I have a couple Founder’s Pack Codes that I am also willing to sell for $25 if anyone is still interested.
Thanks to @Doctor_Hillbilly for helping me get the rocket launched in Stonewood. Also had 2 randoms join who were helpful!
Gave up on my ninja and outlander for awhile, and am 100% focused on my constructor, I just enjoy building in this game so much :D
I noticed the Fortnite wiki at gamepedia seems to be the best place to go for questions.
https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Fortnite_Wiki
Fortnite suffocates what could be an incredible tower defense game beneath the some of the most tangential, egregious, impersonal progression systems we’ve seen.
Random thoughts on classes after getting to mid plankerton.
I find i always lack hero experience, so it is a constant war for my limited experience.
These days i use the pistol outlander or dim mak almost all of the time.
Constructor:
Poorly designed. This class is based around the Base ability which is fundamentally flawed. It just does not scale well enough to be worth a damn under any circumstances, even if you had the +50% damage passive. The damage resist isn’t that much either. This problem is only compounded later on when you start needing bigger or even multiple bases.
The melee focused ones seem pretty mediocre. Yes, kinetic overload can be interesting, especially with kinetic guardian hero, but It just feels like a crappy Ninja.
I don’t have a plasma sentinel focused one that is high grade, but it sounds like it may be interesting. The damage sounds very extreme. This hero might be very similar to dim mak in clearing little guys.
SLOW.
I would never use a constructor to defend a stormshield, although i would always use one (plus a hotfixer in squad) to get a 14% discount on building my stormshield. These days i only use constructor when it is a single defense point and even then, rarely. Their bases just don’t feel better and even a combat focused constructor feels a lot weaker in combat…
Outlander:
I like the pistol one because i generally like pistol weapons as my general weapon. The teleport is also nice and it reloads his shields.
Teddy and the lightning tower are not powerful enough to justify requiring a special resource, much less basing a character around.
Ninja:
I really like dim Mak. Her smoke cloud is really good at killing hordes of small enemies. Probably my favorite Ninja.
I tried the ninja star ninja and wasn’t a fan. It looks like it may be a late bloomer though. Early on i don’t see the point of taking the time to use a ninja star when a gun is going to do more damage.
Soldier:
Haven’t played them much.
Yup. I pretty much agree with everything in that review.
Even this? You said literally the opposite.
The third-person shooting feels snappy and forgiving throughout, with little recoil and massive husk hitboxes.
You are wrong about that, by the way.
Good catch. You got me!
No, you!
Outlander:
I think is a good beginner class, to learn where the game hide crates of ammo and chest. Like… theres a lot of ammo and chest in roofts, or ammo behind beds. I have seen good players playing this class, giving the piñata to the builder so the builder gets the materials. But they are rare. Other than that, they don’t give much to the team.
And some, I assume, are good people.
Soldier:
A powerhouse of bullets. Feel somewhat like a class from destiny, with “super” and grenades. A useful and fun class.
Ninja:
Really good in good hands, weak otherwise. A melee crystal canon. Think about that.
Constructor.
I think they are supposed to work in team with the Outlander, the Outlander getting the resources and the builder making a awesome base. But yea, good luck with that. I wish instead of mace type weapons damage bonus they should have gone the shotgun route. Make constructors get free shotgun ammo or something. The deployable that make buildings stronger is awesome. Some subclasses even give the buildings health regen, or some gigantic size.
What it happens is this (usually):
If you see outlanders, they will not contribute to the team. They will open all the chest in the map, clean the caves from copper or silver, then quit. Leaving the team without these resources and only 3 people.
When you see 2 or more soldiers you know the husk are going to face a wall of bullets. Good times.
One builder is good news. Usually people that take builder AND start building early make some solid FORTS that look good and work amazing.
Ninjas are hit and miss. One ninja is usually good news. Two ninjas is mostly negative. Two ninjas and one outlander, you are going to miss dps and you will be tasked with building, repaing, upgrading and putting traps. A mix of ninjas and soldiers is good news.
I find the “Power BASE” builder guy is really, really good – extra distance for BASE connections, plus he also gets an ambient auto-repair for the BASE, and that 50% reflected damage for all power base connected walls at level 18.
One thing that’s fun about this game is where the random base drops happen to be, affect the gameplay profoundly. (and that’s on top of the random storm direction.) We just had a super rough one where we were protecting two storm cores at the base of a large plateau and the baddies just kept dropping on us in weird unpredictable ways.
I have levelled a soldier, a ninja, and a builder so far, to about level 20 each. Let me try an outlander next, I guess I’ll go for the “sees loot through walls” variant unless someone recommends otherwise.
Aww man I don’t think I have that “ranger deadeye” outlander for the pistol bonuses :(
wait a minute, theres a outlander with pistol bonus! that could be interesting.
