Welcome to my opinion piece on Fortnite, a game that I have come to love and hate at the same time.
I will be honest from the get-go, I started playing Fortnite on April 22nd with the intent of writing an article for GamingBoulevard and being able to play with my nephews online. It was the quarantine for the COVID-19 pandemic that gave me ample time to play and well, I am nearing on 200 hours played now.
I wanted to write an opinion piece on whether or not you could become a decent enough player in a genre that you basically do not play often. I do dabble in First-person shooters from time to time, so I was not completely helpless as I did have some shooting experience, though not in the battle royale genre.
The typical “Fortnite is not a game for real gamers” sentence is total bullsh*t though, straight from the start. I never treated this endeavor as anything but serious as I wanted to really see what playing outside my comfort zone was going to be like.
Originally I planned to play it for an entire month, see if I could win a single game or even better. The first game was a limited-time event that for some reason, I actually won. Being unable to grasp this, I had won a Victory Royale, 5 kills under my belt, and not a single clue what I was really doing. I knew this game was all about building and box fighting, but I had encountered nearly no builds and everyone I encountered proved possible to beat in one on one combat.
I decided to keep playing and my next 100 rounds, I managed to win just one more. I started encountering builders and also a ton of fakers and aimbots. I played on Switch for the most part and I got shot through walls, but not next to them. I read up on glitches where you could shoot someone if their arms reach the building, but I was crouching while taking a medkit when this happened.
Another instance of a faker, I saw someone jump up a mountain… Now I know the grappler exists, I literally had it in my inventory when this happened. One of many reports later, I had my first epiphany. I was going to look up some guides online on how to become better. I had around 300 games under my belt at the time and like 10 victories. Not fully disliking the game, but getting frustrated with the building mechanic.
So I went on Youtube and found a few really helpful channels and some not so helpful… My most loved include McCreamy, SypherPK, and PlaystationGrenade. My apologies to all those that I forgot to mention, but those 3 stick out for bringing in my humble opinion the best content. It was actually thanks to them that I no longer feel helpless against builders and despite not building myself, I can still take out some of them nowadays.
I got this funny way figured out to take out inexperienced box fighters simply by not pushing them. Half of them feel clueless when you hide underneath them in wait to take them out. While this is a despicable variant of camping in some people’s eyes, I disagree wholeheartedly. I am not hiding in a bush or behind a wall with a shotgun in hand. I am right where they forced me to be.
My building skills end at the point where I can build a simple wall to hide behind for when I need to pop a medkit. I can make small stairs to get out of pits as well, but that is about where I stand. Also on a personal note, to everyone in Save the World that finds it funny to box in beginners, a well meant f*ck you. This is not funny and I will report every single one of you for harassment every single time. I chose not to learn how to build, you should not harass me over this decision.
Yes, I have bought Save the World to see if it could learn me to be a better shot. I do feel it has lightly improved me. I do seem to be less easy a target as I do lightly move my aim up in an up-close battle so I can hit more heads rather than bodies. I really came a long way and I can say that if the fakers and harassers were to be taken out with the trash, Fortnite would possibly be the best game out there in the Battle Royale genre.
I am 43 years old, so not your everyday target for Fortnite, right? I actually got quite good at this game in the past 50+ days and am currently rather proud of myself. I play solos only and despite some weird instant kills, I tend to go the way more often than not. Fun story, landing first according to the game to be killed within a second. What was that all about? Lag maybe? That seems to be my biggest problem nowadays. So much that I even invested in a wired network at home.
My biggest victory so far? A flawless victory without getting a single hit myself. I am not a camper and more of a pusher. It just feels the best in my opinion. Hiding like a chicken shit to get a win is despicable in my humble opinion. Way too many times have I experienced this but those hiding in a bush are no longer an issue as I found a way to figure out where they are… I took out three in my last 100+ games this way.
My preferred weapons loadout so far are the burst assault rifle and the regular assault rifle and when picking legendaries, the Meowscles gun. Least preferred is the sniper rifle, which I have used maybe 10 times out of the 200+ hours of gameplay and to some extent, the shotgun. The shotgun is great for one-shot kills but if you miss, you are a sitting duck for what feels like an eternity.
As a human, I am against the entire Vbucks system and despite owning Save the World, the Vbucks farming tool, I think the majority of the skins, … are quite useless and I am still using the basic skin with a pink pickaxe as my sole edit. I liked the pickaxe so I switched to that. All my excess Vbucks are used to buy skins for my nephews, haha, they love me more than ever.
Apparently I am quite the decent player when you get to a one on one. I am currently at 1010 games played and got 102 victories. My k/d is 4.63 and yes, I am proud of that. I am nowhere near the top tier of players, but for only 50 days of playing it, this is still decent if you remember I never really played any Battle Royale game.
I like Fortnite enough to keep playing it, we even stream often on the GamingBoulevard channel. I have gotten 3 hosts so far by the Fortnite hypezone bot. I even won 2 of those games!
In my humble opinion, Fortnite does need to add one feature. If the game allows players to be anonymous, it should also allow me to opt-out against playing them. The majority of reported players were all anonymous users and I am fed up with that part specifically. No, you can not jump up a mountain when I am holding the grappler, you can not shoot through walls or one time even a bus.
As the game has made me really love it, I should say this to end my article. Fortnite is a great game for kids of all ages. This 43-year-old kid had more fun than he ever thought possible, resulting in the purchase of that Save the world game, you know, the original no-one cares about.
Fortnite might even be the best game out there if they had like a no building mode maybe?
