The ULTIMATE reason why old and new players hate Fortnite

This isn't a simple reason at all. It's not a "git gud" situation and I wouldn't even call it an Sbmm/internal decisions situation. It IS a building problem, but it has layers that I haven't seen anyone address yet.

1. Building in Fortnite is the single most unique gaming mechanic to come to multiplayer gaming in decades, and THE most unique gaming mechanic added to a shooter EVER. Full stop.

There is nothing like building in fortnite when it comes to combat, so much so that it's very use was an accident itself. Those of you who were around for the initial promos for Fortnite, what did you see that you don't really see anymore? Forts lmaoo. The whole multiplayer part of the game was supposed to focus on building Forts to protect yourself against other enemies.

In the beginning you and your squad would create these massive bases, and then maybe another squad would flank or someone would try to climb up to infiltrate. That "meta" is years gone now because the speed at which you can build is so fast that it renders actually creating a fort completely useless. The game is no longer Fortnite, it's BuildNite.

Why is this such a problem for newcomers and casual players a like? Because they transfer NOTHING from any previous knowledge of gaming into this one. Zero. Take any racing game for example. Yes the driving mechanics might differ slightly, the cars can vary, even the courses. But the core mechanic of driving games are all the same. That's the same with shooters, sports games, fighting games, MOBAS, hell even RTS games to an extent. There has never been a building game like Fortnite with anything close to those mechanics.

However, that's STILL not enough to warrant the hate. If you could kill just by building, like the actual boxing in of someone itself instantly kills them, then Fortnite would just be a unique party game that has it's niche of players and thats it. People would enjoy it for what it is.

But Fortnite is first and foremost a shooter. In order to ultimately kill your opponent, you have to shoot them just like all other shooters. However, Fortnite is arguably the only shooter ever in the history of shooters to have a mechanic that is more advantageous than just shooting, but it NOT be a way to earn a kill. It's actually an incredible feat.

Let me ask you this: in what competitive game has there been an overpowered meta that wasn't quickly addressed? Building is a meta that was allowed to grow and completely dwarf the original intent of the game. Imagine your favorite fighting game with the OP character, and the devs did nothing about it. But then they changed every other character in the game to behave the same way in order to "balance it". Thats what building became in Fortnite

Which brings me to my second point:

2. Building has NO disadvantages.

Building is a completely drawback free power. You gather materials and let it rip lol. There's no cool down, no health drawback, nothing. Hell, your main process of killing (you know, shootey shootey?) at least has reloading. There is no disadvantages to building and everything to gain. A person who knows how to build vs a person who does not know how to build has an incredible advantage INSTANTLY yet that is not the primary purpose of the game. How does that make sense? In what other multiplayer game does one mechanic completely dwarf another in terms of win condition yet they have virtually nothing to do with another?. In fighting games you have combos and parries as advantage states. The faster and more precise you can pull these off, the better, but its just an advanced version of the existing mechanic. In other shooters it's called aim. But building has no mechanical relation with shooting in Fortnite. That's not normal at all.

3. No applicable single player mode

Yeah yeah yeah, your first angry reddit reaction (if you even made it this far) is that "there's Save The World!" I haven't played STW, I admit, but I've know about it since before the game was even released (I remember the Gameinformer cover you brats) and you absolutely do not have to (or even should) use the same build mechanics as you would in multi, nor would you have to run into that. There are no bots you can practice against completely solo, and the bots in BR are laughable at best, confusing at worse. That's all I need to say about that. If you combine all 3 of these points you get:

4. The Killer Combo

What do you get when you have a game thats advertised and designed as a shooter, has a mechanic no other game has or has even remotely mimicked, PLUS you don't have a sufficient practice mode against capable AI AND the base skill floor of the game has reached the point where old school Myth build mechanics are the norm? You get disgruntled casual vets, and a legion of newcomers (new money) who won't even step foot into the arena.

Now I know a lot of you are like "fine, we don't want them playing with us anyway" but thats a shame because Fortnite is a fantastic game. There's few games like it that provide so much content and polished gameplay all for free. In fact, it pretty much spearheaded that genre and the era we see today. There is so much room for Fortnite to be more inviting to new players while still catering to old vets. Here's some possible solutions:

• Add a cooldown for building IN A SEPARATE MODE. It's already too late to have such a drastic change as adding it into regular gameplay, but what about a separate mode where you actually have to think about how you build? Yeah, ground game is a cool alternative too but this allows people to keep the building mechanic while also leveling the playing field between it and gunplay
• Take out/lower building completely as a separate mode and actually advertise it correctly. Ground game has been around for a while but it was never really pushed as an alternative (even the name doesn't say much) and it constantly was overshadowed. What if you put some marketing dollars into that new "no build" game mode and actually made it permanent? What if you brought back that other market of players that left because of one simple reason?

Ok ok, this was probably my longest post ever, but this has been on my chest since I came back after Chapter 2 to a ridiculous pub lobby. I once said Fortnite might be my favorite game of all time and I really want to go back to those good ol days. I think what annoys me the most is the solution is so easy and yet they still haven't tried to do it. Here's to my fellow Fortnite retirees who feel the same.

Submitted January 21, 2022 at 11:58PM by mr_chub https://ift.tt/3FXkOjS https://ift.tt/eA8V8J