I do hope the devs take that review to heart. The progression system is just crazy. Have you seen the research trees? They are packed with boring things like +5 to one stat. That is line 95% of the research tree. I suggested that they let you research heroes, people, and equipment with the stats you want. Such that every 1000 research will increase the probability that said item/person drops from a loot lama by 1%. That legendary hero you want? You can eventually get him or her. Or that weapon with the modifiers you want? That too.
Anyway, this game needs a big pass on tuning down the grind and the progression system really needs to be simplified. There is far too much xp needed, especially survivor xp. There are like 60 slots or so of survivors and you want to level them all up? Nevermind the rare resources like pure drops of rain which are NOT refunded when you retire / recycle something.
This is a fantastic game that will be crushed under its own weight of grind and progression. Oh lets not forget the crafting materials too. They could easily go with a 50% reduction in cost for traps, and either increase the drop rate of spinning gizmos / pure rain / etc… or reduce those costs a lot too.
I agree, not much else to say.
I enjoy the game but have these gigantic flaws that can be his doom if not corrected extra-quick.
+50% Extra reflected damage, not 50% reflected damage. so at base it goes from 4 to 6. That scales with stats somehow too, but it doesn’t scale very much. The end result is something with tens of thousands of health getting hit for numbers that are barely in the double digits.
See through walls is a decent boost for finding extra loot but the heroes that tend to have bonuses to this also tend to have zero combat helping abilities/passives, so if the mission is hard, it might be annoying.
I also agree with the sentiment of that review. I really REALLY want to like this game, but the obtuse survivor system, and multitude of grinds and the extreme slowness that the game doles all of this out is just… not fun. moving on until something changes
I really hope the devs are taking reviews like this seriously.
This is the interesting question from the Ars review:
Epic now has a serious problem on its hands. Which path do they take from here, with Fortnite in early access? Leave this game as-is and let Fortnite be forever identified as a case study of “free-to-play” gone horribly, horribly wrong? Or reset every element for the sake of saving the fun stuff from the economic garbage and thus punish every person currently playing the game (since this early access period requires paying at least $40 for a founder’s pack and doles out packs of the game’s piñatas, along with other microtransaction perks, in exchange)?
Everyone keeps saying this is Early Access so things will change for the better but if ultimately the end goal is gong F2P I don’t see that happening. If the plan is still to go F2P in 2018 then Epic will be doubling down on all of the bolted on progression systems, multiple currencies, and F2P garbage. That part won’t improve much should the plan hold.
That said, everyone has different tolerances for F2P hijinks. I am deathly allergic to them but others don’t seem to mind as much.
For me, just add v-coins rewards here and there (pitances, don’t need to be much). A way to get schemes that is not llamas (in mission rewards, maybe?). And change the ammo and traps scarcity a bit, by making them cheaper or the mats more plentiful. The game don’t need to get huge changes to shine.
This is already the case. You get vbucks from daily missions, progressing Stormshield defense missions, and several side quests as well. It’s not a ton, but it’s there (50 or 100 vbucks per mission, depending on the type).
But that in itself is crazy grindy. I mean sometimes just to complete 1 daily quest you need to run 3-4 20-30min missions. It can be painful. (and even then it could be more if you get unlucky with the RNG map)
The materials for bullets is just frustrating. I mean I’ll go from having tons of materials, or all of a sudden running out of nuts and bolts out of the blue - it isn’t the end of the world, just shift to a different style of gun for a while, and do a mission in a industrial map with parking meters - but it’s a pain in the ass when there are so many other things “to do”
I had one of my first missions where a shoddy base didn’t work well.
Data download mission - ~19power level, we had one player who had a power-level of 8. I knew it was going to be a dicey run.
I was working on improving the base so that we could actually have some solid defenses, and then someone decided to pop the balloon and start the defense way too early!
I grumbled at the team, saying we aren’t ready at all, and we are under leveled but they just told me to stop (censored) complaining .
So - we lost approx 3 data transfers, I died twice. It was pretty much the worst data download mission I’ve been a part of/seen happen. And it was totally avoidable, if they just built up the base more.
I do like how I’m starting to see the challenges ramp up - but it’s getting in to the domain where teams that work together will actually perform a LOT better and in general the game will be more enjoyable when they do.
Yeah, I’m not arguing about the grind or anything. @Teiman has just said on a couple occasions that he wishes there were vbuck rewards in-game (even a pittance). I’m just pointing out that’s the case… although it is a pittance. :)
Regarding the grind, I’m hoping the EA release helps them out. I found them to be very responsive to feedback in the alpha, but issues related to the grind weren’t quite so applicable. It all had a very temporary feel to it, since wipes happened with maybe every other major update (basically every time they redid the progression system).
Like all closed tests, I think the community that existed weren’t representative of a larger audience. By definition, they were pretty much the hardcore diehards, and those types live to grind in this sort of game.
I was pretty impressed with how the team responded to issues that occurred in the Alpha, so I’m curious to see how they handle this. I think the next major update will be very telling in that regard.