I think there are a few ways Fortnite needs to change to not be such a painful slog. I’ll disregard my own opinion on the shooting itself, since I’m the odd man out on that feeling.
Revamp the various progressions systems so there’s less overlap and confusion. First, does a particular system even need to exist? Why collect gun and trap schematics with different values and have an XP grind to level them up? The same goes with the heroes, survivors, and defenders. Cut one or the other system out. Since it’s eventually going F2P, and presumably will need the loot crate purchases to sustain itself, I’d recommend just having various qualities of items in the crates and drop the leveling. It’s simpler and you can generate more loot excitement with the rarities. As it stands now, unpacking a llama is as exciting as scrolling through an Excel sheet.
Take a good hard look at that first ten hours and do something about it. The official tutorial is okay, but almost every player acknowledges that the whole first map is one giant tutorial. That’s too long. They need that many missions to dole out the various systems and grinds, (see above) but they do a terrible job explaining stuff anyway. You open your first llama after the tutorial, but the game does shit all to tell you what any of the loot does.
Get some systems that really encourage teamwork in the first part of every match. Until you start the horde portion of the session, the mechanics actively discourage staying together. You don’t want anyone hoovering up your materials, so everyone runs off willy-nilly. At some point, almost every pub match hits a point when one or more people are done gathering, but others are still breaking down cars and trees. Then the game compounds this error by setting mission building limits like “Only build 60 objects to protect the core” which inevitably sets the defense-minded players against the offensive players.
I sure hope they are willing to go back to the drawing board as far as progression goes. It can’t be tweaked, it needs to be scrapped.
I like the idea of survivors being useful somehow, but their current implementation is just insane. I am not sure I have an idea for a use for them though.
The best I can think of, not that this is particularly interesting, is to assign them to resource ques. Like each survivor on the metal que will give you 1 metal per hour. Have one for wood and stone, and then more ques for each crafting tier.
I think the current research system is just dumb and redundant with the skill tree system (which is fine as it is IMHO, but I am only on tier 2).
Get rid of the expeditions, and the support squads.
I am ok with the defenders, but just have like 4 defenders tied to your hero which can be deployed even with a full team of people.
Reduce trap cost by at least 50% and have them be partially recoverable based on how many charges they have used.
Reduce wall costs by 75%, and again have them recoverable based on their durability left.
Both of the above should be automatic when the mission ends.
As far as treasure chests, they should work like every other objective. When someone finds one, a gift box appears for every player to collect.
I agree mostly with it (though I tried the game one year ago).
But yeah, not so hot gameplay at the end of the day, too much farming, too convoluted and disperse in the game design (base defense/explore/collect/quest/craft/build-athon!), and too shameless in the f2p design, with oh so many bars to increase, so many loot crates, so many levels up rank up, buildings to upgrade, daily quests, daily rewards, objects to craft, and a long etc of elements designed to hook people. Instead of got me addicted it made me run away.
Defenders are fucking worthless and I have yet to use a single one successfully in many tens of hours of play, so that’d be my vote right off the bat. Either radically simplify defenders (maybe give them a default weapon and ammo), or remove them altogether.
I haven’t found this to be a problem in practice; nobody wants the mission to fail because you get zero rewards (or close to it) on a mission fail, so when the objective starts, everyone hauls ass to where they’re supposed to be.
The more common teamwork fail is starting the objective too early without reasonable defenses.
I agree that the progression systems are byzantine to the extreme, but other than defenders, who are completely fucking worthless, the F2P depth of these systems kinda made sense to me as I played more and more. For example, the survivor cards can be matched on personality and bonus perks, so even if you have multiple identical survivors, they end up being useful for matching other squadmates on those criteria.
It is a hell of a lot of systems, though, and they should radically simplify at least one of them (cough defenders).
Yeah, defenders were hot garbage when they were first introduced but I just assumed most of the UI/functionality was WIP. Doesn’t really look like much changed with them from first implementation and EA release, unfortunately.
