There are some subjects that I just cannot shut up about… MMOs, Engineering Leadership, Stealing Nickels from Jeff Bezos, and Epic Games’ War On The Thirty Percent App Store Tax.
I have an ancient note to write a blog post on battle passes. I fear writing this article because it is focused heavily on the early Fortnite Battle Pass. It also focuses on why a large slice of casual players stopped playing Fortnite. With this in mind, it made sense to log back into the King of Battle Royale and see what was happening.
There is good news, and there is bad news.
The good news is that the leadership of the Fortnite team has been listening, or at least thinking. One of my complaints about Fortnite is that they went all in on the paragon-style battle pass, clearly copied from Apex Legends. While Apex Legends is a better game, it was also less popular. I still wonder why they thought they would want to adopt features from a poorer-performing title. Apex Legends was more hardcore, and most of the Fortnite audience was casual. If you are not sure about that, Google Peely. That will tell you everything you need to know.
I am pleased to say that there are once again three daily matches you can play without having to think about killing five people with a shotgun, then killing ten people, then killing fifteen people, and so on. If you want to log in, get 40k experience points, and finish your murder party day, Fortnite has you covered.
You can also complete seasonal paragon-style quests. You have 20 ranks of quests for completing matches, doing damage, killing other players, and, the most important part of the match, thanking the bus driver.
Epic is also trying to Metaverse. It stands to reason that they should partner with LEGO and have a LEGO Fortnite game. Those of you who read the news know they took some money from Disney to do a “something something Disney” real soon.
This goes into the “good things” bucket because I am collecting experience points for my Battle Pass in LEGO Fortnite while we speak. I have Done The Research and figured out some of the optimal things you can do to progress through your Battle Pass levels to collect your stars. I will share some math with you later on.
It is smart for Epic to include tranches of quests from LEGO Fortnite, their racing game, and their brand partners. I do not know why a TMNT promotion is happening within Fortnite, but I accidentally earned two levels toward my Battle Pass because it exists.
So, let’s talk about the cartoon stink lines emanating from the game. I know this is what you really came here for.
I am going to apologize because I do not have screenshots for everything. I am certain some of this will be valuable as a historical record. Still, as much as you are not interested in clicking on links to steal from The Bezos, I am not interested in making a giant collection of screenshots. If you will indulge me in becoming suckers for my internet marketing scheme, I will do more work in the future. That is a fair and reasonable request.
Now, let’s jump in.
First off, I have my own version of “enshittification” as a word. I am going to call it crapflation. The user experience for Fortnite players has experienced a significant amount of crapflation. There are more buttons per square inch of screen on the first screen than there were before. Most of them are unclickable noise. This is bad. This is also how Roblox looks. You can put two and two together. Much like Fortnite thirsted after the UIUX from Apex Legends and chased that audience, they are doing the same thing with Roblox. UEFN is real, even if the revenues are not. That last point bears some explanation on another day. I am going to tunnel on Fortnite badness for a while.
There is also crapflation on the quest screen. You have a gigantic vertical scrollbar filled with banners indicating your different categories of quests. You have Ranked Quests. Match Quests. Weekly Quests, TMNT Quests, LEGO Quests, Fortnite Crummy Race Game Quests, and everybody’s least favorite, Fortnite Stupid Dance Party Quests.
I will acknowledge the awesomeness of so many different ways to earn experience for your Battle Pass. Some of the categories will easily disappear once you have completed all of the quests. I should have put that into the “good things” category. The problem is that some of the categories of quests include massive time sinks. I am reasonably certain there is a metrics-driven PM somewhere inside the Fortnite Bidness Citadel with a graph suggesting that it is good for Fortnite Crummy Race Game to include a quest for players to earn Gold Driver status. I hope someday that person asks, “Am I pissing off the core Fortnite players who just want this stupid quest category to go away?” The answer for this player is “yes.” That goes double for Fortnite Stupid Dance Party. I am on the fence about the quests for LEGO Fortnite because the quests they offer are easy to complete, and they have not yet patched out AFK experience points farming as they did in Fortnite Stupid Dance Party.
Last week, I declared Disney’s investment into Fortnite for “something something Disney” as “meh.” A lot of people had questions. They assumed that I would be excited about this because I love the future in which the thirty percent platform tax goes down. That is a reasonable assumption to make. The problem is that most of the extra experiences in Fortnite have taken the Roblox path. They are poorly crafted experiences.
LEGO Fortnite is not fun. It is a pale Minecraft imitator with boggling UIUX problems. I tore through it to clean up my regular Fortnite quest UI.
I similarly tried to do this with Fortnite Crummy Race Game. The problem is that Fortnite Crummy Race Game requires you to get to Gold Driver status, and the time commitment for clearing out this category of quests is not reasonable. As a game, FCRG is not entirely terrible. The biggest problem I have with it is that the multiplayer racing technology is a fucking liar. It may look like you came in third on your screen, but the fraction-of-a-second split between you and the other bad players meant you actually came in seventh. This is unforgivable to me and incredibly consistent. If you love racing, you will buy an XBOX to play Forza because big-boy racing games do not have this horrible amateur-hour problem. Also, you need to understand the shortcuts to score bigly in the race. I accept that “I am not gud” is not really something I can complain about.
