If one were to be charitable, maybe this is partially a testbed for scalability improvements to the UE4 networking code. It was designed for much smaller player counts, and PUBG has been hitting the limits hard. The scuttlebutt a while back was that Epic was working on a solution.
I don’t really know anything about Fortnite, but that Battle Royale video looks kind of fun. Just because it is derivative of an existing game doesn’t make it bad. I think of PUBG as a really solid framework that has a lot of room for mechanical improvements. I don’t know if this is it, but I’m open to the possibility.
Battle Royale is the new hotness. It’s inevitable that any MP shooter game coming out after PUBG will ship with something similar.
Looks fun… a lot more enjoyable to the 4+hr slogfest they currently have going on.
Okay, so looks like Battle Royale was done by another team at Epic. I don’t have any issues with that, the gunplay is fun and polished, it makes a good base for such a game mode. I just thought it was bizarre to be doing a 180 on direction when they have so much to work on with the core game.
This update has convinced me that i don’t want to spend a penny more for the game. With all that is wrong with the game and how little content it has, this is what you’re doing epic? Really? We’re talking about a game where most of the classes and weapon types are absolute shit.
I’ve been working on an update too epic, it is called taking the money I used to give you and giving it to someone who knows what the heck they are doing.
If it had been the Fortnite team working on the Battle Royale, I’d be similarly annoyed.
When/if they ever add new traps and weapons, are they going to have to balance them around this tacked on pvp mode? Are they going to have spend time/resources updating/maintaining it? And really, if they had an extra team to throw at the game, why can’t they spend more time fixing stuff?
This feels like mass effect multiplayer all over again.
It sounds like the PVP mode is a separate thing, so I would imagine (hope?) that as new weapons are added, if the other team wants to throw them into Battle Royale they’ll have to figure out how to balance them.
They say it’s a separate group of people at Epic that wanted to add this mode and so they did. If that’s the case, I don’t really mind. I don’t have any interest at all in it, but I don’t mind. I don’t feel like the issues Fortnite needs help with would be addressed by the skillsets needed to put together a Battle Royale mode using the existing game assets.
Primarily, my main issues with Fortnite revolve around design and balance. That’s something that the existing designers need to sit down and hash out. I guess more “story” in Canny Valley is needed as well, but I don’t personally care about that sort of thing.
I don’t mean to sound like an apologist. For my personal tastes, this battle royale thing has literally ZERO fucking appeal to me. It’s why I’m playing a PVE coop shooter, not PUBG. But until it starts pulling people off of the main team to work on it (which I guess might happen, if BR became a smashing success) it’s not really a bother to me.
I’m excited for it because so far on console we have no option for Battle Royale until now. Also it’s the Unreal Tournament team doing it, they were probably bored since they had no other project ;)
it’s fun, I wish they tied it in a tiny bit with the PvE game… where you could earn coins to buy upgrades for PvE, even if it was just 50 coins for 1st place. Just something :)
Right on, I hope you have some fun with it!
After playing some 5 matches or so I’ve come to understand a lot more
The Battle Royal isn’t really the PvE smashed in to PUBG.
They actually took what you do in PUBG and recreated it in the Fortnite world.
There aren’t nearly as many weapons as you would find in the PvE game… not at all. Just a handful of shotguns, handguns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles.
I’ve yet to find a melee weapon.
They’ve added in bandages (full heal, and partial healing), as well as shield potions (1 potion gives you 50% shields)
I’ve only found a single trap - and I haven’t really been in a situation where it would have come in handy.
(kinda wish I put it down just to see if my own trap can hurt myself)
It is fun - I kind of wish that they would be able to incorporate the procedural world creator in this mix. Maybe the PUBG likes the standard map, but I’d rather a dynamically generated map. where they could put in different variables… “must contain XXX houses, at least 2 stores, some parking lots, some farms…”
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/fortnite-battle-royale-goes-free
What’s Fortnite Battle Royale?
It’s a 100-player PvP mode in Fortnite that will be free for everybody on Sept. 26. One giant map. A battle bus. Fortnite building skills and destructible environments combined with intense PvP combat. The last one standing wins.
So, what’s the catch?
No catch. Fortnite Battle Royale is free and we will not sell items that give a competitive advantage. At some point in the future we will sell other things including cosmetics or compendium-like content.
How Can I Play?
On September 26, Battle Royale will be available as a free download on the Epic Games PC launcher, PlayStation Store and Xbox Store.
Goddamn. The power of PUBG.
Edit: People that purchased Fortnite just to get in on the Battle Royale mode can get a refund.
I bought the game for the PvP Battle Royale mode on PC last week. Since it’s free now, can I have a refund?
Yes. If you purchased Fortnite between Sept. 12 and Sept. 19 to get access to Battle Royale, and you would like a refund, contact us and we’ll give you one. Fortnite Battle Royale will still be available to you for free.
The me-too in this industry is strong. For a while, everyone was making an MMO and describing it as “WoW, but with ____”! Then came the Great MOBA Migration where it was decreed that everything must be a MOBA. Sins of a Solar Empire developers? Make a MOBA! VCs buy a stake in Trendy Entertainment? Make Dungeon Defenders 2 a MOBA, because that makes sense! Even Oprah is giving away MOBAs!
Now it’s Battle Royale and I’m left asking the same questions I did for those mentioned above: If I’m a fan of Battle Royale, all my friends and I are playing PUBG. What are you offering that will make me (and since it’s a MP game, a critical mass of other players) leave and buy or play yours instead? Because unless your company is Blizzard, good fucking luck with following up behind a MP juggernaut that achieved critical mass with a me-too offering.
So has anyone tried the 100 player mode?
I tried the FortnitePUBG mode and is fun. No my type of fun, but fun nonetheless.
I agree - is fun, but seems way too short (for me)
I mean there’s a wait for ~95 players
then another wait for all players to load in to the game staging area
then you’re on the plain and waiting to get to a place to drop in.
it’s a good 5+ min to get in to another game after you exited after playing 30 seconds in the prior match, because you have potato aim with a hang gun, and another guy found an assault rifle.
That’s fun right???
It’s okay. As a PUBG knock-off it does the job, I guess. But it’s definitely not the equal of PUBG.
Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode is missing the inventory management, weapon part swapping, and vehicles that give PUBG the hyper-fiddly jank that’s kind of necessary for the mode to work the way it does. Without that friction, PUBG feels more like a 100-person DM than the streaming phenomenon PUBG is now.
I’m curious to see how the cosmetics will be implemented. I always thought it was weird that they didn’t go heavy on the cosmetics early on when they had the llama system running.