Treatment of Fortnite STW is a Disgrace by Epic Games

u/magyst

As a founder with the Ultimate Edition supporter pack, and a player since 2017, I have been consistently disappointed in the way Save The World has been treated by Epic Games, and how they essentially funneled all the Fortnite STW dev team, and the funds, into a game no one wanted. I hate Battle Royale games with a passion. No it is not because I suck at them, I do quite well with them and I have friends I can play with to make winning easier. At the end of the day though a Battle Royale game is the least effort type of game to make. They are a dime a dozen games that die when a new game comes out with the same generic boring concept. I find it even more frustrating to see how successful Battle Royale did, yet somehow Epic Games has not funneled any of that additional income back into the base game, the game we all wanted, not the spin off.

Disregarding the fact that Save The World is nothing like it's promotional material, or as dark as it was supposed to be, It is increasingly more frustrating to see the state of the game over 3 years later.

• The game is plagued with immersion breaking and world destroying cosmetic skins from Battle Royale, and other non franchise games and movies, such as Halo, Aliens, and The Predator.
  • Despite the fact that people enjoy these I do not think any of these skins should be allowed in Save The World period.
• The quests for the entire STW that are not event quests, are still absolute trash. Literally every quest is still complete "X" Missions "X" times. This is not only annoying, but also boring. Can Epic Games not come up with a real quest line for this game. Don't get me started on how the game was sat on the back burner delaying content and updates for almost an entire year that were supposed to be in the game the previous year. The event quests themselves are a little better, but still mediocre. Maybe kids will find the poor comedy in these quests funny, but to me they are pure cringe.
  • I want quests that describe the world, reveal new things, and change gameplay as a whole over a period of time compared to how we usually play on the regular. There is no real seasonal like change of the "meta".
• A lot of people might be mad about the Jail Build changes, however the Jail Build changes actually made Jail builds easier to do, and cheaper to do, compared to the jail build costs before the patch. I can literally build 4 walls, and 4 wall spikes and stick a Base on top and that will actually work in mid to high twine. If you abuse the AI, you can also make more than 50% of the enemies spawned not even move or attempt to attack anything. The longer the game goes on the more clear the specifics of the AI get, and the easier they become to exploit.
  • Enemies should spawn non stop no matter what for the entirety of the mission. The current limitations are the only reason jail builds are possible. The only way a jail build would fail right now is if too many Husky or stronger enemies are spawned on the first wave.
  • As a side note, the Jail Build changes does make endurance mode missions substantially more difficult, especially in similar game mode based off of the same concept, such as Frostnite and Wargames ( which no one cares about and will never play no matter how many new ones you make ).
• IMO the games stinginess on rewards and resources is a complete game killer. The amount of time you are demanding from players to get resources, build traps, and defend an objective without using a jail build is atrocious. No one in the world wants to spend hours farming resources just to actually play the game.
  • Epic Games needs to substantially increase the speed that players are able to gain resources across the board. Harvesting stone, wood, and Metal needs to be faster and the stupid hit the circle mini game to harvest faster needs to be removed entirely.
  • The amount of resources gained from harvesting the above, along with plants, gnomes, ect needs to be at least tripled.
  • Alternatively all resources spent in a mission that are not destroyed during the mission should be refunded to who ever built them. So traps and walls should be refunded entirely if none of them are destroyed. This means you can effectively fund the next mission with the resources used in the current mission if you build smart, encouraging players to play the game as intended.
• The constant reskin of heroes and just changing a few perks is just lazy. Even worse throughout the years, even today at least half of the current heroes are useless, especially in high twine. Even some of the heroes are complete duplicates of base heroes with 0 changes at all.
  • In the future I hope no new hero's are reskins of any existing hero in the game right now, and they should have perks that are strong and desired, causing more player choice in who they will use as leaders and supports, compared to now where there is very little room for custom builds. At the end of the day builds are very boring, generic, and obvious.
• Trading is a cancer mechanic in this game that causes real problems both inside and outside of the game.
  • For 1 trading directly results in players being scammed. "Trade Boxes" which are used for scamming other players in trade are some of the most popular videos on youtube.
  • Trading leads to RMT, which there is literally a plethora of places to buy in game stuff using real money. From items that are duped, to carries in Ventures, or carries on MSK. A lot of money is being made off of this game IRL.
  • Duping is another issue that seems to always come back consistently in this game. Next to Trade Box videos on youtube the next contender for STW content is duping videos, of which in the past few weeks there have been a plethora of.
    • Trade Box Videos and Duping videos need to be copyright claimed and removed from youtube entirely, putting the content creators accounts at risk as well since most freely show their name and epic games id in their videos.
    • Players who do a lot of duping, do giveaway videos on youtube as well dropping hundreds or thousands of traps on some unsuspecting kid, pawning off these duped items, and putting the receiver in potential jeopardy.
  • IMO trade needs to be removed entirely from the game, with the only resources you can drop being Stone, Wood, and Metal to aid other players in building a defense. This destroys scamming and RMT for items and resources, leaving carries as the only potential RMT source for these individuals. This also increases the games longevity by preventing people from bypassing content in the game entirely by paying money.
• Weaponry
  • I love getting new weapons in the game. However I really feel that adding new weaponry needs to stop. There is literally hundreds of weapons in the game already, and many of them could use reworks or improvements. I am not talking some mediocre base damage increase either. That is far too easy. It would be far better if certain weapons had something unique to them that separated them from all the others. You could think of it like legendary or unique items in other rpg's. Each one has something unique to that item alone, and in the long run this increases play style variety and build diversity. This would also help improve ventures as well if there were weaponry you could only unlock through playing ventures, and were actually good enough that people would want to obtain them.
• Gold
  • The gold shop needs to be expanded to include basic crafting resources, and other items for us to dump our gold into.

