Mastering the Art of Pinging in Fortnite: Tips and Tricks

Are you a Fortnite player looking to improve your communication and coordination with teammates?

Pinging in Fortnite is a valuable tool that can help you do just that. In this article, we will explore what pinging is, how to ping on different platforms, why it is important, and how it can enhance your gameplay experience.

We will discuss the different types of pings available in Fortnite, provide tips for effective pinging, and highlight common mistakes to avoid.

Stay tuned to level up your pinging skills in Fortnite!

What Is Pinging in Fortnite?

Pinging refers to the player’s means of communication by indicating where items, enemies, locations, or anything relevant to the game are located. It is indicated on the in-game map, the player’s compass at the top of the screen, their visual field, or an empty spot near them on the visual field.

It is called pinging as this method of marking game information was originally invented by the real-time strategy game Empire Earth II where it functions as a literal “ping”. Pinging was expanded for greater meaning: two clicks rather than one represent attacks, locations in danger, or items solely for yourself, to give the information you are pinging sound if people are not listening to the pocalyptic voice, to threaten people by mimicking gunshots. Pinging is no longer a term exclusive to Fortnite with it available by default in all team modes of Warzone, Valorant, PUBG, Apex Legends, as well as from an expansion pack used by players in Minecraft.

How To Ping in Fortnite?

You ping in Fortnite by pressing the ‘Select’ button on the Xbox and PlayStation controllers, the ‘- Key’ or ‘Mouse Wheel Button’ on PC, or tapping the map on mobile. After pressing this, a cursor will appear on your screen. The ping command can be used to get allies’ attention, show locations for enemies or supposed enemies on the map, mark enemy robots and players, request a weapon, request ammo, request materials, suggest a movement path, choose a place to loot, or to warn others of an enemy trap on the ground (Fortnite Remedy vs Toxin part of the Convergence saga).

For PC Players

To ping in Fortnite on a PC, use the key at the bottom left corner of the entire keyboard.

Based on the default Fortnite bindings that are determined by version (FN), the keybindings for Ping on a PC are:

• Z – Open Emote Wheel
• X – Reset Building Edit
• C – Building Edit
• V – Toggle Harvesting Tool
• B – Emote Just Myself
• N – Emote Wheel

For Console Players

There are no inbuilt methods for pinging in Fortnite on consoles. However, players can use Xbox Party Chat or PlayStation Party Chat to jump into party chat with each other and use the voice chat to communicate and not just play during matches.

Here are the steps to switch voice chat to party chat on consoles.

Switching on Xbox
Every Xbox comes with a pre-installed Xbox app through which you can create or join other parties. Once you are in the party screen (press the home button and then the party chat symbol), you can right click (press Y if you use normal controls) to invite your friends to join a party. Here is a how to guide from Microsoft.

Switching on PlayStation
Make sure you out of the game and on your console screen. Head into settings and search for party settings. You need to make sure it is set up to prioritize party chat, after which you can head back to the game and continue just with a voice instead of standard game chat, thus effectively turning on party chat. A detailed how to guide can be seen on PlayStation’s website.

For Mobile Players

Mobile players of Fortnite do not require a specific method for pinging, as the method is exactly the same as on all other platforms. Mobile players use a button at the top side of the screen in the middle to open an emote wheel from which they can select their pinging emote. If players prefer physical mobile controllers, then pinging may not be possible if the buttons of the controller do not support emote options. Players using a ping instead of a high five in an in-person high-five-pancake-gg team huddle should just say it out loud.

Why Is Pinging Important in Fortnite?

Pinging in Fortnite is important because it provides users an easy way to communicate and communicate threats with their team members without using their voice or a separate chat program. Players may mute all opponents in-game to eliminate toxicity or reduce noise, making pinging a necessary communication tool. Not only will teammates understand the player’s location better than they would purely based on their voice, but it saves seconds of time by providing a visual indicator that you could have a hard time understanding if you were only hearing the call.

The distance tags are crucial, providing teammates a sense of relativity about whether they can be of assistance or not. If a threat is too pressing, it can be both underlined verbally and through more aggressive/multiple pings to make it clear teammates must change course.

How Does Pinging Help in Fortnite?

Pinging helps in Fortnite by notifying your team’s members of items, locations, and enemies seen. This way they can be alerted quickly and efficiently without having to speak on voice chat, which helps in maintaining a silent approach to battle royale matches.

