“Ghost peeking” in Fortnite has been around about as long as the game itself, and while Epic has tried to remedy the issue in the past, the latest attempt may have done the trick.
In earlier versions of Fortnite, players could stand in a certain location on a stair that would allow them to shoot over the ramp and hit a target in front of them without exposing any part of their body to the enemy. In other words, someone who ghost peeked could shoot without any risk at all.
According to a recent Reddit post from Epic designer Nick Donaldson, this was reportedly caused by Fortnite’s animation system attempting to correctly place characters’ feet on the stairs. Here’s the example Donaldson provided at the time:
It may look small, but that one little animation was causing this nearly unbeatable bug to persist.
The first time Epic attempted to fix this issue, we ended up with Season 3’s now infamous “dick bullets.” The fix meant that, instead of firing from your gun, characters were sometimes firing a little lower, causing shots that looked like they should easily clear of the wall a player was standing behind to go into the wall instead. That change, thanks to fan pushback, was quickly reverted. But the ghost peeking problem remained.
This time, it’s a little less clear what Epic did in attempt to fix the issue. The developers seemed to have smoothed out the animation so that it doesn’t take characters down farther than they should be, but based on the details of the Reddit post, we can’t say for sure. What we can say is that after patch v5.10 any player who can shoot over a stair can now be shot over that stair.
As you can see from the new, post-update image, the ghost peeking perspective has been eradicated. While the character is high enough to shoot over the stair, she can also be seen from the other side. It’s still too early to know if this change will provide permanent solution for ghost peeking, after just a day it’s certainly corrected most cases of the issue and might be enough to fix it for good.