Fortnite

Taharka wrote:
  • Because traps need to be placed on flooring, and because the durability of traps is dependent on the durability of the flooring it's built on (I think? Correct me if I'm wrong), steel is good

Sort of right, sort of wrong. Traps have durability independent of their surface and a trap's durability tells you how many times they can fire before they break.

The correct part is, the floor/wall/ceiling underneath the trap is what is damaged in an attack. If the surface the trap is on dies, then the trap goes away. So yeah, it's good to put traps on strong surfaces. Especially once you get into AOE people like the propane tank guy, and the mortar guy.

b12n11w00t wrote:

After Early Access this game is going to be free. You're paying to test the game basically.

With respect, I don't agree with the second part of this statement. You are paying so you can play the game early. Yes, they are going to improve and enhance the game before it goes F2P, but presumably you understand this if you are buying early access. The game is complete and playable now. It is not a beta test. I'm having a great time with it, but I watched some streams and read first impressions before I decided to buy just to be certain it was something that would appeal to me.

As for the game, I jumped into a public level 19 mission yesterday (I was at level 13). It was intense and challenging and we had multiple people go down during the defense phase. It makes me excited for the later zones where the levels get much higher. If anything, the early area feels to easy (especially with all of the loot and founder items I have). I'm glad the difficulty is finally balancing out so that I don't have to just play on autopilot.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:
UMOarsman wrote:

Yeah, muraii's evangelism is wearing down my resistance to picking up another game this week...

Side note: @doubtingthomas, are you going to be posting any thoughts on the game? I'm on the fence given the mixed reviews I'm hearing.

If the servers are up tonight, I can post some brief impressions here. Any front page articles are going to be at least a week out, just due to scheduling and editing requirements.

My bad, I actually meant impressions for Yonder

muraii wrote:

Fair warning: I have read in the Fortnite Discord of people losing some of their Outpost buildings even after a successful defense. Someone I played with last night had to rebuild.

I have not had that issue, but a friend gave me some Legendary weapons in my Outpost last night and they're missing. So, be observant, and report stuff to Epic Support. The easiest way to do that is to hit ESC and click "Feedback".

I'm late to the party here, but this is now fixed in case anyone was worried.

jakeleg wrote:
b12n11w00t wrote:

After Early Access this game is going to be free. You're paying to test the game basically.

With respect, I don't agree with the second part of this statement. You are paying so you can play the game early. Yes, they are going to improve and enhance the game before it goes F2P, but presumably you understand this if you are buying early access. The game is complete and playable now. It is not a beta test.

It's also not going to be free to play for another year. The difference between "going free to play in a year" and "I'll get it for $5 in a Steam sale" is negligible.

rabbit and I tried to boil down Fortnite on the podcast (going up tomorrow night) and I suspect failed miserably. Once you try and describe the flow of the game you realize how many systems and structures are crammed into the design. It's a bit much.

jakeleg wrote:

With respect, I don't agree with the second part of this statement. You are paying so you can play the game early. Yes, they are going to improve and enhance the game before it goes F2P, but presumably you understand this if you are buying early access. The game is complete and playable now. It is not a beta test. I'm having a great time with it, but I watched some streams and read first impressions before I decided to buy just to be certain it was something that would appeal to me.

For the sake of accuracy, on console (Xbox, at least) there is a very large CLOSED BETA flag on all loading screens.

UMOarsman wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:
UMOarsman wrote:

Yeah, muraii's evangelism is wearing down my resistance to picking up another game this week...

Side note: @doubtingthomas, are you going to be posting any thoughts on the game? I'm on the fence given the mixed reviews I'm hearing.

If the servers are up tonight, I can post some brief impressions here. Any front page articles are going to be at least a week out, just due to scheduling and editing requirements.

My bad, I actually meant impressions for Yonder :-)

Without derailing too much, Yonder is fantastic if you like RPGs with crafting systems and base management but don't like combat.

Basically, it's a very cute, nonviolent Mass Effect without the party system set in a Zelda universe.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:
UMOarsman wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:
UMOarsman wrote:

Yeah, muraii's evangelism is wearing down my resistance to picking up another game this week...

Side note: @doubtingthomas, are you going to be posting any thoughts on the game? I'm on the fence given the mixed reviews I'm hearing.

If the servers are up tonight, I can post some brief impressions here. Any front page articles are going to be at least a week out, just due to scheduling and editing requirements.

My bad, I actually meant impressions for Yonder :-)

Without derailing too much, Yonder is fantastic if you like RPGs with crafting systems and base management but don't like combat.

Basically, it's a very cute, nonviolent Mass Effect without the party system set in a Zelda universe.

Sold!

Abu5217 wrote:
jakeleg wrote:

With respect, I don't agree with the second part of this statement. You are paying so you can play the game early. Yes, they are going to improve and enhance the game before it goes F2P, but presumably you understand this if you are buying early access. The game is complete and playable now. It is not a beta test. I'm having a great time with it, but I watched some streams and read first impressions before I decided to buy just to be certain it was something that would appeal to me.

