Fortnite

Yeah how can you have play to win when the game is just co-op or single player?

karmajay wrote:

Yeah how can you have play to win when the game is just co-op or single player?

Fair point but I believe in this context it's paying to 'win' the game itself, not a match against another player. In which I do wonder, if it's there who cares?

My main concern is that at some point feeling like you have to buy Llamas to progress, but the daily reward system alleviates that a lot....you just have to put time into it.

b12n11w00t wrote:
karmajay wrote:

Yeah how can you have play to win when the game is just co-op or single player?

Fair point but I believe in this context it's paying to 'win' the game itself, not a match against another player. In which I do wonder, if it's there who cares?

My main concern is that at some point feeling like you have to buy Llamas to progress, but the daily reward system alleviates that a lot....you just have to put time into it.

In the context of this game, or any other single-player free-to-play game, that's what I mean by "pay to win."

Regarding the loss of materials, I was specifically referring to the materials I had used to build the defenses for that level, though I realize I wasn't clear on that point.

I'm really enjoying the game, and so long as it doesn't start making me pay to beat levels, my only issue with it is the fact that I have to schedule my time with it very carefully so I can finish a level without interruption.

muraii wrote:

For PS4 players at least, I figured out how to do the map. It's up on the D-pad. I'm just roaming around my Outpost getting familiar with how the controls work differently than PC. At some point I wanna test if cross-platform play works.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/6MWN4rh.gif)

Thank you for that! I was playing a few missions last night and it seemed like everyone I was paired with was exploring the area, but I had no idea what had already been uncovered so I was just wandering aimlessly. I don't know what I didn't try the D-pad.

I think we have had this discussion in other threads, using money instead of your time shouldn't be an issue. Some people have less time and are willing to spend money to speed things up. PTW should only be a question if PvP is involved and even then if balanced well can be a non issue.

Also really enjoyed the party time last night with benign1, Taharka, karmajay. I have bumbled so much in this game and continue to and the charm of playing with people with whom you share a kinship, even if it's just an internet forum, is that we got ya back, yo! Prior to Early Access I played almost exclusively with pubs and eventually got to know a few but I still hit the "git gud" crowd more than I'd prefer (which is none). If I ever say "git gud" in any form, boot me from the party.

I am not hardcore and only made it to Canny Valley a couple of times maybe, usually preferring instead to not die constantly (the Ninja can get squishy in higher-threat areas, depending on balancing). I gather from close friends and acquaintances alike that high-threat Plankerton and especially Canny Valley require a couple of things to succeed in missions:

  • Levelling and evolving up your gear. You might've noticed in the official Fortnite Twitch stream yesterday if you watched it, but Zak Phelps showed that an evolved Legendary can have a DPS roughly double that of an unevolved Legendary (i.e., a Malachite weapon >>>> a Copper weapon of the same rarity). Zak was using a weapon with ~12,000 DPS. That's almost all the DPS.
  • Organizing and strategizing. In the early game we kind of build however we want, try things out, etc. And we often run around the battlefield sweeping through husks. In the higher-threat game, you'll have several types of ballistic husks, hordes upon hordes of lighter husks, sometimes multiple Smashers on the field at the same time, etc. You'll find Constructors hanging back, building and repairing on-the-fly, clearing husks from the walls. You'll find Soldiers often in sniping positions to take out ballistic husks or unloading massive amounts of ordnance right outside the walls. You'll find Outlanders skirmishing and...well, in combat they're kind of like soldiers. And Ninjas can get around the field fairly quickly and can get face-to-face with ballistic husks or kite Smashers away temporarily.

    Or an entirely different arrangement. I'm not great at strategy. But I think we'll find that "playing your class" becomes increasingly important, whatever you take that to mean.

I installed the Epic Games Launcher and added some of you all. I am game to see if the "undocumented" Xbox/PC cross-play works. Shoot me a message, um, somewhere? (Have to figure that out) to give it a go.

Okay with a little testing under my belt here's what the Transform works out to.

When you first unlock Transform, you have three "Transform Keys": one for melee; one for ranged; and one for ranged or melee. They're all Rare (blue). You click on a key and you're presented with five slots. A pane on the right of the UI presents a summary of the transaction. You will need to slot in one to five of your cards, e.g., schematics, survivors, etc., and the summary will show you how much of some unitless point currency you've slotted. Seriously, I don't know what the units of these points are. My Rare Copper (one-star) swords are each worth 40 points. You can initially slot a maximum of 80 points. Copper Uncommon are worth 16, Rare 40, Epic 100, and Legendary 250. You also spend Research Points, and it looks to be a minimum of 500.