When a specific item, location, or enemy are pinged, a contextual white outline (items and opponents) or blue marker (locations) is displayed on the map, the HUD appears, and select voiceover cues are triggered for call-out reinforcement. According to telemetry gathered by Stratus for Epic Games and the US Navy’s Navaire Human Systems Study of Technologies Designed to Mitigate Cognitive and Memory Limitations, pings in Fortnite help increase player situational awareness by allowing teammates to stay in close contact despite having their eyes on different points of the battle.

Communication with Teammates

Pinging aids in communication with teammates when players do not have a microphone or do not want to speak over voice chat. It is also an assistive technology for players who may have difficulty speaking such as autistic players or those who wish to mute voice chats. It is used by most players as a way of drawing attention to an enemy or object during the game. Using the ping function allows players to concentrate on ensuring that their language is free of background noise and that they can hear any important sound clues of the game.

Marking Important Locations

In battle royale games like Fortnite, you might need to communicate with teammates without using voice chat to avoid alerting any enemies nearby. You can use the 5 key on your keyboard to place a marker on the map at important locations. This is the simplest way and doesn’t require any pointing gestures. Once you place a map marker on the place you need to mention, your teammates will see where it is marked on their maps as well and will easily understand the location of where you are pointing. This is beneficial for strategies that require silent non-obvious location calling.

Reputed Fortnite user MadaraUchiha on disgaming.com elaborates that pinging is the way to show or tell where you’re aiming. When you hit the button with the Army person with his hand raised (G by default on PC), you make that circle that appears when your teammates hit the “Eye looking around” ping. It appears on where you’re aiming (you will always ping at the map spot/apt you’re aiming sometimes). If you want players to look at one specific area very fast, you have to look at/point at it first, then ping it. This will make it bigger for a few seconds, which will make players notice it faster.”

Alerting Teammates of Enemies

Using voice or text chat for calling enemy positions, particularly before or during a fight, can be too risky. The best approach is pinging them on the map after a fight to alert teammates on position and to warn them of enemies. Teadoh, a Fornite content creator for the organization 1%, shares his thoughts on how to ping their location and alert teammates.

Drop your guns (LMB on PC, triangle on PS4, Y on Xbox). This will notify your teammates that enemies are there. so they can come and join the fight and help you. Spot (alt on the PC, L1 on PS4, LB on Xbox) so your teammates know exactly where the enemy is.

What Are the Different Types of Pings in Fortnite?

The different types of pings in Fortnite are as follows.

1. Enemy Pings: Ping by pressing down on right trigger at the enemy.
2. Item Pings: Ping with the middle mouse button or a similar function to highlight various items – such as a weapon, shield, ammo, or even the island’s larve-infested cubes.
3. Comment Pings: Ping with the middle mouse button or a similar function to state excitement, confusion, gratitude, wanting loot, or so on.

In addition, player pings can indicate enemy presences, suggest looting or stop like commands, and so on.

Standard Ping

Standard ping in Fortnite is referred to as “Threat Ping”. The game allows for pinging of specific objects, locations, enemies, drops as well as simply sharing one’s position with squadmates on the minimap. A standard ping in Fortnite is made by opening communication options (default button Left Alt), aiming at the place of interest, and pressing the left mouse button (shoulder trigger on platforms). This will place a bright red marker with a text description of the distance in meters to the object on the screen. Select to place further markers as well as text about desired actions if necessary.

Danger Ping

The danger ping is a marker on the location wheel that is used by players to notify their team of enemy sightings, traps, or other dangerous locations. In this case, it is recommended to use the red color, as imagistically it represents the danger of the situation better than the blue color of the default center location marker. Players can customize their Danger Ping from Settings.

The Danger ping is effective when playing with your teammates on mode in Fortnite when friendly fire is turned off, be it squads or team rumble, as you will elongate the communication time while your teammates work to understand your location and the danger you emerged, giving opposing players more time for their danger to fizzle out.

The danger ping is even beneficial for lengthy team battle in a duo match that eliminates the enemy due to its long notification process. However, other more rapid direct communication interactions can be more appropriate if you are in a rush to alert your team of the danger. In general, the players are in a position behind enemy lines and need to let their team know (within moderation), as being a silent and deadly threat means even dead silent materials are now a huge indicator.