For the sake of accuracy, on console (Xbox, at least) there is a very large CLOSED BETA flag on all loading screens.

Interesting, on PC it says 'Early Access". I wonder if that is something specific to Xbox? Maybe MS requires that language?

Certis wrote:

rabbit and I tried to boil down Fortnite on the podcast (going up tomorrow night) and I suspect failed miserably. Once you try and describe the flow of the game you realize how many systems and structures are crammed into the design. It's a bit much.

Agreed, the UI needs some extensive work as does the tutorial system. There is a bunch of stuff thrown at you right from the first couple of missions and a lot of the systems are not introduced or explained in any way other than mouse-over tooltips. As someone who develops UIs for a living, it is pretty painful. If I had not played the first day with Muraii and Cathadan and asked a bunch of questions, I would have been much more lost. That said, the looting, constructing and combat mechanics are very satisfying, so I am having fun. I hope they improve on the UI and in-game help/tutorials as they move forward.

I chalk it up to it being, well, Early Access. I have also seen some minor text bugs and whatnot. Overall the game has played fine, I haven't run into any soul-crushing bugs (like losing my outpost) or anything.

garion333 wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:
UMOarsman wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:
UMOarsman wrote:

Yeah, muraii's evangelism is wearing down my resistance to picking up another game this week...

Side note: @doubtingthomas, are you going to be posting any thoughts on the game? I'm on the fence given the mixed reviews I'm hearing.

If the servers are up tonight, I can post some brief impressions here. Any front page articles are going to be at least a week out, just due to scheduling and editing requirements.

My bad, I actually meant impressions for Yonder :-)

Without derailing too much, Yonder is fantastic if you like RPGs with crafting systems and base management but don't like combat.

Basically, it's a very cute, nonviolent Mass Effect without the party system set in a Zelda universe.

Sold!

Popped in here because I was intrigued by Fortnite... Now I'm kind of sold on Yonder!

ClockworkHouse wrote:
jakeleg wrote:
b12n11w00t wrote:

After Early Access this game is going to be free. You're paying to test the game basically.

With respect, I don't agree with the second part of this statement. You are paying so you can play the game early. Yes, they are going to improve and enhance the game before it goes F2P, but presumably you understand this if you are buying early access. The game is complete and playable now. It is not a beta test.

It's also not going to be free to play for another year. The difference between "going free to play in a year" and "I'll get it for $5 in a Steam sale" is negligible.

I basically agree with both of these things, technically the year(s) of closed alpha play was testing the game(of which I participated), at this point it's just them tightening up the systems in place...I think. Still just wanted to make sure it was known that there isn't going to be a launch game price, you're paying to play it now, warts and all.

b12n11w00t wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
jakeleg wrote:
b12n11w00t wrote:

After Early Access this game is going to be free. You're paying to test the game basically.

With respect, I don't agree with the second part of this statement. You are paying so you can play the game early. Yes, they are going to improve and enhance the game before it goes F2P, but presumably you understand this if you are buying early access. The game is complete and playable now. It is not a beta test.

It's also not going to be free to play for another year. The difference between "going free to play in a year" and "I'll get it for $5 in a Steam sale" is negligible.

I basically agree with both of these things, technically the year(s) of closed alpha play was testing the game(of which I participated), at this point it's just them tightening up the systems in place...I think. Still just wanted to make sure it was known that there isn't going to be a launch game price, you're paying to play it now, warts and all.

I looked at it as getting the heroes, loot packs, etc. with whatever edition you bought, plus x days of login rewards before it's free. But yes, if you're willing to wait, you can play it for free later on.

Certis wrote:

rabbit and I tried to boil down Fortnite on the podcast (going up tomorrow night) and I suspect failed miserably. Once you try and describe the flow of the game you realize how many systems and structures are crammed into the design. It's a bit much.

It is a lot. I think I've finally gotten a good grasp of everything, but even so, there is still a good bit of management and optimization with all your squads, research, skill points, etc. Still, it was easier for me to grasp than EU IV.

jakeleg wrote:

Agreed, the UI needs some extensive work as does the tutorial system.

My friend and I have been playing since the middle of the Alpha and agree that the UI is horrible.

We also both agree that this is the best they've ever done with it. There were 11 major alpha releases and each one totally redesigned the UI (I mean, there was a point in the Alpha where you unlocked classes by clicking on buildings in a miniature town).

And each time it was terrible, but now it's gotten to a point where it's just kind of bad. So... that's a thing.

b12n11w00t wrote:

you're paying to play it now

Some part of your money is basically just in-game microtransactions too. If you buy the $40 version, you're getting effectively $7 dollars of Llamas, and some banner icons of incalculable value (read: worthless).