They’re not that great and I’d actually be OK with that if the UI were simplified. I shouldn’t have to place defender pads or give them guns or ammo, it’s all far too tedious and cumbersome. I should be able to select them just like I would a trap and drop them wherever. They should come equipped with a default weapon that matches their rarity (so a blue rifleman should have a blue assault rifle).
I’m OK with the concept of a “trap” that can cover a wider area, but at at the cost of the UI chore involved with placing them. As it is, I just completely ignore them and use them solely for Hero XP.
Yeah, after you get established with some blue quality stuff, it’s best to send you vbucks on this sort of llama (there Super Hero Llama is another really good one). I’m pretty happy about the dragon pistol I got along with a few other things.
So safe all my v bucks for one of these? I have been spending them, sometimes on the 350 special lamas. I guess I should just hold on to them forever until one of these comes up.
How often do they have these kind of lamas? I would be very interested in the hero one. I want an upgrade to the one I play, which is Jonsey.
Speaking of upgrades, is there much difference between a blue vs purple hero? I ask because from weapons it doesn’t seem to be much of an upgrade. I had a level 20 blue light machine gun that did 1600 dps (this in game) vs a level 20 purple one that was 1800 dps. Not very much better IMHO. Also the odd thing is the schematic lists the gun as 2400dps. Does anyone understand the discrepancy?
We had a fantastically lucky build site a few games ago – on a small island surrounded by water. It was so easy to defend because water slows down the husks. Almost as good as that is when you get a build site near a few houses / buildings so you can use the areas between houses as funnels!
(Also, I am STILL finding new areas in this game, new and interesting procedural stuff I haven’t seen before, which is amazing to me after dozens of hours of play.)
Have you guys tried the double barrel shotgun? It has an insane spread. Like it literally fires about 50 degrees in front of you. It’s hilarious to use, a real room-clearer.
I had enough materials to upgrade a hero / weapon to level 3, but I was afraid to. I did find some malachite (it’s green jade looking stuff) in a cave in a recent level though! I ended up upgrading my Legendary Tiny Instrument of Death to level 2 and it does like 5,000 DPS now. It’s a pistol that fires these tiny slow moving guided rockets, which are hilarious. I figured out it works best if you fire near the ground and use it as a splash damage weapon.
grumbles about @telefrog and “the weapons don’t feel good”
I like to save my vbucks for these big llamas, once you have an initial setup of blue heroes/schematics. I want to say they show up every few weeks. I have to start saving all my vbucks for when a super hero llama shows up, those are my favorite.
There’s a bit of a stat difference between blue and purple heroes but the most important thing is that people heroes unlock additional perks at level 25 and 30. Blues stop getting perks at L20, IIRC.
Yeah, I was pretty damn excited about that! I’ve been focusing more on ninja and outlander but after that find I need to start unlocking my soldier evolutions!
On my weapon DPS thing, where in game the DPS for the blueprint says 2400, yet in game its like 1800. Is there some kind of scaling due to level? IE: I am a level 20 guy and my weapon is level 43, so I am getting less than half it’s stats or something like that?
Also as far as spending xp on survivors, is better to level up a bunch of them a little vs a few a lot? Or does it make any difference?
Bought this Llama before heading into work. Got an EPIC (purple color) electric wall zapper that has very nice stats. Along with a 2 legendary survivors and a ton of other purple/blue/green loot. Very pleased.
I’m not aware of any scaling liked that, DeepT. I’ll have to check this evening with my blueprints and see if I can figure out what’s up with that. If anything you would think it would be the other way around, since your group stats would be higher in a mission.
That is so weird! I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what could possibly make the listed DPS go down while you’re in-game. The only factors I can think of would make it go up (survivors not being calculated, team Homebase power increasing, etc). And if you just hopped to your homebase, I’m assuming you had the same hero slotted as well. Really strange!
I’ll check this evening as well and see if I see the same thing.
