Fortnite

Does anyone play?

I dip in and out of it from time to time but I'm properly crap at it. 9.9 times out of 10 I die the moment I see anyone else. Its got so bad I screamed like an over excited teenage girl when I got a kill the other night.

I booted it up once, I think, but didn't actually play…

I'm so out of touch with gaming. I'm not sure when it happened, but Fortnite is probably the most obvious example of it.

In my head, Fortnite was a Left 4 Dead rip off that everyone thought looked rubbish. And now I find out it's the biggest game in the world somehow. Even bigger than PUBG, which I don't understand either and only recently learned was also massive.

Actually I'ma make a separate thread.

Ah, now, I have played PUBG. Fortnite started out as a co-op horde-mode-meets-Minecraft kind of thing, where you gather materials during the day and build a fort to hold off waves of enemies at night. PUBG came out and was huge (but entirely devoid of character), and Epic thought, "that's a cool idea for a game mode!", and implemented it in about a week, showing up the PUBG devs' glacial pace somewhat.

Now the PUBG guys are trying to sue just about everyone for "stealing" their stuff, despite it all being either so generic as to be unidentifiable, or in many cases just purchased assets from the Unreal Engine Store.

I do think I like the purity of PUBG a little better, though; the building mechanic feels like an overcomplication.

I downloaded this because it's what all the kids are into apparently. Not my son, thankfully, who's been raised on Nintendo games and is not in the least interested in this when we've got Super Smash Bros in the house. But I thought I ought to at least be aware of what it was.

I haven't played it yet.

It's a fun game, can't really describe how excited I was when I got a sniper rifle in a Tower and saw that a crate was being patachuted in the small car park across from me, because I knew full well someone was going to go for it and I was going to ruin whatever great run they may have had up to that point.

Ah, now, I have played PUBG. Fortnite started out as a co-op horde-mode-meets-Minecraft kind of thing, where you gather materials during the day and build a fort to hold off waves of enemies at night. PUBG came out and was huge (but entirely devoid of character), and Epic thought, "that's a cool idea for a game mode!", and implemented it in about a week, showing up the PUBG devs' glacial pace somewhat.

Now the PUBG guys are trying to sue just about everyone for "stealing" their stuff, despite it all being either so generic as to be unidentifiable, or in many cases just purchased assets from the Unreal Engine Store.

I do think I like the purity of PUBG a little better, though; the building mechanic feels like an overcomplication.

It does take a bit of practice to get used to but it just means you can throw up cover whenever you want.

I played the PVE portion of it a lot. Anyone remember that? How there was a PVE thing that was supposed to be this big deal right up until they poop'd out a PUBG clone and everyone went berserk for it?

The paranoia of the PUBG devs seems to have been prety justified, I'm not saing Fortnite is/isn't a rip off but if I was the PUBG devs I'd probably be a little salty.

Maybe, but they don't really have much of an argument; they brought out the most basic version of the idea, with the most generic graphical style. Other than marketing guff, there's nothing legally distinct about PUBG.

And if they were to sue Epic over Fortnite that opens up a whole can of worms for the rest of the industry, as everyone "copies" each other

PUBG sued someone for using cookware as a weapon, which I'm sure must have raised some eyebrows over at Capcom.

And given how readily they throw the term 'battle royale' around like they invented it, they sure don't seem willing to give much credit to one of their most obvious influences.

They tried to claim they own air drops. Like, parachuting from a plane was apparently invented by PUBG. It's just insane.

According to Giant Bomb there are 132 games that use frying pans as weapons, almost all of which came out before PUBG. Bit rich.

The boy and I sat down with this today to check out what it was all about. I can see why the kids like it: it's quick to get a match, it's often remarkably unpressured (the map's huge and you can basically hide in a toilet and stand a pretty good chance of survival, if that's what you want to do), you can watch other people play once you've died and it's got silly emotes. It's also got that "kid thing" whereby it explains nothing at all about how it works or what anything in the lobby does and yet somehow they'll all miraculously pick it all up by osmosis.

My boy played it as some sort of bizarre lumberjack simulator, happily chopping up trees and buildings until someone with a shotgun came along and blew him away whereupon he started another game and recommenced chopping. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

As mentioned previously I wrestled myself out of a Fortnite BR addiction and am much happier and well rested since I stopped playing.
Had a go on the H1Z1 beta last night to see… what was up with that. I can see H1Z1 gathering a player base on the PS4 because it's more in line with PUBG's realism but Fortnite BR is fun, colourful and has a well thought out (and improved) map.
The other great thing about Fortnite, as Gar points out, is the pacing of the match. H1Z1 is much quicker which tends to leave more players in the last zone but makes the overall match less interesting. Getting a win in Fortnite tends to involve multiple memorable encounters with other players (or hiding in a toilet for the majority of the match).
I guess, like a lot of others, I was excited to get a BR game on PS4. Epic picked up that good will baton and ran with it in terms of giving the community regular improvements, figuring out how to make money off them without ripping them off and keeping people playing.
Crucially also I'd say that it has run well from the beginning; there were a couple of times when I was playing where performance took a dip but it was rare. I had to admit defeat in H1Z1 when my avatar started rubber banding around the map. I'm sure it'll stabalise over time but it's immediately off putting, I can sympathise with XBONE owners struggling with PUBG.
It was good, I had my online shooter addiction quelled for the next couple of years, Been Fortnite free since the end of season 2.

Friend sent me a gif of some players riding a shopping cart. Caved, downloaded and started playing again last night. It's much shinier than it used to be – the last time I played was on a friend's Pro and thought the visuals were improved because of the Pro but going back, even on a basic PS4, it looks so much crisper than it used to.
Felt great to play again, managed to generally hold my own unless I came up against an insane builder (of which there are definitely more now). My own building has suffered in the break.
Have to say that I think my previous obsession was with completing the battle pass, hitting challenge targets and leveling up. Without that incentive it's a pretty fun BR to play a few rounds of. Think I can manage to leave it installed on my HD for a wee while at least.

Up until the weekend I hadn't played this in months and just felt like having a go and it's clicked much better than it had before. I'm still monumentally shit at it but getting more used to it. I still squeal like Ned Flanders when I get a kill 😂 I managed 3 in one match today, which is unheard of and it took so much effort not to wake Charly up from her nap to tell her (it was the first thing I did say to her when she woke up though, followed by "how are you feeling?" then "you need to take your medication"). I got to 7th place in that match too, used the plunger gun to his in someone's tower and was trying to bait them into my floor trap but the made a door frame in the wall behind me and shot me in the back before throwing up a laughing emoji.

What are you playing on Wev? Not played in a few seasons but was getting lots of top 5 finishes on Switch when it came out. Find that is the worst player base in terms of skill.

PS4, it's the only system I own. Does match making place you with other players regardless of platform now?

It's in beta.

I know it's in beta but so is the whole game, isn't it? Is it only set players or is it everyone currently playing?

I don't think the game's ever going to be coming out of Early Access. It's hilarious. :D

Still salty they dropped working on the updated Unreal Tournament for FN.

I mean, it's an okay enough game in theory. I just didn't care for a lot of its basic gameplay in practice. A lot of kills seemed to be "run up to someone, shoot with shotgun, quickly switch to second shotgun, guy dies regardless of how much health/shield he has", for example. I played it for a little while until I grew tired of crap like this.

I'm not complaining. It's a fine enough game. Just give me some damn updated UT. The alpha seems so incredibly balanced and polished (what's done, anyway) and really reminds me of classic UT. Shame.