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While Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 1 brought with it the introduction of three new Fortnite-based games (Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival) – it also brought about some changes to the long-running battle royale formula that made its name. However, now the dust has settled on the changes and with players now well settled in, it seems not all of the new additions have been a hit.
In case you’re not up to speed, Medallions are a new game mechanic that are held by five NPC bosses on the island. When a player kills a boss, they can loot a Society Medallion from them. On launch, this item gave a buff to you in the form of a shield regen, and the more medallions you had, the quicker this regen occurs. To offset this buff, however, it also makes you show up with a big yellow circle on the map to mark your general area, with the circle getting smaller and more precise the more medallions you grab – making you an easy target for every other player in the server – and also grant you access to a vault on the map filled with high tier weapons. These effects have been tweaked slightly since launch, but it seems the community is a hard to please lot.
Over on the Fortnite subreddit, a thread by ShimoNoKigen states that they “feel like the medallions aren’t worth going for” – with a number of other players agreeing. Explaining their reasoning, Shimo says “Yes, the weapons can be good, but one medallion only gives a max of 50 shield and replenishes at 2 SPS (shield per second). Each additional medallion gives 10+ max shield and 1+ SPS, so the risk to reward of the medallions revealing your location just for one or two medallions seems redundant since you’ll have to carry shields anyway.” Shimo goes on to suggest that the medallions be buffed in future updates to make them more worthwhile.
“The people who have them in the majority of my matches tend to be the strongest players in the lobby,” laments Hippopalace, “and they full on want everyone to know where they are,” implying that they only benefit already high-skilled players on the server, rather than giving others a leg up. TigerKirby215 adds “The only times I ever wind up with Medallions are in the matches where I get lucky and get enough kills to rank up my Prized Lama. Usually by the point that the game tells me “emblem achieved: end match to receive reward” my brain just turns on “f*** it we ball” mode and I just treat the game like a death match to see how many kills I can get before I bite it.”
Plenty of members of the subreddit have suggestions on how to improve them, such as Joshhwwaaaaaa who offers: “I’d like to see the medallions gone. And add work benches to every POI. I think it would be more fun. And the 5 big locations would just have more gold.” Meanwhile BrownBaegette says “I wish it was more like a vampirism thing that grants shield and health on kill rather than passive regen.” Some disagree with Shimo entirely, saying they actively enjoy the medallions. “I love chasing people down. If i hear one distant gunshot I will immediately begin running that direction and I will not stop chasing until the player is dead,” reveals Ryn7321. “I am by no means a good player, but the medallions bring others towards me so I can kill them and I love that.”
It’ll remain to be seen if the medallions will go through any more changes as time goes on – but it’s fairly safe to say Epic have no intention to leave the Fortnite meta alone any time soon. For more on the game, check out our How to get deadly aim in Fortnite Chapter 5 guide. Alternatively, if you’re more interested in Lego Fortnite, check out our Best LEGO Fortnite seeds – our 5 world codes to hoard resources.
