He’s one of Twitch’s most popular – and, at the time of writing, it’s most subscribed to – personalities, but Fortnite streamer Nick ‘NICKMERCS’ Kolcheff had some choice words to say about the game’s young competitive community, particularly those who play with mouse and keyboard.
During his March 9 livestream, NICKMERCS began discussing that day’s announcement from Epic that the Fortnite Champion Series would, for the first time, have split events and prize pools for PC and console/ mobile players. There has been growing frustration from the Fortnite PC community over the supposed advantages controller players have over them in cross-platform lobbies, but NICKMERCS was annoyed that they were now complaining about Fortnite finally trying to separate the two sets of players.
“All those keyboard and mouse players bitched, bitched, bitched, bitched about controller players being in their lobbies, you guys heard it a million times,” he tells his viewers. “Well now, Fortnite has taken a real step [towards] getting them out of those lobbies. They’re saying ‘alright, we’ll put them in their own thing.’ And now they’re bitching again! Like make up your mind bro, you [either] want them in or want them out!”
NICKMERCS, who himself is a console player who predominantly uses a controller, goes on to defend one of the scenes most successful controller players, NRG’s Dominick ‘UnknownArmy’ Green, and also rubbishes claims from mouse and keyboard players that controller players are inferior.
“Can you not just understand that [with] controller players there’s a lot of them that have been playing competitive shooters for a very long time,” he says. “I don’t know what this keyboard and mouse community don’t get. They think we were playing Spyro or some shit, what do they think we’ve been doing?”
The split in the Fortnite Champion Series has also left competitive players like NICKMERCS in a dilemma in regards to which platform they should play on, especially as your duo partner must be on the same one.
Aydan ‘Aydan’ Conrad put his decision to a Twitter poll, which at the time of writing is only just leaning in favour of playing on console.
There has been no official word as yet from Epic as to whether PC controller players will continue to be allowed to play in the PC bracket, or whether it will be exclusive to mouse and keyboard players.
However, the general consensus is that most controller players will gravitate towards playing in the console competition as there’ll be less competition than the already stacked PC scene.
