Fortnite Season 6

Yesterday was the release of the v6.00 patch which includes a new Battle Pass that goes along with Season 6 as well as some patch notes. First I’ll start off with the new Battle Pass and the Season 6 changes. I still haven’t played myself so I’ll just be writing on what I’ve read and seen from videos.

The Battle Pass this season doesn’t look too great in my opinion and I can’t really see a theme. The first tier 1 skin “DJ Yonder” looks kind of strange because of the large llama head which I’m interested in how the hitbox for that will work. The second tier 1 skin “Calamity” is one of those skins that have more customizable versions the more experience you gain. In my opinion, the 5th tier looks better than the maxed out one with the lights. The tier 23 skin “Giddy-Up” also looks like another strange skin with a person wearing a Halloween costume making it look like they’re riding a llama. I’m also curious about how the hitboxes will work with this skin as well. The “Fable” skin on tier 47 is my favourite skin from this Battle Pass although it kind of just looks like another normal skin that you might find in the item shop. The tier 71 skin “Dusk” also seems like your average skin. The “Nightshade” skin at tier 86 looks really strange with a seemingly normal skin wearing a smiling tomato head. The tier 100 skin “Dire” in my opinion is really boring for a tier 100 skin. After stage 3 it seems like the colours change going on and that’s about it. Moving on from skins, the gliders, contrails, and pickaxes all seem about average for a Battle Pass.

With the Season 6, they’ve added a new cosmetic item called pets which ride in a backpack with you. There seem to be three types of dogs, three types of dragons, and a chameleon. In my opinion, I feel like Epic Games should stop adding more cosmetic items. I get that as a free game cosmetics are how they make money, but now the trend of Fortnite is starting to die out. That’s why I feel like they should try and balance the gameplay mechanics more so that people like me who just want to play the game are more interested in playing.

Starting to get into the gameplay, there haven’t been too many changes to the map in terms of new locations. In Loot Lake, the middle house is now a floating island. In the patch notes, there’s supposedly corrupted areas, corn fields, and a haunted castle although I can’t say where they are on the map. Since I haven’t gone in-game yet it’s hard for me to mention all the new changes to the map.

New Shadow Stones have been added which make you invisible when standing still and slightly more visible when moving. You are unable to use weapons, but you have increased movement speeds in general as well as reduced fall damage capabilities. You can “Phase” which propels you forwards as well as through objects in the direction you’re facing. The effect of the Shadow Stones lasts 45 seconds but can be deactivated by holding down right click.

Impulse Grenades, the Suppressed SMG, the LMG, Bouncers, and C4 (Remote Explosives) have all been vaulted, but these five items can still be accessed through the Playground mode. The Grappler was tweaked in the way its momentum was affected by moving objects, as well as the number of shots you get, was reduced to 10 from 15. The Double Barrel shotgun’s damage was also reduced by around 30 from 143 and  150 which doesn’t seem like a lot but makes it a lot less viable than it was before. Dual Pistol drop rates were reduced down to 0.88% and that’s about it for weapon changes.

There were also some changes to the storm circles in terms of shrink and wait time, but that’s it for this patch (v6.00). I’ll check it out and play for a while to experience the new things, but from what my friends tell me it’s not so great. However, my expectations were never high for the game after the past few months anyway.

Why I Don’t Play Fortnite As Much As I Used To

There are a few reasons why I don’t really play Fortnite Battle Royal as often as I used to. There are mainly two reasons, but one reason is just that of school. The other reason is due to the content that the developers have been adding to the game for the past few months.

I feel like the issue started sometime between early and mid-July when the double shotguns were removed. Back then there were already previous nerfs to the use of more than one shotgun, such as changing their pullout times. It depends on who you ask, but if you’re asking me, I’d say that the CQB META’s were pretty stable. The use of two shotguns wasn’t extremely overpowered due to the nerfs, which also made the shotgun and SMG  combo a viable tactic. One used slow amounts of high damage outputs, while the other was more of constant small amounts of damage. However, there was a nerf to all shotguns which made the delay of switching from one shotgun to another a lot longer (at least an entire second) which made having more than one shotgun useless. Forcing every player to switch to using SMGs, the number of options you had for CQB became limiting if you wanted to stand in the ring. There were a few new “META”s that people came up with, but they were never really consistent and a shotgun with an SMG still seems like the way to go as of now. Around early August the double barrel was introduced, but it wasn’t too impactful. After some balancing, it’s now something that could be used depending on a players preference and play style.

Moving on from the shotguns, around a week ago, the grappler and suppressed AR were added. I don’t really have anything against the suppressed AR, but the grappler doesn’t really seem to fit the game in my opinion. Some people may get confused when I say this item is “bad” because when I say it’s bad I mean it’s bad for the game. In terms of it’s use the grappler is extremely overpowered. It can be used to disengage from a fight, get really close to your opponent, gain the high ground, and travel from buildings all in around a second. If you spotted someone and you had a double barrel shotgun with a grappler, you could jump right next to them. All you have to do is click twice and the fight would be over. If you made a mistake in your building and fell a few floors. All you have to do is shoot your grappler and your back in the fight. If you didn’t have the grappler you would’ve had the low ground or just fallen to your death because of your own mistakes (as it should be). Although you can only use it 15 times before it’s destroyed, it still feels overpowered to me. And it’s not like I’m always getting destroyed by people with grapplers, but it’s the other way around. Sometimes it just feels to easy and “wrong” to be using the grappler. There are times when my enemies don’t even have a chance unless they can hear the grappler, but by that time it’ll probably be too late. In my opinion, the grappler should be vaulted (removed) as soon as possible or at least tweaked to make it more balanced. Something like a slower retraction speed after you’ve attached to something.