All the above are some of my biggest issues and gripes with the game in its current state. IMO the game would be far better if progression was smoother and faster, and resources were far easier to obtain. In fact these changes would inadvertently hinder the RMT market. However there are some mechanics that I think need a rework.

• Ventures is one of the newest game modes added into the game since I last played this game. While interesting in concept it is IMO a complete failure, and is some of the most boring new content I have ever seen added to the game since 2017.
  • Starting off fresh is always an interesting mechanic. Primarily in heavy looter shooters, or heavy RPG's with an economy where a fresh start is enjoyable. Likewise games with this mechanic typically have a plethora of "builds" and content to play that a fresh start is simply an opportunity to try something new. In concept Ventures gives players the ability to start over seasonally, and try out a bunch of guns they would never try since vending machines are the primary source of new weaponry. However you keep all your heroes and as such this gives veterans an unfair advantage in the game mode, which I am fine with. However that basically makes this mode pointless.
  • The idea of doing the same content we have been doing for years all over again without the weaponry we want to use is simply a poor concept and that's all there is to say about it. The poor mission variety, along with the resources issue above just causes people to do 2 things. Either they will jail build literally every mission, or they will play an outlander with low cool down skills and just spam turrets and Teddy to get through the game which works perfectly fine in 120+ Twine Missions with a good build.

Fortnite Design Philosophy

• Fortnite at its core is no different from any hero based tower defense game. Similar games would be Dungeon Defenders and Orcs Must Die. They have done well across a plethora of games because they understand the core of what they are. Every objective in Fortnite is essentially a target that results in game over if it is destroyed. Our traps and walls are our towers. However what these other games understand is that players should have the option of being DPS based or Defense Based, and you can play the entire game as one or the other. You can build defenses and focus on killing everything with your hero, or you can build stronger defenses that of built strategically well will kill everything as well.
• Fortnite as a whole seems to constantly be trying to force players to kill everything and make traps weaker, put additional limitations on them and what they can do, or completely make many of them entirely useless. IMO this is a poor move and is slowly killing the miniscule player base STW still has left after essentially 0 major changes to the game since 2017.

Fortnite has been around for years, but has essentially seen no development or improvements since its early access release date. The dev team has dwindled to nothing, the same content gets pushed out on rotation, and the game has done nothing but decline because of this. STW content creators have mostly abandoned the game as a whole, with the amount of legit STW youtubers being able to be counted on a single hand. Cheating and exploit videos are the primary content for this game on youtube. Sustainability wise it would be a poor decision for anyone to be a content creator for this game that feels essentially dead and on it's way out the door within the next year. The existing player base has given plenty of feed back over the years and it seems Epic Games has not listened or paid attention at all. Epic is riding the tail end of Battle Royale but soon that game will be dead, and Fortnite as a whole will start to dwindle.

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I think it is about time Epic Games stopped ignoring STW and beating their players, and finally actually put some work into it. Fortnite STW is like No Man's Sky, it has infinite possibilities, and an infinite world build upon. How we still have not made it to a completely new planet yet is beyond me. How the husks have essentially not changed from low level to high level besides the boring elements, and a few new husk additions (nurses, the shielding guys, maybe the lobbers that throw husks) is also beyond me. By now I figured there would be far more hero's so that every weapon type and play style has more love. Likewise I would not believe that the above issues that are still in this game today are actually still here. From day one I have had high hopes for this game and its future, but it seems like this game is never going to actually see real development and will be on the back burner forever until some new Battle Royale games kills Fortnite Battle Royale outright.