With Friends Like These…. Fortnite

Fortnite is quickly becoming my new Landmark. Awesome ideas, terribly implemented, confused development group, Early Access Flop… In fact, does Daybreak own them already?

To recap quickly – Fortnite is an artful blend of a building game (Minecraft / Landmark), Survival zombie game (7D2D, H1Z1, L4D2), and card collecting PVE Co-Op game. There is a lot it does well – the gameplay is tight, the shooting, crafting, building is intuitive and the art style is well done and creative. The use of traps for defence is clever and even harvesting is a zen-like grind.. The main problem with Fortnite is that there isn’t any sort of point to it all.

And now they can add a Battle Royale mode to it as well.

Nothing screams “Cooperative PVE storm-fighting adventure!” like a free for all PVP mode that doesn’t use any of your existing characters or progress, has a complete separate login at the start screen, and has already fractured a delicate community. Players already have a laundry list of things that need to be adjusted or fixed in the PVE mode and this PVP mode drops, without even a hint they were working on it. It was a complete surprise. How a company can work on a feature that was never in their public game plan without even a  hint that they were considering PVP is the very definition of “left field”. The second biggest patch in their development history is ignoring the issues in their core game and fundamentally changing the entire experience. Sounds like a good idea.

Either way, it is here, and people are loving it. Well, some people are. Not the PVE people who have early backed this game promised a rich, PVE experience of course. And those people are pretty upset about it. By the early sounds of it, the PVP popularity may even eclipse the PVE portion which means, well, will Fortnite PVE ever see the light of day? I have already stopped playing it due to the major issues (that are seemingly being ignored for the PVP patch) and the whole pointless nature of the game. There is a great opportunity here to make a great game, but now I fear things have gone off the rails.

I still log in for this:

It seems as though I have another 8 logins for rewards, so I go get them. Although I am completely confused because on daily rewards it says I am 36/42, but my next Epic reward is day 49. I may or may not find out. I also login daily to collect and spend my research points.

Again – I don’t know why – but I do. Takes me all of a minute a day. I may have a level 21, maxed out on research character with nothing to do and see.

What I will say with this pivot – if you were on the fence about Fortnite but curious about the PVE and building elements – RUN AWAY. RUN FAST AND DON’T LOOK BACK.

Well, maybe look back in a few months and see if its rebranded as a “Competitive PVP Battle Royale Adventure!” if that kind of thing floats your boat. Heck, by then, judging by how focused the dev team is capable of being, it might be a fully fledged MMO.

5 comments / Add your comment below

  1. I don’t often have serious buyer’s remorse about game purchases, but in this case I sure do. I did the same as you..logged in for the daily rewards, at least until the “Founder” rewards ran out. I did try the Battle Royale mode and (unsurprisingly since I’m a PvE guy) didn’t like it.

    1. The frustrating part is that they could have an amazing PVE experience if they built a game instead of an elaborate cash shop. The bones are there to be something really special. I don’t understand this pivot at all – I mean, they said they have over 1,000,000 in EA now, which means they pocketed another 40,000,000 to 150,000,000 in funding. So there is cash there for sure.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: