When starting my re-evaluation of Fortnite, the game was just past the beginning of the Avatar event in April.
My original intention was just to play it during the event to get enough time in to form a real opinion of it.
A combination of enjoying it more than I thought I would and not writing everything I wanted to write fast enough led to me continuing beyond that point.
As a result, I got to experience changes brought about by the steady stream of content updates.
The first of these was the end of the Avatar event, which removed the Avatar NPCs,
the bending scroll drops at the shrines, and the three bending scrolls that weren't the waterbending scroll.
The reasoning for leaving in the waterbending scroll specifically is beyond me.
Maybe its popularity from being stupidly powerful led to it being included for longer.
Now that I think about it, I don't know if the other three had actually been taken out of the item drops for the battle royale game modes as a result of that update.
I just never saw them drop or get used by other players after that.
Overall, these were relatively minor changes.
The Avatar event is what got me to pay attention and give the game a second chance, so seeing some of that go was disappointing.
It was a limited-time event, so it wasn't a surprise to watch most of those things go.
In its absence, the main theme of the "season" had less distractions.
It had something to do with figures from Greek mythology, such as Zeus, Cerberus, and Artemis, to name a few.
I'm not sure that this had any real bearing on how the game played, as I don't remember it impacting much more than having some NPCs scattered around the map.
Actually, one of those was an Artemis NPC that could be hired to follow the player who coughed up the in-game collectible gold to provide some extra assistance.
In the case of Artemis, she would occasionally do a scan revealing nearby chests and players.
I liked her. She was helpful.
There were a few more like that, but she was the one I could reliably find and usually get to before anyone else.
Not long after the Avatar event ended, there was a minor event that added some Star Wars characters, items, and challenges to the game.
Some stormtroopers would set up little camps on the roads and I think there were other things happening that I never got around to looking at.
I really don't have much to say about this.
Mostly, I'm including this just to make note of it.
All of the changes up to this point were relatively minor.
Of course, these were just within the game's current "season", or major update cycle.
I think the presence of "Chapter 5, Season 2" labels on the then-current version of the game should have tipped me off to the fact that bigger changes were on the horizon.
I wasn't paying particularly close attention to when that would happen or what might come as a result.
I was only playing the game occasionally and figured I was pretty close to done with it.
Less than two months after the beginning of my expedition, the next major update ("Chapter 5, Season 3") was pushed out.
Seeing as the theme before mostly centered around Greek mythology, logically,
the next step was to bombard a large chunk of the map with sand to have cars with lethal modifications driving around in the desert, complimented with punk rock and Metallica.
The most common comparison would be towards Mad Max movies.
As of this writing, I still haven't made the time to give them a watch, but I have received confirmation that the comparison is accurate.
In addition to the sandblasting of the map, some NPCs got moved around or removed.
Worse yet, Epic decided that the train going around the map had served its purpose, removed it, then had the model for the train partially buried under a pile of sand.
Most of the time, the train wasn't super useful, but I liked using it as a destination for the beginning of the game if there wasn't anywhere in particular I wanted to drop to.
Some season-specific items were replaced with new ones.
Due to a tie-in with Metallica, a guitar used mainly as a traversal tool was added with the name "Ride the Lightning".
I wonder how many Fortnite kids know what that song is about.
The most popular of the new items seemed to be a pair of rocket-powered gauntlets called the "Nitro Fists".
Evidently, Epic Games noticed that I, one player with a punching-themed username scattered among millions of other players who have different names,
was back after all these years and decided to commemorate the occasion.
The most prominent changes were the expansions made to vehicle-based combat.
A few gas stations in the previous version of the map was increased to several vehicle refueling and repair stations in every area of the map.
At gas stations, players had to leave their vehicles in order to grab a fuel hose (unless said vehicle was a motorbike) and refuel the tank by spraying gasoline anywhere on the vehicle.
Just like in real life!
The newer stations just work by having players drive on top of a repair pad, which then adds fuel and vehicle armor over time without any further input required.
Cars and vans can also be kitted out with mounted guns, stronger tires, and bumpers that can dish out even more damage than the inertia from two tons of virtual metal alone.
These are obtained by finding wooden crates by repair stations or random spots by the sides of roads.
Helpful hands that guide players to these spots are provided in the form of green inflatable tube guys, similar to what can be seen outside some car dealerships.
Additionally, one type of cube instantly and completely repairs the vehicle that hits it.
There are also cacti with blue globs sprouting out of them that can be rammed to restore some vehicle armor and player health or shields.
These changes to the infrastructure supporting vehicles resulted in a grand and sudden shift in the way most players approach the game.
My understanding of the game's typical battle interactions is a mix of close-quarters combat with shotguns and long-range sniper battles.
With these additions, most players stick to using upgraded cars.
Doing significant damage to one with equipment that can be picked up and used on-foot isn't impossible, but vehicular players are in a significantly more advantageous position.
When I play the game, my jam tends to be using marksman rifles at a distance safe from being instantly killed by shotguns and/or multiple players trying to kill me at the same time.
Vehicles are both harder to hit and take far greater amounts of damage than players do.
As such, it has taken all of the fun out of shooting someone from hundreds of feet away without them even realizing it.
I think Epic realized that a good number of players were having a rough go of it with the new focus on vehicular combat.
About a month after the car update, an update introduced a new mode called "Fortnite Reload".
From what I've played of it, the idea seems to be a scaled-down version of the main battle royale mode.
Smaller map, no vehicles, and a system for automatically respawning mid-game as long as one or more players on a team are still alive.
From what I can tell, the locations on the smaller map were based on the original map for the battle royale mode.
I say this because some of the location names actually sounded recognizable to me.
While the standard battle royale experience is more survival-oriented, the compact nature of the Reload variation makes it feel more like a brawl.
Sure, there's still plenty of hiding behind cover and camping out to minimize the risk of getting eliminated.
When fights do get around to happening, more aggressive plays are made less unreasonable by a player's death being not as entirely catastrophic for the team as a whole.
Overall, it feels like a quicker version of the battle royale mode, both in terms of how it plays and how long a match tends to last.
They also have some Unreal Tournament (UT99) posters in at least one building on the map for Reload.
The map was made well after all the Unreal and UT games got pulled from digital storefronts.
Yeah, I'm still sore about that.
I get that almost all of the playerbase for Fortnite would not rather play an Unreal Tournament game at any point
and that most of them have probably never heard of the games from which the engine powering the game they are playing got its name.
However, someone tried porting Morpheus from UT99 over to Fortnite for instagib matches
(another thing most Fortnite players have probably never heard of) and while the effort was good, it's just not the same.
How will new players ever learn the joys of Flak Cannon deathmatches on Hyperblast, classic free-for-alls on Deck-16][, and nuking each other with Redeemers?
I would say something about sniper-battle stalemates on Facing Worlds (the map pictured in the poster I saw!) but many user-made modes seem to do a decent job of that,
albeit without the awesome setting in orbit around Earth or the phenomenal Foregone Destruction by Michiel van den Bos.
EDIT: It was brought to my attention after writing this that the song was added to Fortnite as a purchaseable choice for lobby music many years ago.
The name of the item is "Unreal Chill" and from what I can tell, does not include information about the actual name of the song (Foregone Destruction),
the author (Michiel van den Bos), the game it was composed for (Unreal Tournament), the year of release (1999),
or the map it was most closely associated with (CTF-Face / Facing Worlds).
Michiel van den Bos - Foregone Destruction : UT (1999) - Facing Worlds - YouTube
Fortnite | Unreal Chill Lobby Music - YouTube
UPDATE: A Pirates of the Carribean event done in much the same way as the Avatar event was launched after the initial writing of this section was completed.
UPDATE: A series of in-game challenges with unlockable items that includes a version of the Tesla Cybertruck were added during the revision process.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the absolute fridge of an automobile still looks like it's being rendered by an original PlayStation
despite the high likelihood of the polygon count in the game's model being orders of magnitude greater than what is necessary to form the shape of the vehicle.
UPDATE: While stalling out on making the video adaptation,
a new major game update ("Chapter 5, Season 4") was released, consisting mostly of Marvel theming and tie-ins.
No more upgrades for vehicles, but there are plenty of items introducing new, more annoying bullshit for a player like me to deal with.
They also cycled out the Huntress DMR from what can be obtained in a game of BR.
Same with any of the sniper rifles that could be dropped.
Shit fucking sucks.
The two beams of hope are a burst-fire rifle that actually does pretty okay at range and the new Monarch pistol.
The Monarch is actually very similar to the Huntress.
It has seven rounds of standard rifle ammo for the magazine.
The accuracy at range is worse and the options for sights to put on it are limited,
but it has a faster fire rate and is generally stronger in mid-range engagements than the DMR.
I didn't like it at first because I could only see it as a worse Huntress.
I like pistols though, so giving it some more chances and trying to understand it better have warmed me up to it.
UPDATE: Minor update introduced a chance of the late-game island that spawns having a way to "harness the power of Doctor Doom" and become very powerful.
I haven't really cared to try getting it.
Other players always seem to swarm to it like flies to shit.
If only this game had sniper rifles...
UPDATE: New mode introduced with another update.
The "Day of Doom" mode is a variation of the game's 16vs16 "Team Rumble" mode that I didn't make any comment on because it wasn't particularly interesting.
One set of 16 plays as "Avengers" and the other 16 play the "Henchmen" of the evil doctor.
The Avengers try to prevent henchmen from capturing objectives that appear randomly across the map and exhaust their limited supply of respawns.
The Henchmen try to capture six of the previously mentioned "Artifacts" to disable the respawns of the Avengers and eliminate the rest of them.
Weapons and items are determined by the team the player is assigned to.
The good guys get randomly chosen loadouts mostly filled with the items I called bullshit.
Agents of the evil doctor only get shockwave grenades to help them move around and actual guns.
