10 Key Differences in Fortnite's Chapter 5 Locker Interface

Fortnite Chapter 5 has been impressive in many ways, with its unique battle royale gameplay and the high-quality battle pass. However, the introduction of the revamped locker UI has caused a stir among fans. The new locker supports new cosmetics related to the Lego, Rocket League, and Festival modes, but it has made the customization experience much worse, leading to backlash from the community. This has become a major point of discussion on reddit, even more so than the changes to movement.

The issue with the locker experience is not simply a dislike of change. Many aspects of managing the locker with a controller, such as equipping skins and other cosmetics, now take much longer. Additionally, key functions from the old locker have been omitted from the revamp altogether. Since the majority of Fortnite players use controllers, these delays have become a notable problem, as the wasted seconds quickly add up.

The reason behind all of this is above my pay grade, so let's get straight to the point and examine a list of ways in which the new UI has made the Fortnite locker experience worse.

1. When you select the button to view an item's details in your locker, it automatically equips the item. Additionally, every time you inspect a style in the detail menu, it also automatically equips that style.

2. Previously, archiving meant using a mass-select menu. Now, there is no mass-select option, and archiving an item requires navigating a dropdown menu for each individual item.

3. Previously, favoriting an item in your locker only required one button press, but now you have to navigate a dropdown menu for each individual item you want to favorite.

4. Pressing Triangle/Y will no longer take you back to the top of your locker menu. To unequip an item or randomize a category, you will now need to manually scroll to the top, which may take some time if you have a large collection of items.

5. The locker presets have been modified, allowing you to keep the assigned skin, back bling, pickaxe, glider, and contrail, but separating out emotes, wraps, banner, loading screen, and lobby music. It is no longer possible to assign specific emotes or wraps to a skin preset. The new UI includes separate groups for emote and wrap presets, and these different types of presets cannot interact. You will need to manually choose your skin, emote, and wrap presets separately.

6. In addition, the option to shuffle your locker presets has been removed. Previously, you could set your presets to random and they would change with each match. Now, you can only select presets manually.

7. Previously, you could clear all your locker notifications - which appear every time you unlock something new - with a single press of a button. However, the locker interface has been divided into seven distinct segments, requiring you to clear each segment's notifications individually by navigating a dropdown menu instead of using a dedicated button.

8. The new "randomize loadout" feature allows you to randomize sections individually, but not your entire locker at once. However, if you don't like the random selection, you'll need to press six buttons each time you want to try again.

9. Previously, sorting a locker section by your most recent items required two button presses, but now it requires eight. This change occurred during OG season and was made worse by a new quirk in Chapter 5: If you close the "sort & filter" menu by hitting the cancel button, it will always return to the default sorting, regardless of any previous customization.

10. The removal of rarity colors from the locker has made it more challenging to navigate, especially for those with stacked lockers. Sorting alphabetically helps, but the color coding was a convenient visual aid for quick scrolling and easy tracking of items in the locker.

11. Previously, scrolling to the edge of the locker would move you up or down to the previous or next row of items, but now it no longer has any effect.

This list is not comprehensive, and mouse-and-keyboard schemes present a variety of unique issues. What is intriguing is that the UI is not particularly buggy, as it appears to have been intentionally designed this way. This doesn't necessarily imply that this was the desired outcome, with key features missing—it is more likely due to an unfinished rush job with numerous oversights, possibly influenced by the layoffs at Epic in September. It is hoped that updates will be released sooner rather than later, but with the holiday season in full swing, it is unlikely that any major fixes will be implemented until January.

Editor's P/S

As a hard fan of Fortnite, I am deeply disappointed with the revamped locker interface introduced in Chapter 5. The new UI has made the customization experience much worse, with numerous inefficiencies and omissions that hinder the user experience. The automatic equipping of items when viewing details and inspecting styles is particularly frustrating, as it adds unnecessary steps and slows down the process of managing cosmetics.

The removal of key functions such as mass-select archiving and one-button favoriting further exacerbates the problem, making it more time-consuming to organize and manage a large collection of items. The changes to locker presets are also a major inconvenience, as it is no longer possible to assign specific emotes or wraps to a skin preset. The separation of emotes and wraps into distinct groups with no interaction between them adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the customization process.