Loot Ping

People who refer to ping as marking a location usually mean loot ping. This describes marking a spot on the map with more loot or resources you want to let teammates know about. This option is available in games like Apex Legends and PUBG, but there is no feature in Fortnite at the time of writing that lets you differentiate your marker by what it indicates. Whether it is another team’s location, a strategic point, or loot.

You can use the colors of pink for strategic locations and yellow for points of interest to make the differentiation clear. There is no limit to how far you can use the loot ping command and it will remain active until another ping command is given or until the marked location is returned to. Here is how you do it in Fortnite on a Mac, PC, Switch, Xbox, or PlayStation depending on your target/platform inputs:

Building Ping

Building pings are triggered when something like a wall or ramp isn’t building or working properly. You will send building pings automatically when you play Fortnite depending on the default settings. Those are typically neither subtle nor hidden. The sound and visual effects they produce when you get nervous about building in a tight spot are well known.

If nothing happens when you press your build keys (the default is both mouse wheels and the keyboard letter Q), only a transparent outline appears instead of a completed structure, or the build doesn’t show up at all, A peg leg structure is there but with no mass, expect a wall to appear instead of a ramp, impossible to make gap to be created between two pieces, structure remains in editing mode, you get shot while remaining in edit mode, then you know a building operation has failed. The guidelines below will take you through the key ways to identify and correct the issues of building pings in Fortnite.

What Are Some Tips for Effective Pinging in Fortnite?

1. Avoid the single card limit. Trying to pick up a new card when the inventory is full and a card is over another card will drop the held card in the slot in which it was pinged.
2. Get into the habit of pinging if you are struggling with movement. Pinging when stuck can be helpful if you are trying to get out of a sticky situation. It disrupts the overall movement of enemies as they now know you are present and may send in a weaker opponent to confront or help you out.

Use Pings Sparingly

Using pings is a great way to share non-verbal information and odds with randomly-queued teammates. However, they also have the potential of being an annoyance. Overusing pinging has been mentioned repeatedly in the official shooter games Discord channels.

It is possible only to build and do nothing for the whole game, but some amount of pinging as well to not be disruptive. The real answer to whether or not pinging is being used too frequently at an individual level is if anyone is complaining.

There are broad strategic decisions that pings are quite good at communicating. Such as:

• We should rotate to since it is in zone
• We should hold this spot and let an enemy group pass
• There are three enemies 500m southwest

Get in the habit of marking a location. It ensures that enemy callouts are specific and reduces the chances of having miscommunication. Pings can also be used to solicit responses from your teammates. Players use question pings on an area to connect with their team on whether they should pass through it or not? Other players use it to engage with teammates on whether an inventory piece or weapon is needed or not?

Be Clear and Specific

It is important to be as clear and precise as possible in communication to avoid any ambiguity or confusion. You can practice this in Fortnite to both make and understand calls. Look at the in-game map to check names of locations and grids. Mark a spot with your ping when sending a friend to a specific place and call out when you see an enemy or building. ‘Enemy front north 40 degrees’ or ‘building to your northwest’ both works but one is more clear than the other.

Use Pings to Communicate with Non-Verbal Teammates

Due to varying language barriers, on-the-go mobile gamers, or players who do not use voice chat, the use of Fortnite pings provides a direct and clear method for conveying one’s intended thoughts and plans without being misunderstood. Mobile gamers who frequently enter and exit a match throughout the day likely do not use headphones, so providing their teammates with a visual indicator of their plans is keyfinding success for their team members.

Across all platforms, many players do not wish to use voice chat to interact with strangers, making ping chat the preferred method of communication. Those who are playing in the office (or otherwise in a location where voice chat is not appropriate) or who do not have appropriate headphones for team chat are relatively common. In this 2018 article, the founder of a Major Esports Organization pointed out the current limitations relating to the use of voice chat in playing esports. He noted that only the calling channels have good voice communication comparing it to normal calling applications and that the private conversation channels are far from good. This leads to very few players actually using it.

Use Pings to Strategize and Coordinate with Your Team

Teams often use pings to strategize and discuss plans. Coordination is the primary use of pings during matches. Though players may choose not to talk over Tristan and other AI leaderboards stats, this added communication is crucial when moving with Bachelor’s degree online classes. Particularly when planning an ambush or flanking strategy, using this function to communicate strategic plans helps ensure team members are on the same page. Protip: click mouse wheel for understood to better broadcast a plan in progress. Pings can even be considered the equivalent to Bartender Jobs for the whole team because it arranges for movement, set up better angles, and makes a plan with minimal conversation that ensures one’s location goes un-given away.