What you get will be a random weapon of the class of the transformation key you chose and XP of the class of card you slotted. For instance, if I slot these two melee weapons I'll get a melee weapon and schematic XP. Interestingly, I can slot any type of thing toward my weapon. I can slot Legendary heroes and get back a random Rare melee weapon and a bunch of hero XP.

What I don't know is how to open up transforming and receiving Epic and Legendary items. It's not directly linked to the level of your Recycling capability. I can recycle Legendaries but can't Transform to an Epic target item. I looked through the skill and research trees and didn't see anything specific to this, but in the last online test before Early Access I had Transform open to let me get Epic stuff. Maybe they changed it, or maybe I'd unlocked something. I has a shrug.

I loved what I got to play. I broke my right hand Monday night so my play time is postponed.

muraii wrote:

Okay with a little testing under my belt here's what the Transform works out to.

When you first unlock Transform, you have three "Transform Keys": one for melee; one for ranged; and one for ranged or melee. They're all Rare (blue). You click on a key and you're presented with five slots. A pane on the right of the UI presents a summary of the transaction. You will need to slot in one to five of your cards, e.g., schematics, survivors, etc., and the summary will show you how much of some unitless point currency you've slotted. Seriously, I don't know what the units of these points are. My Rare Copper (one-star) swords are each worth 40 points. You can initially slot a maximum of 80 points. Copper Uncommon are worth 16, Rare 40, Epic 100, and Legendary 250. You also spend Research Points, and it looks to be a minimum of 500.

What you get will be a random weapon of the class of the transformation key you chose and XP of the class of card you slotted. For instance, if I slot these two melee weapons I'll get a melee weapon and schematic XP. Interestingly, I can slot any type of thing toward my weapon. I can slot Legendary heroes and get back a random Rare melee weapon and a bunch of hero XP.

What I don't know is how to open up transforming and receiving Epic and Legendary items. It's not directly linked to the level of your Recycling capability. I can recycle Legendaries but can't Transform to an Epic target item. I looked through the skill and research trees and didn't see anything specific to this, but in the last online test before Early Access I had Transform open to let me get Epic stuff. Maybe they changed it, or maybe I'd unlocked something. I has a shrug.

This seems incredibly over complicated

Wayfarer wrote:
muraii wrote:

Okay with a little testing under my belt here's what the Transform works out to.

When you first unlock Transform, you have three "Transform Keys": one for melee; one for ranged; and one for ranged or melee. They're all Rare (blue). You click on a key and you're presented with five slots. A pane on the right of the UI presents a summary of the transaction. You will need to slot in one to five of your cards, e.g., schematics, survivors, etc., and the summary will show you how much of some unitless point currency you've slotted. Seriously, I don't know what the units of these points are. My Rare Copper (one-star) swords are each worth 40 points. You can initially slot a maximum of 80 points. Copper Uncommon are worth 16, Rare 40, Epic 100, and Legendary 250. You also spend Research Points, and it looks to be a minimum of 500.

What you get will be a random weapon of the class of the transformation key you chose and XP of the class of card you slotted. For instance, if I slot these two melee weapons I'll get a melee weapon and schematic XP. Interestingly, I can slot any type of thing toward my weapon. I can slot Legendary heroes and get back a random Rare melee weapon and a bunch of hero XP.

What I don't know is how to open up transforming and receiving Epic and Legendary items. It's not directly linked to the level of your Recycling capability. I can recycle Legendaries but can't Transform to an Epic target item. I looked through the skill and research trees and didn't see anything specific to this, but in the last online test before Early Access I had Transform open to let me get Epic stuff. Maybe they changed it, or maybe I'd unlocked something. I has a shrug.

This seems incredibly over complicated

Welcome to Systems Elite! I mean Fortnite. Their design has been more of the "Wait there's no kitchen sink in here?" methodology than "No one will ever need more than either of these features." They acknowledge that, actually; Zak referenced the "kitchen sink" yesterday in the dev stream.

And they are serious about UX. I know it kind of doesn't look or seem like it, but I watched a GDC talk by their UX lead (a research psychologist deep in statistical modelling) and lead developer, who work together using their UX Lab to research what works and what doesn't. They capture an enormous volume of subsecond data events. And I'll say that what you see is somewhat refined from prior iterations. Here's hoping the early access period sees them really put their shoulder into the flow, streamlining systems, etc. It is a lot, for sure.

I had so much fun playing Dungeon Defenders. I keep seeing that in this game, but keep reading enough slightly negative that I think I'm still going to wait and see.