A the $60 level things start to get a little better in that you get like 28 pinatas, so that's about $20-25 worth, though some contain unique things you can only get as a founder, making them better(?)... and then you get XP boosts and every character class in the game up front and extra account inventory slots (all of which don't really have a direct value comparison).

In any case, I'd reckon you spend about $30 towards playing the game early and the rest is in-game microtransactions. And if you played the alpha, slash that $30 to $10 (or maybe split the discount between the two sides and call it $20).

Fortnite Support in Discord wrote:

Sorry for not being able to provide an ETA.

I can provide a bit of back story for those interested though. At around 4 AM ET we added extra shards to our profile database during our "planned" downtime to handle increased load. Balancing shards takes around 24 hours so we decided to add a few more shards at 2 PM ET given anticipated future load / increasing player counts. This resulted in us running into an open file handle limitation (default is 1024) which brought everything down.

We incorrectly identified the root cause and tried a speculative fix of rolling back an unrelated change to our backend, but the deploy of that change failed. In the mean time we identified the actual root cause and raised the file handle limit and rolled back to the previously working instance. This deploy failed as well.

The root cause of the deploy failure is not clear and we are working on trying to resolve / debug this. The goal is to spin up a single instance of our backend and then rapidly scale it up in parallel. After that we will enable our "waiting room" (avoids a land rush taking system down if everyone tries to get in at once) and let everyone in again.

Heh, I tried logging in earlier and the launcher gave me a 5-minute wait. Later the game launched and did a small patch, but couldn't connect to the game servers. Well, at least it's popular.

deftly wrote:

Heh, I tried logging in earlier and the launcher gave me a 5-minute wait. Later the game launched and did a small patch, but couldn't connect to the game servers. Well, at least it's popular.

The servers have been down for awhile. I haven't been able to play since being home from work

https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/f...

The game is back up.

SixteenBlue wrote:

The game is back up. :)

I regret that I have but one like to give.

SixteenBlue wrote:

The game is back up. :)

I regret that I have but one like to give.

LOL you really regret this. Does the double post count as two likes?

D'oh!

So, I don't think I'm grokking this game. I've watched a couple streams, but I'm still kinda meh, and I should like this game.

Is anyone streaming on GWJ? Does Epic let you view other player's games like Steam does? I'd like to see an actual game with actual players, not someone who may or may not be selling a product.

discoursian wrote:

So, I don't think I'm grokking this game. I've watched a couple streams, but I'm still kinda meh, and I should like this game.

Is anyone streaming on GWJ? Does Epic let you view other player's games like Steam does? I'd like to see an actual game with actual players, not someone who may or may not be selling a product.

Sean and Julian did two twitch streams of the game:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/160971751
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/161245579

Edit: Spelling is not my fort(nit)e

I will stream whenever I am playing. But maybe after I've finished the tutorial.

I bought the $59.99 version on Xbox. I feel like all of the extra swag that I got is helping me grok the game more quickly. I have bonus xp that I can give while I play with friends. It's a bonus to xp earned while we play.

If you use the Collection Book in Fortnite, be careful: you are permanently retiring anything you add to it. This wasn't clear to some folks who haven't been in the alpha (Fortnite forum link). I think the warning is pretty clear, but I'm not about to tell people they're doing it wrong.

In recent months the devs introduced two alternate resource currency transmutation mechanics: the Collection Book; and Transformations. Together with recycling, these allow players to take schematics, heroes, survivors, and defenders and cash them in for other kinds of resources. Recycling schematics usually nets you schematic XP and potentially manuals (maybe even evolution materials like Pure Drops of Rain?). Recycling heroes typically gets you hero XP and potentially manuals. It's the oldest and simplest of the three.

The Collection Book lets you slot items like collectible cards in a binder. The value of the items levels up the Collection Book, and as you earn each level you get some kind of reward. This might be 500 V-bucks (L6), a funky llama (L13 I think), Pure Drops of Rain, and some other stuff. It's a little more experimental and few people seem to talk about it, so this time I've been levelling it up pretty regularly to figure it out. I think I'm at L18.

Transformation is a little less clear to me; I haven't used it much. In overview, you combine multiple items of a similar category toward creating something new and usually getting some item XP (schematic, hero, etc.) as well. I initially understood the system to reward higher rarity items as you add more and more items to be transformed, but I've heard slightly different notions from more-experienced players, that is, that to receive an item of a given rarity you must transform at least one of that rarity. At first you don't know what specific thing you'll get back, only its category and rarity (e.g., Rare Hero). There are Transformation tokens I think later in the game that determine the type of item you'll get back. As such, at some point, it seems like a mechanic that could allow you to cash a lot of things you don't use toward a very specific item you want. I have not taken it that far, though.

Again: when you transmute schematics, heroes, survivors, or defenders, by whichever mechanism, you are abdicating any claims to them forever.