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We’re Hyped About Fortnite

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We are really excited about an upcoming game called Fornite

Fornite can best be described as a RPG survival tower defense game with base building, crafting, harvesting, destructible environments, and player progression. Yeah, it's really quite vast and vague all at the same time.

The gist of the story here is that 98% of the world has vanished. You choose a character archetype to play as you survive the world against hordes of zombies.

The E3 trailer contains a good overview of the game:

World Exploration / Missions

The game appears to have lots of generated areas to explore. They claim "no two areas are the same," which does confirm the randomly generated maps.

I'm also intrigued by the gathering around the world. Players can scavenge resources, chop trees, and make things with what they find. I'm going to assume that most of this is incorporated into fort/base building.​

We know that the game is based on a mission mode system where you'll go out on missions and build things, scavenge, kill zombies, etc. But there's also a persistent base building element that must survive. I'm eager to see what that's all about.

Fortnite

Crafting

Weapons include melee, ranged, traps, and gadgets. These are all crafted using resources gathered in the game.

I don't know much else about crafting, and the FAQs out there do not go into much more details. I'm curious to learn to what extent crafting competes with gear drops.​

Characters / Heroes

Your character is represented as a 'hero' which is obtained or 'collected' in the game through a card system. You can find new heroes which each contain a set of abilities.

How you'll progress or level those heroes remains unknown to me at this time, but there are skill trees, abilities, and other info in the video I linked above.

Character archetypes or classes include:​

  • ​Soldier - Lots of guns, explosions
  • Constructors - Specialize in building forts, crowd control
  • Outlanders - Harvesters, gadgets, tools
  • Ninjas - Melee and ninja stuff

With something like 116 heroes over the 4 archetypes, it looks like all of them have a solid role to fill while leaving plenty of room for variability.

Fortnite Outpost Fort building

Forts Building & Defending

The building side of the game has me most excited. I really like how you literally place every piece of floor and wall on your own. You can make your fort look like whatever you want, and function in any way you want.

The persistent versions of the forts are the 'Outposts'. Each "map" (there are 4 at early access launch) has ​an outpost location where you defend and work your way through the map unlocking more missions until you access the new map, thus progressing to a more difficult area.

Upgraded forts allow access to new abilities, etc., so they need to be defended in order for you to progress further in the game.​

Since there are only 4 hours, and thus 4 Outposts, I do hope the missions last long enough that we can get attached to our forts. I'd love to spend weeks at the same fort having to protect and build mine up.​

Multiplayer Seamless Drop-in / Drop-out

Multiplayer is where this game will shine. You can play solo, but that seems to defeat the purpose of how the game was set up.

There's a matchmaking system for players to quickly jump into missions, but you can also play with friends.

Each player gets their own outpost, but you can give your friends permission to edit your base and I assume use your stuff. This is what Graev and I will be doing in order to make the game feel more like we have a joint fort.​

Early Access Founders Packs - Physical Copies?!

Here's where things get a little .... duplicitous. That might be too strong of a word.

The game is entering early access. HOWEVER... they're selling actual physical retail copies of the game for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.​

My mind was blown when I learned of this. Have we really come that far?​

Putting that aside...

You can buy four different versions of the game. Each version comes with varying degrees of goodies like exp bonuses, hero cards, loot pinatas, etc.

Here's where it gets even more duplicitous -- again with that word.

The game will eventually be F2P. Yep, I know. A literal WTF moment.​

I'm worried about the cash shop making the game be less fun for those who choose not to partake. I'm also bothered by there being $150 versions of a F2P game in early access. It wreaks of cash grab.

​I'm comforted knowing I can play this with just Graev and never have to interact with other players. Therefore, there's no need for me to see the uber decked out guy who spent $500 on the game. I'm only limited by my own desire for what the cash shop would gate. An immediate game killer will be a cash shop move that limits what you can base build if you don't spend more money.

​Let's hope the hype for the game pans out! I think it looks like a lot of fun. I like the base defense and Orcs Must Die! motiff. I like the idea of going out of missions with friends, finding loot, and killing zombies.

  • Knowing this is going to be F2P, and with all the uncertainty around it’s design, hard-pass for me on buying it.

    Looks fun, hopefully it comes together and all the pieces work in alignment, but the business model already looks shady. Also the game not being on Steam is a huge negative for me as well.

  • I am intrigued by this game but not enough to put out any cash at this stage. I am still burning through SWL and just getting my feet wet in Albion so my game time is limited. Plus when I need a zombie fix I just play a little 7 Days to Die. I do like the art style and the vast amount of characters you can collect. The early access part of this does not bother me, some games I think it makes sense for as they are constantly evolving based on player feedback. The tiered packages though to me is a little bit of a warning sign of a company that designs systems and mechanics around RMT first and gameplay second. I never begrudge people making $ but it does cause me to adopt a ‘wait and see’ mentality with a lot of games.