Rybowl wrote:

I had so much fun playing Dungeon Defenders. I keep seeing that in this game, but keep reading enough slightly negative that I think I'm still going to wait and see.

I didn't play a ton of Dungeon Defenders, but this is probably a much better comparison than the oft-repeated Orcs Must Die. Good call.

the servers seemed to be in rough shape tonight, not sure if anyone else had any trouble.

servers were shaky but i seemed to be doing ok on the first couple missions so i farmed a ton of steel, built up, and started the next storm shield defense mission. then it just all went to hell, gun wouldn't reload or i'd have to reload it multiple times, bullets disappeared from my gun (i'd fire 3/15 bullets and gun would be empty), mobs were running in all directions and taking out random walls but not really going after the amplifiers. crazy stuff too, for example mobs would run in say from the south west, run north all the way around to the east wall and start beating on them. I've been building perimeter walls like wall->backwards stair->wall, etc with cross walls between each section (just what seemed to work for me, no idea if it's the best solution). one wave they'd breach the outer wall but then just go around and destroy all the cross walls and stairs, not trying to breach the inner wall.

overall i lost probably a minimum of 3000-4000 steel (i had upgraded everything to level 3). I guess the lesson is if the servers seem shaky, avoid shield defense at all costs.

Oh that's rough, sortimat. I ended up not playing tonight and lamentably watched Ghost in the Shell (2017) instead. Well, lamentably except for hanging with my son. (We moved on to One Punch Man so the night is redeemed.)

I've seen some odd things where husks float above the ground or clip into the ground, or their center of mass seems off so when they rotate they also fly an elliptical trajectory. Today the game crashed for two of the four people in our party. Be sure to submit feedback. If you use the in-game Feedback it'll grab metadata and a screenshot. The game hangs for a minute so I wouldn't do it in in a hostile environment if you can help it.

Also, tier 2 and 3 structures become increasingly important and so, too, do the buffs on Constructors to build more quickly and more cheaply. I don't have a good feel for them all but I know those are available on the right Constructor heroes and in the skill tree for everyone. And the BASE.

Is there a way to go back and play old missions? I'd like to try and do better on some of them, now that I've learned some things about building and materials gathering.

Played last night with Mrs. Abu for a couple hours. We did a Fight The Storm mission by totally overbuilding the fort (the ATLAS took no damage) then ran a successful Shield Defense. I progressed through the skill tree enough to get my Collection Book then leveled it to 4 using only duplicate and Grey schematics. Yay, another "economy" to consider! (I actually like it, I love tracking things like that)

We had no problems getting into a party together while in the menus, but the first few times we tried to start a mission, she got booted from the party. Submitted feedback and kept trying, once she was able to get in we had no issues.

We really like this game, and have barely scratched the surface.

Question though... if she saves a survivor during the mission, but I am the mission leader, who gets the survivor? It seemed like she didn't get the three she saved during the mission (I don't know if I got them either, to be honest).

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Is there a way to go back and play old missions? I'd like to try and do better on some of them, now that I've learned some things about building and materials gathering.

Yes. I'm not sure about the shield base defense, but most of the others are replayable. At a certain point you should have access to the map with all the mission icons. I've run missions multiple times to gather resources, meet daily quest requirements, etc

IUMogg wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Is there a way to go back and play old missions? I'd like to try and do better on some of them, now that I've learned some things about building and materials gathering.

Yes. I'm not sure about the shield base defense, but most of the others are replayable. At a certain point you should have access to the map with all the mission icons. I've run missions multiple times to gather resources, meet daily quest requirements, etc

yea thats how i farm resources, just go into an untimed mission (fight the storm or ride the lightning) that i completed previously. i usually jump out before the end but you could complete it if you wanted.

shield defense you can go in, but unless you're at that stage in the story, you can't play a mission, just build and store stuff.

Giant bomb posted a quick look with part of the development team. I haven't been able to watch it yet (currently at the dentist waiting for a crown to cook), but I'm sure people will be interested in it

https://www.giantbomb.com/videos/unf...

Abu5217 wrote:

Played last night with Mrs. Abu for a couple hours. We did a Fight The Storm mission by totally overbuilding the fort (the ATLAS took no damage) then ran a successful Shield Defense. I progressed through the skill tree enough to get my Collection Book then leveled it to 4 using only duplicate and Grey schematics. Yay, another "economy" to consider! (I actually like it, I love tracking things like that)

We had no problems getting into a party together while in the menus, but the first few times we tried to start a mission, she got booted from the party. Submitted feedback and kept trying, once she was able to get in we had no issues.