It is now time to talk about Fortnite Stupid Dance Party. I am nearly trembling with rage at this one. I get that I am not in the psychographic for this game. I am willing to accept that there are “The Kids These Days” who also like to play their four-button rhythm games with two hands, but what the actual everloving hell is Jam Stage all about? I am at least grateful that the Jam Stage quests are easy to clear, even if the Main Stage Stupid Dance Party quest has two phases that make removing the quest category from my Fortnite regular screen impossible. The second set of quests is “Play a bunch of matches with a friend.” Do you know why they are my friends? Because I do not invite them to Fortnite Stupid Dance Party. I am grateful that one of my sons volunteered to earn me some stars in the Main Stage event. He also gave me a pretty good and thoughtful explanation for why the game is bad and punishes really good players.
Some of the quests also require Creative Mode play. I am grateful that someone inside the Fortnite Bidness Citadel did not add a category of Creative Mode quests at the top level. You can earn some bonus TMNT points if you are excited about turtle power garbage. I got some of the quest currency this weekend from having my face ripped off repeatedly in one of many different UEFN variations on murder party. I was so terrible at it that eventually, people got tired of killing me repeatedly, leaving me all alone in a battleground to earn experience points and think about what I did wrong.
As I sit here, I struggle with categorizing everything in the “this is bad” category. While I appreciate a “No Build” version of the game and enjoy it, I almost invariably come in second place. I die to people who have gotten 100% chance loot drops from minibosses or are using the overpowered TMNT melee weapons. Why do this? Why remove that incredible sense of randomness in the battle royale match by making it a near-requirement to get specific overpowered weapons to win?
At the end of the day, I am sitting at level 100-ish with enough time in the season to grind out all the remaining “bonus rewards” if I want them. I will do about five more levels to get to another 100 V-Bucks. They did balance the season, so you generate 900 V-Bucks in exchange for buying a Battle Pass for 950 V-Bucks. Every 10 to 15 levels after 100, you can earn another 100 V-Bucks if you feel it is important to earn yourself a free Battle Pass. It is not important for me to grind out more than that because one of the biggest problems with Fortnite now is that they have jumped the shark.
The whole reason my casual family and I loved to participate in Family Murder Party Night was the awesome cosmetics. And while the store refreshes algorithmically, they have not added enough new stuff. We used to love going to the game to see what new and exciting skins have been added to the game and are appearing in the shop rotation. It is no longer like going to the mall; it is instead like taking a bunch of near-expired coupons to the factory outlet mall.
Net Fortnite usage is up, and net Fortnite revenues are up. They are doing a good job merchandising music and automotive items for game modes I do not love. They also have a lot of random stuff happening in UEFN land as they try to nibble on Roblox’s incredible market share. None of these things enhance the Battle Royale game significantly to me.
I should amend that. I actually enjoy parking my character in LEGO Fortnite for a few hours for some free experience points that have not yet been patched. They did patch out the AFK points from Fortnite Stupid Dance Party because it was an embarrassing amount of free levels each day with both AFK grinds possible. Giving away that much free experience is mildly inconvenient for one game. If you inflate daily active users for a game, it might be one with a license partner so they can pretend to feel good about the volume of daily “active” users.
I have a few more weeks of avoiding super-sweaty blood baths in Fornite Unranked No Build mode. If I did accidentally earn Ranks in Ranked Fortnite, I would be forced into deeper levels of competition than I want as a filthy casual. It is also a good idea to avoid playing when the weekly quests refresh and when branded content like the TMNT quests drop. That TMNT quest drop happened this morning, and I had my face ripped off twice as a reward for not paying attention to what quests are new today.
Knowing I can earn supercharged experience points before completing a daily quest is nice. Knowing that I can earn half of a level’s worth of experience points by doing daily quests is nice, too.
Ultimately, I have earned or collected all of the items I was looking for from the Battle Pass this season. I may get a few more accidental Victory Royales if my panicked clicking with TMNT weapons or measured clicking from a well-covered location with an auto-lock pistol catches someone off guard. I won’t get into the long, slow turtle fights of two people with riot shields or talk about the cruelty of hirelings or turrets. Some of these things are net negatives to the experience.
So, what do we conclude from all of this?
Racing game technology is challenging. There are many questions to ask about the Fortnite Stupid Dance Game. Unranked No-Build Fortnite is awesome. Anyone who works at Epic ought to pray that decision-makers at Disney do not read what I have written about how crappy some of the game modes are. Many things were added to Fortnite Battle Royale that detract from the Battle Royale-ey-ness of the game.
I did not even get into the bullshit that is the car-refueling weekly quest where I have 0 / 75 progress. I have read the websites. I have watched the videos. It is a mystery how to do this quest successfully. I will close by telling you that I have discovered no less than ten different ways to die horribly in Fortnite while trying to refuel your car.
See you all next week!
