The truth about Fortnite: Save the World (From an experienced player)

The lack of developement in Save the World is so sad to me, as a player that has spent thousands of hours in STW, I can really see a huge potential with the mode if Epic did things correctly. I feel like the developers have no care for the game, there are too few devs, or the higher ups have stopped seeing a potential with stw mode. Today’s event where Epic decided to give away 3 free birthday llamas was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Not because I care about it only being 3 llamas, but because it shows you how little Epic cares about the mode, and how disconnected they are from their own game and the stw community.

For the past 1.5 years the game has had 0 development other than recycling content from 2018 and 2019. The only huge update was the venture zones which I’ve been a huge fan of since it’s something I’m being rewarded for doing over and over and it's a good quality-of-life update to the mode, but it’s really nothing else than recycled Save the World content with a few modifiers added to it. I really wish Epic took better care of their game, and if they don’t, I won’t be surprised if the entire STW community leaves over the next months/ year.

I have every hero in the game in max level, all schematics and I have literally nothing to do in the game anymore other than completing recycled ventures every 2.5 months. Adding another dungeons level or adding a new biome or another hero is not really going to do anything with the core game. In my opinion the gameplay needs a huge revamp. I would love if Epic went a similar way as Square Enix did with Final Fantasy 14, and just a acknowledged the fact that Save the World at its current state is bad, and they try to make a better version of it. It feels like Epic stopped caring because kids will play it anyways, and as long as there are some type of way to spend v-bucks in the mode they are happy, this is also why they likely decided to only release 3 birthday llamas, because they are afraid of people getting too many and not spending v-bucks.

Save the World has some of the most unique weapons and an enormous library of them, this is what makes STW so good. As a person that has been doing endurances for the past year, I also have a huge appreciation for the traps and how they work. Every trap can be used in unique ways and after the crowd control counter got introduced you can no longer just spam traps, but you need pretty much use every trap in the game with 2-6 variations of perk ups to make a perfect tunnel and I love it.

What Epic should do in my opinion: acknowledge the fact that Save the World at its current state is bad, start working on a new version with chapter 2 assets (right now I barely see a difference from the early trailers in 2014 and the gameplay in 2021) and they should add a bunch of more features to the homebase and really show the possibilities of Unreal Engine 5 once it fully launches. The biggest addition would be a new PvP mode where you/ your team and another player/ team can attack each other, this would be a permanent mode and a main mode next to the questline, a lot of players like myself have already completed everything possible and have nothing to do anymore, adding a PvP mode would basically be infinite content since you can always get better and get to higher ranks and every game would be different. A lot of people are finding stw boring and very grindy in this current state and I think the pvp mode would help bring new players. The PvP mode would have a similar style as games like Rocket League where 1-4 players face off in a 5-10 minute game where you need to set up traps as fast as possible before you start attacking each other bases with husks. This could have a ranked Arena mode and a casual version.

Another thing I would love to see is a 5th zone added, and have a new questline starting in Twine and ending in the 5th zone, in the 5th and final zone it would take extremely long to get to the highest power levels, for example add 4 more survivor squads in the 5th zone and supercharge every survivor to max to reach the final areas of the 5th zone. It’s not about the destination but the journey to get there and making it harder to reach max level would mean the journey to get there would be longer. We want journeys, adding 2 free llamas to the shop only has a destination and no journey.

I want to finish off saying I have huge respect for Epic, and I know they are amazing at listening to feedback. I remember during the first 9 seasons of Fortnite BR, and for the past couple of seasons where it feels like they made updates exactly like the players requested and as soon as anything was wrong it was fixed within the next update. I Peronsally visited Epic for 3 weeks in 2019 when I made the first set of Creative hubs in creative mode and I had a Zone Wars LTM map going on at the same time. I wish Epic and the STW team the best and hopefully you will be able to change the state of STW which currently feels like an underdeveloped easy money grab to a good and enjoyable game with more frequent updates and content. – jesgran