The last notable thing, in my opinion, is the Season 5 events. The rifts at the start were alright as a way for people to get around faster, and then there were the golf carts. Both of which ended up getting temporarily removed for bug fixing. After that were the many changes to the map, Lazy Links and Paradise Palms made sense as they fitted in with the modern aesthetic of the map. However, there were changes to one of the large mountains that used to have a house which now has a Viking style village on it with a waterfall which was kind of out of the blue. Towards the end of the season, they changed Tomato Town into Tomato Temple making it into a sort of ancient shrine which doesn’t make any sense to a player who’s not following with the story. A player not following the story would be me. As someone who just wanted to play the game, there were all of these theories about cracks in the sky, the Tomato Head, the Cube moving around the map, and all these things that just randomly start appearing in the game. Last season there was the rocket launch that transitioned into Season 5 along with a new villain lair, but not really anything that changed gameplay or the map. However, this season there seems like way too much going on that’s out of place with all the time travel and a random cube with markings on it moving around the map. Nothing really foreshadowed this in my opinion, unlike last season where the battle pass skins were themed around superheroes and villains. I don’t really know, but this season just doesn’t really sit well with me.

Overall, I think I’ll still play the game like I’ve always had, just never as often or with the same enjoyment as I used to have. I have my interests still in CS:GO and osu! is getting a lot more fun with harder maps.

Guitar Pro 7.5

For the past few weeks, I’ve been using Guitar Pro (7.5) to write a fingerstyle guitar arrangement with the help of my music teacher on the song W:Wonder Tale. This week I’ll be writing about my experience with the program and kind of how it works.

First of all, I believe that this is a great program with lots of things to learn. Even now, I still don’t know a lot of things the program can do or what all the different buttons are for. However, I have a pretty good understanding of the writing part for guitar. At first, I was having trouble even adding measures, but I eventually got it. The way you input notes is pretty simple (at least for the tablature).

I input the notes through the tablature instead of the actual staves where you would read A,B,C, etc. With the tablature, you can just input the fret number on a certain string and it’ll automatically fill in the note in both the tablature and staves. You can also adjust the rhythm of the notes either from the side or the plus and minus keys.

There are a lot of specifications to notes you can choose, whether or not it’s dotted, a set of notes should be plucked at once or arpeggiated, tied, and lots more. I think it’s good to watch some videos on the basic functions, but afterwards, you can kind of just open a new file and mess around with settings and try things out. That was how I learned most of the things I use although there were some things that I had to look up. However, I haven’t experienced any technical issues yet.

One thing I found a bit troublesome, at least for me, was the need to specify the duration of each note. I understand that it’s necessary to be read correctly and for the program to play it, but you have to select the note and then manually adjust it using the plus/minus key or by clicking since there are no individual shortcuts for quarter notes, eighth notes, etc.

Overall I think that Guitar Pro is a great program. It is around $70 USD though, but there’s a free 30-day trial which you can use to see if you like the program.

Back To School

This week I started going back to school after the summer break ended which I wasn’t really looking forward to. My class isn’t too bad and the teacher is better than the only other grade 8 teacher this year in my opinion. So far we haven’t really done much in class and we’ve just been doing “icebreaker” activities for the past few days even though pretty much all of us already know each other since this is our last school year at the elementary school. Because of that, I don’t really have anything to write about regarding school so I’ll just write about how my summer went.

At the very start of the summer my brother, mom and I went up to our cottage and stayed there for two nights until we decided it was too hot for us to want to stay any longer. There wasn’t anything, in particular, that was that exciting besides our uncle’s new boat which was a lot more comfortable to ride in compared to our grandfather’s fishing boat.

After the cottage trip, I’d pretty much just stay home and play games or go out every once in a while for a walk. Pretty much by the end of the summer, the only games I really played were osu! and Counter Strike since Fortnite was at the point of adding so many new things I just couldn’t bother myself to keep up with it. In my opinion, Fortnite is slowly losing players and definitely won’t be as popular as it used to be by the end of the month. A lot of my friends also have kind of the same general opinion on the game and haven’t really been playing it as much. I don’t think I’ll stop playing, but I won’t be playing it as much as I used to. osu! has been pretty fun for me and I have seen some definite improvement in myself since I started playing at the beginning of summer. I’m also trying to get back into Counter Strike, but with school starting, I don’t think I’ll be able to play as much as I’d like.

For the last week of the summer break, we had to go to Montreal for one of our uncles’ wedding. We stayed in Pembroke for a few days which was fun and then we went to Montreal closer to where the wedding was. The wedding was pretty good besides the outdoor ceremony which was really hot and the loud music. The food was good and I got to talk with one of my cousins. The day after, we went back home and I had a day to play a little more although it was mostly just osu! so I could maintain my rank since I can’t play between weekends.

Overall, my summer was pretty fun, I didn’t do anything too exciting but I enjoyed my self and had a good time for the most of it. I’m not particularly looking forward too much about school since being in grade 8 has a lot of the high school transition stuff to worry about.