That sounds like it would be misery-inducing considering what the other team gets to work with,
but it enables me to shoot at people from long distances, so it gets an "oh yeah!" from me.
Overall, the added spice makes for a Team Rumble mode actually worth playing.
With that, I've caught up to the updates made to the game between the start of my little adventure and the time of this writing.
With Fortnite being a game that not only followed a live-service model but revolutionized how live-service could be implemented,
it's no real surprise that the game receives consistent content updates.
With as little as I knew about what had changed and what the update cycles were like, my surprise gradually escalated and never really went back to normal.
Anything in the game could be changed at any time without recourse and I was becoming more cognizant of the extent to which it applied.
My perspective is likely skewed by my primary non-Toph reason for deciding to play this game again and make note of my opinions that nobody asked for.
Six years is plenty of time to forget what a game I only launched a handful of times was like to play.
Comparing what its like after all this time to my hazy memory of what it was like then is already enough of a challenge.
In only two months, I've already found myself comparing two markedly different versions of the game.
Some of what I originally wrote may not apply anymore.
Two months from me writing this, there will probably be new points that render my newer writings obsolete.
EDIT: I was right.
Demos that I saved from games I found particularly noteworthy can no longer be replayed in-game because the game version no longer matches and I have no way of making it match again.
Meanwhile, I have Quake demos going back to 2017 that play back just fine in ezQuake.
Being able to play back games with moments I found special only becomes a greater feature to have as new demos are saved and saved demos hold onto what I forget over time.
For instance, being present on a server to watch a new server record time on a race map get set (hi isabella!).
The changes that have been made consistently haven't landed with me.
Maybe the novelty is just wearing off, but my opinion of the game has been souring as time passes.
Sticking around wasn't all bad, though.
By some miracle, I ran into two people with microphones in a four-player-per-team battle royale match
(the game refers to this option as "squad") that actually made playing the game a more enjoyable experience.
I got added to their party after the first match so we could continue on our quest to win a game.
The second match after dealing with some technical issues and getting added to the party, we ran into a fourth player with a microphone.
The stars had aligned and we found ourselves with a full party of four people using microphones with the intention of having a good time and maybe sneaking in a win.
On the surface, it's a simple thing, but the matchmaking system and general lack of talkative players who are tolerable to interact with doesn't afford many such opportunities.
We pressed on, eventually getting a win after spending most of the beginning of the match standing on top of a hill doing dances.
After one or two more attempts, we switched to doing free-for-all and two-versus-two games on some user-created maps.
Before the night was over, we all added each other to our friends list.
This breathed new life into the game for me.
When I got on the game after this, I'd look to join one of their parties if they were on.
I'd usually let them pick what they wanted to do, as it helped me see things I wouldn't have otherwise.
I played a few matches of the normal battle royale mode with the wacky building mechanics and actually won a round.
There was a version of the Murder game mode from Garry's Mod someone made that was well put together.
I thought "Bed Wars" was only a Minecraft thing, but apparently, someone made it work in Fortnite.
I did a few ranked matches of "yes build" battle royale and found out that vehicles and bots posing as players were mostly absent.
Oops. Probably should have looked into that sooner.
At a time when I most feel the effects that irreversible changes to a game have on being able to revisit for the same experiences,
I find a group of players that remind me of why I'm not a fan of it.
Much like the version of Fortnite I first played in 2018 and the version I was introduced to upon revisiting,
the version of the game I met these people in was only going to last so long before being permanently changed.
Once it happens, it's not coming back.
Admittedly, I'm unlikely to miss this phase in particular.
EDIT: I was wrong.
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but a lot of the multiplayer games I enjoy stick to tuning existing functions and adding new options.
That, or they stopped receiving updates due to being old.
Games and modes I played a year or ten ago tend to still be available for me when I want to get back into them.
Not being able to just press a button to choose a different version of the game's one map that used to be the latest seems arbitrary to me.
I have a feeling the culture of typical Fortnite players differs in a way that prioritizes a constant flow of changes to keep things feeling fresh over having access to the older versions.
That's understandable.
Over time, most players would probably get bored with the same worn-out places.
The map needs to be changed because the game is designed to have no other maps to change to.
Weapons, equipment, vehicles, and NPCs are introduced, modified, and removed to further change the spices and alter the taste.
I grabbed at this game not anticipating the effects of the constant shifting.
Most of what I play is largely or entirely unchanging in how I can and will choose to experience it.
What I expected to be solid was instead granular and ever-changing.
If I ever put it down, I wouldn't be able to pick it up again as it was.
All I have the power to do is to continue holding the sand, but even this is temporary.
The grains will work their way through the cracks between my fingers,
changing the size and shape of what I held and only the memory of how it used to be will remain in the face of what now is.
Maybe the memory is all I really need.
Did I mention that all of this is for some video game I'm not even particularly fond of and don't see myself playing much after I'm finished with this?
Man, I'm more committed to this bit than I ever thought I would be.
And by 'bit', I mean the 10,000+ word essay(?) about said game.
I no longer remember why I wanted to do this.