We really like this game, and have barely scratched the surface.

Question though... if she saves a survivor during the mission, but I am the mission leader, who gets the survivor? It seemed like she didn't get the three she saved during the mission (I don't know if I got them either, to be honest).

All the mission items both parties will get credit for and so all parties in a group can finish the mission in one go. This does not work for Shield Defense though. You have to rotate party leaders to cycle through each shield defense mission. Players in the party still get the standard end of mission rewards though for playing.

Hmmm. I know that she didn't get the survivors in that particular mission, and we finished it. Perhaps it was a glitch, as I don't remember having new survivors either. (You do get survivor cards when you rescue them in mission, yes?)

Okay, so I've been playing this game the past couple of days, and for the life of me I can't seem to locate any nuts and bolts during the missions I've been playing. I'm still pretty early on--I just finished a second ATLAS story mission, I think? However whenever I'm on a mission there doesn't appear to be any machinery around at all after exploring the map. I've been unable to use any of the ranged weapons for the past few missions because of it, so basically I'm taking on the horde with just a sword.

Is there a specific mission I can go back and play or something I can do prior to starting a mission in order to get some ammo?

Abu5217 wrote:

(You do get survivor cards when you rescue them in mission, yes?)

No, you don't get survivor cards for saving survivors in a mission. I believe you get "People" resource though, which is used to craft survivors.

Well, there you go then. Thanks Frahg.

CptDomano, in the second training mission, were you in a suburban area with houses and such? If so, there should have been cars on the streets and houses. You usually get a fair amount of nuts and bolts from cars and any mechanical devices in houses (Stoves, TVs, etc). Even in the more "woodland" missions it pays to look around, as you will often come across houses in the woods and such. Hope this helps.

Abu5217 wrote:

CptDomano, in the second training mission, were you in a suburban area with houses and such? If so, there should have been cars on the streets and houses. You usually get a fair amount of nuts and bolts from cars and any mechanical devices in houses (Stoves, TVs, etc). Even in the more "woodland" missions it pays to look around, as you will often come across houses in the woods and such. Hope this helps.

Yeah, that's the problem for me I think. I didn't see a way to replay that mission (is it possible?) because that was definitely the one that I remember very clearly having a ton of cars and stuff.

CptDomano wrote:
Abu5217 wrote:

CptDomano, in the second training mission, were you in a suburban area with houses and such? If so, there should have been cars on the streets and houses. You usually get a fair amount of nuts and bolts from cars and any mechanical devices in houses (Stoves, TVs, etc). Even in the more "woodland" missions it pays to look around, as you will often come across houses in the woods and such. Hope this helps.

Yeah, that's the problem for me I think. I didn't see a way to replay that mission (is it possible?) because that was definitely the one that I remember very clearly having a ton of cars and stuff.

Eventually, if you haven't already, you'll unlock the city areas as well. Lots of cars, and even better, parking meters and power substations. Also loot the small and large toolboxes you run across in any zone. Those tend to have good amounts of nuts & bolts.

You can always go into your storm shield area as well, and build up your defenses at any time. I've been farming with other classes, then building my defenses with a constructor (cheaper build costs).

Filthy skimmer but I love me some parking meters for easy nuts'n'bolts farming. They're only in suburbs and the industrial parks though so in the early stages you'll want to find any electrical boxes and keep an eye out for tin cans. You can even find them in plants you search (as opposed to mining).

For some people that have played further into the game, I've been reading reddit posts about the "pay to advance" in the game. It seems like the only way to get past a certain point in the game is the llamas. Does anyone here have a feel for the amount of time in the game you have before you hit this wall? Some of the people are overdramatic about this wall, but others have posted some seemingly reasonable thoughts on it. I would just leave it alone, but there is something about this game that keeps eating at my subconscious, in a mostly good way.

sortimat wrote:
IUMogg wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Is there a way to go back and play old missions? I'd like to try and do better on some of them, now that I've learned some things about building and materials gathering.

Yes. I'm not sure about the shield base defense, but most of the others are replayable. At a certain point you should have access to the map with all the mission icons. I've run missions multiple times to gather resources, meet daily quest requirements, etc

yea thats how i farm resources, just go into an untimed mission (fight the storm or ride the lightning) that i completed previously. i usually jump out before the end but you could complete it if you wanted.

shield defense you can go in, but unless you're at that stage in the story, you can't play a mission, just build and store stuff.

Thanks,

I can access the map, but I don't seem to have access to old map points yet. It looks like I can only select the Next Mission.

I'm digging the game, but this user interface is just confusing.