten at least one of its quests requires the Kinetic Blade to be completed. If you haven't completed the quest that requires you to eliminate opponents with the now-vaulted weapon, it's now impossible to do. Epic usually swaps out quests that require vaulted items to complete, so it will hopefully have been replaced by the time you read this.
More Star Wars crossover content and the arrivals of Miles Morales and a caked-up Spider-Man 2099 on the island might have made some players happy, but it feels like Epic is making more missteps than good ones right now. Not only via the grenade nerfs and weapon vaultings, but also by sending Trios into the Fortnite abyss. The game finally got a ranked mode this season, something that has been a long time coming. However, Trios has to make way for it for some reason. Epic still hasn't explained why that needed to be the case.