What Are Some Common Mistakes When Pinging in Fortnite?

Some common mistakes when pinging in Fortnite include

1. Ping spamming: the overuse of pings
2. Bad choice of ping color
3. Inaccurate pinging
4. Breaking from fighting to ping
5. Missing the ping concept

Although pinging can be extremely helpful as it allows communication without the need for a microphone, repeated overuse or spamming of pings makes the function distracting and annoying for players. Bad color choices may not get noticed or understood in high-intensity situations, resulting in the information not getting relayed to teammates. Incorrect pinging can create confusion and misinformation which can be dangerous in a game of Fortnite. Breaking cover to ping can lead to the player’s elimination.

Pinging Too Much

Pinging too much in Fortnite can be annoying to listen to and distracting to play with. This is because audio notifications for pings are sent to the earpiece of the player who initiates the ping. This can often be too much noise to process on top of regular gaming audio, which can throw off a player’s focus.

Additionally, it interrupts that player’s audio in a way that can eventually disrupt communication and gameplay among teammates. They may unintentionally remove their earpiece or mute it just to get rid of the noise of the pings, which then means they may not receive essential instructions from teammates and be isolated.

Pinging Inaccurately

Pinging inaccurately is the Fortnite term for pinging but missing the mark. This echoes when you intend to let a user know where enemies are but select the wrong location either on the Fortnite map or in-game. Real-life friends will often forgive you, in online games opponents may exploit a puff of friendly fire to get rid of you due to inaccuracy.

The negative effect of this inaccuracy ultimately varies and may not impact the course of the game at all.

Not Paying Attention to Pings from Teammates

Not paying attention to pings from teammates can cost you the game in Fortnite. Both hearing and seeing pings from teammates are parts of your awareness that need to be improved.

Teammates have line-of-sight requirements for their pings to be visible to you. If your teammate is almost directly behind a wall, obstacle, or landmark (such as a large tree or building), their ping will not be visible. The most common mistakes in this category of not paying attention to pings are due to syncing errors between team members.

Ryan Aube states people are occupied with other things such as looting, enemies are in sight, running away from other problematic enemies, and sound of the pings getting lost in heavy gaming audio. To fix this, try to share one job that each of you is responsible for at all times so that all assets of the game are covered and fewer pings are necessary. Your teammate can let you mark the necessary places on the map, as you are currently engaging with other issues.

Or let your teammate focus on planning the goals and have everyone follow your direction. If you are in a high-intensity situation where any distraction could mean a loss, allow one person in the squad to be a dedicated caller. This is useful when communicating in person is not feasible. They will dictate the actions of the team (loosing, shock, go forward to the front, rift, covering fire, etc.). Jared Beriau in his suggestion states It sounds like a lot, but it helps you stay efficient. Multiple voices and inputs can cause confusion during critical moments.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Ping in Fortnite?

Question: What is pinging in Fortnite?
Pinging in Fortnite is a way for players to communicate with their team without using voice chat. It allows players to mark specific locations, items, and enemies on the map for their teammates to see.

How to Ping in Fortnite?

Question: How do I ping in Fortnite?
To ping in Fortnite, simply press the middle mouse button on PC or press up on the d-pad on consoles. This will bring up a marker on your screen that you can place on the map.

How to Ping in Fortnite?

Question: Can I ping specific items in Fortnite?
Yes, you can ping specific items such as weapons, ammo, and health items in Fortnite. Simply aim at the item and press the ping button to mark it for your team.

How to Ping in Fortnite?

Question: Is it possible to ping enemies in Fortnite?
Yes, you can ping enemies in Fortnite by aiming at them and pressing the ping button. This will mark their location for your team and allows for better coordination during battles.

How to Ping in Fortnite?

Question: Are there different types of pings in Fortnite?
Yes, there are three different types of pings in Fortnite – location ping, item ping, and enemy ping. Each one has a different color and symbol to differentiate between them.

How to Ping in Fortnite?

Question: Can I customize my ping controls in Fortnite?
Yes, you can customize your ping controls in the game settings. This allows you to choose which button or key you want to use for pinging.