V design at work:
Before:
And after:
Is material efficient, good to defend and a good protection for players.
But it looks like a salad bowl. :p
It’s an interesting design. I’m not saying I would live in the stadium crossed with a salad bowl, but it must make it easy to run up and down on the sides to snipe husks. :)
I’m only about to start the second home shield defence mission, and I’m low on resources to build up my base and traps. Is there a way I can choose to go back to the first mission in town to get more metal and chests? Or am I stuck with only the stuff currently showing on the map (i.e. the home base defence and a woods mission called “Defeat the storm” or something similar)?
You can just start that mission and gather stuff before doing the expansion. You really don’t need much in the way of defences early on. Hell, I’ve been playing most of the weekend and I’ve barely ever had zombies reach the defences if there are other people on the team.
I like the game but all the various ways to progress and what you can level etc is sometimes a tad much. Too much to keep an eye on you know? But I dig the building and enjoy being the lone builder around most of the time. Leveling up an outsider now to gather resources quicker.
I honestly can’t figure out if it’s a real game or the world’s most expensive parody game. The progression systems are insane, and while there’s a lot of polish for an early access game, the interface is really poorly designed for some basic stuff.
You get it quick that the game want players to use the money of their pockets to progress in the game. And is something ugly and I make me slightly ill. Thats the reason I don’t see myself playing this in one year. Anyway the game is work in progress and they may make some adjustements to make the game less a fremium mobile game and more a PC / Console game.
Changes I think would do good to the game:
- A system where you can join people on lower difficulty missions and your effective level is lowered, but you still get rewards.
- Get rid of the allocated daily XP cap or change how it works.
- Add a few v-rewards here and there. Maybe create events that give v-coins as rewards. Like other phone games do (like Summoner Wars).
- A way to “save” a base so you can inspect it in some sort of virtual reality room.
- Allow people to search other players and visit their base in read-only mode. Maybe donating mats.
- Make the recipe for ammo supersimple. Wood+Metal maybe. The game is fun, the weapons are fun, the enemies are hard. Why limit the pew pew so much?
- Do something with the stamina thing. Maybe make walking slighly faster. Sprinting take less stamina. Stamina regain faster. Remove the messages the character say when out of stamina and tyriing to run.
- Nightmare mode / Hell mode / New Mode+. Whatever system they can add that double the game length by adding ridiculous hard content with ridiculous cool rewards. What we usually call “Endgame” in other games.
I dunno. Maybe the game is already the best that can be.
This is Epic we’re talking about here, unfortunately. I certainly wouldn’t get my hopes up.
This already happens via daily (and other) quests. You also get some via login rewards.
I played about 10 hours of this over the weekend. I’m generally negative on the experience. I like the look of the game, and there are moments of shooting and killing husks that are really good, but the overall game is just not my thing.
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Too many systems. About an hour into the game, I was overwhelmed with stuff. Weapons, survivors, traps, heroes, defenders, research, collections, llamas, and everything has its own XP track. Talk about information overload.
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Grind, grind, grind. If you like filling bars with colors, this is the game for you! I can pass on it.
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I detest co-op games that don’t actually have a good reason to actually work together. The first half of every match features everyone running off in different directions to look for loot because you actively don’t want other people around you taking all the good stuff. There’s a period of haphazard building, and then fighting zombies. At no point is there any real reason for me to coordinate or do anything with these three other people. They’re just there. Heck, sometimes they’re actually being annoyance because they’re starting the horde-mode sequence when I’m still gathering or building, or vice versa.
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The building stuff is very slick, but also kind of pointless. Maybe it gets more hectic in later missions, but at no point in my ten hours did any of the base building feel necessary. Everyone just runs up to the zombie spawns and massacres them before they get anywhere near the base.
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Finally, and most importantly, I don’t think the shooting is all that good. This is Epic with their own Unreal Engine, so I’m a bit surprised at how loose and unsatisfying the guns feel.
Both of these issues relate to the same problem: the game takes far too long (IMO) before it offers real challenge. Later areas and missions are quite difficult, and you really want to be working together if you want to succeed in the mission. Unfortunately, it takes too long to get to that point. After dealing with a few wipes in the alpha, I’m finding it a slog to get back through the initial couple areas again. In later missions the 7 minutes of defense is a frantic struggle to keep the base alive, whereas at first it’s just a timer you wish would hurry up and finish so you can get on to the next mission.
As for the shooting, I like the feel of the guns!
Yeah, I’m doing all of the first areas solo for the most part. I’m at the point where they are getting challenging, though.
Yeah, I get that Epic wants to ease people in, but the game didn’t offer any challenge in ten hours other than the obstacle of figuring out what the zillion different systems and XP tracks did.
It’s something that I hope is addressed as part of the EA process. When things get difficult is where the game really starts to shine, but it just takes too long to get there right now, IMO. I realize that will want to keep the difficulty accessible to more casual players, but perhaps there needs to be ways to fast track zone progression.
As it is, unless it’s changed in the EA release, you don’t even start seeing elementals and the like until the 3rd region?
I’ve switched to constructor now, and mostly enjoy building forts in the public levels, even if they disappear forever after the match is over.
I agree that early game difficulty is a bit too easy. I am gonna definitely stick with this till it hits F2P. Has anyone made it to the 2nd area? Does is change up much?
I still have 2 more missions in the starting town.
I actually kind of like this about the game. I normally get turned off by team coop games because of a) having to listen to idiots and b) worrying about letting the side down. The former isn’t really an issue in this game, and so far the latter isn’t either, as it’s a doddle and anyway someone else is always going to sort out the building while I go and do all my quest busywork. But I assume that will no longer be the case once the difficulty finally ramps up.
Thanks for your thoughts here. I almost purchased this going into the weekend but had a weird Spidey sense tickling the back of my brain that had some nagging worries. You articulated those worries quite well here. This feels like a game I wouldn’t stick with in the long run due to the glut of F2P systems, leveling, and grind. I now think this is a pass for me.
I also wonder if Fortnite is going to peak with hype and playerbase before this even goes F2P. As many devs have discovered with Early Access you only really have one true release.
Ultimately, I think the game is in a good spot for an initial EA release. It’s more polished than the majority of fully released games I’ve played.
I don’t think the game is going to be at peak yet, though. I think that will come if/when they release on Steam. For a huge chunk of PC gamers, a game doesn’t exist until it hits that platform.
I believe Epic is trying to push their platform as the exclusive home of their games. They already have a store and in-client system for buying stuff.
That certainly could be. It depends on what they’re trying to build, their platform or their game. If the former is the case, then yes, this is more than likely peak exposure to Fortnite!