Fortnite - Epic Games - Team Survival/Strategy/Crafting/Combat

The long delay is questionable.. brilliant marketing strategy or boneheaded idea? Cool idea though and since I haven't played in ages it doesn't bother me but if I was 1 of the millions of addicted players I think I'd be frustrated.

Lobby video of the event... neat how it effected everyone:

Wonder how the water mechanics will be. Something FN has avoided till now.
The water effects look real nice though.

Chapter 2 looks great, I think I'll login tonight to give it a whirl.







Map. Looks so good, the biomes blend so well compared to the old.

Retail Row, Salty Springs & Pleasant Park all make a return.
Risky Reels is back, which has been gone forever in Chapter 1.
Lots of water now, but swimming + boats hopefully make it not an annoyance.
Water doesn't kill you, not even on the borders, you can go out to sea pretty far now, I guess the circle will keep people in check.

I'm having a heck of a good time today playing this.
They did a great job creating a new world and ways of dealing with said world. Graphics quality went way up (still cartoonish) and the changes to how one builds etc are really confusing folks so I can shoot them all in the head as I see them struggling with the interface or something. Boats are ridiculously overpowered and hilariously fun. Gonna bet flattened by the Bat for sure although I'm seeing folks figure out how to kill them now.
Pretty fucking nice re-imagining of the game and how its systems work.
Still a cartoon dork theatre but there is a time and place for that and today was its time.

I logged in to play 5 games. Enjoyed it a lot. The visuals are so nice.
I was Soooooooooo rusty with everything and it didn't help that keybinds were reset. Spent majority of 1st game (which dumps you immediately into the match) changing binds... eventually got a couple kills and 2nd place overall, but I gotta believe it's a bunch of bots/intro players that 1st game, so can't feel too good about it.
Played 4 more rounds, fixing up keybinds throughout most of my session, but eventually got to feel semi-comfortable enough to "play".
However... I did end my last game dying to the storm, lol... was in a skirmish and lost track of time, with the circle being farthest possible distance & no heals or boats nearby.


What I love the most is the new skill-based matchmaking.
I haven't played in a very long time and it was nice to play people with lacking abilities as well.
Last time I played was way before the new matchmaking, and I was fairly decent with a 5% winrate.
I don't intend to tryhard like I did before, the game was way too sweaty when you had to expect pro-level players every game. But now I can just login to blow off steam against people of equal/lacking ability and maybe get a few kills to feel good about myself

I assume he can make a new account unless Epic is monitoring his youtube/ip ban/cc#/personal info/etc but Im guessing he's more emotional of just losing the first 10 seasons of cosmetics. The Battlepass rewards can't be re-acquired.

edit: this guy was in FaZe clan, so he's high profile. Probably was trying to play competitive.
Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=jar...rome..69i57.3087j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Tmz article, lol: 'Fortnite' Superstar Jarvis Gets Lifetime Ban for Cheating, Gamers Are Furious!

Good.
Fuck cheaters.

Their marketing folks are amazing.
The number and type of "Call me crazy but if we sell NFL costumes, Batman, (blank), we will all roll in Scrooge McDuck vaults.." that they hatch and observably have catch on like fire is incredible. $100-$200 million dollar a month fremium game that only sells cosmetic items? Holy fuck.
Plus it's fun in a super vapid kind of way and their new match up system allows ancient fools like myself to get put into geriatric park with others and we all get to pretend we're any good.

To be fair, not having skill-based matchmaking was going against the grain and is a primary reason for why I've heard a lot of people quitting the game.

With regard to marketing, it's probably a little of both: marketing, but also not afraid to "ruin" your game. It also helps that their skins are universal. Can you imagine a game like League or Overwatch trying to sponsor with an outside entity? Overwatch has Olympic skins, but would they be willing to put stormtrooper, batman, & whatever else, in their game? Maybe...but the skins would need to conform to a specific champion & not ruin the champion's "silhouette", they are also limited to specific champions whereas FortNite every skin is usable by everyone.

And of course it helps to be the most popular game, especially with kids. And to not be "branded". Epic is outside the "Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo" ecosystems.