Again this week I can’t really think of anything to write about, so for this week I’ll be writing more about the popular game Fortnite and it’s recent patches. In the past few weeks Epic Games has added a few new things and have also made a few other changes as always.
There were a few things added that I’m pretty sure were just for the holiday season such as the 14 Days Of Fortnite event. Different LTMs have been brought back along with new challenges with rewards. The end date for the event had supposedly passed, but it seems like there was some miscommunication between the community. Therefore the event is now extended to January 15. Another thing that I think will be gone soon is the Present! that was introduced a few weeks ago that’s a throwable item. When thrown the Present! it creates a one by one that takes the form of a present, and inside there’s a 100% chance that you’ll get some sort of legendary rarity item as well as other consumables.
As for new items, there have been two new ones. The first one that was introduced was the Boom Box which is a throwable item. When thrown the Boom Box deals large amounts of damage to structures for 18 seconds and has 400 HP. It is impossible to place new buildings in its radius and already built structures will take damage over time and eventually break. In my opinion, this item’s another way of indirectly nerfing building in the game. This could be an attempt at closing the skill gap between players that can build and those that cannot. The second new addition is the suppressed bolt action rifle. It’s the exact same as the previous bolt action except it’s suppressed and does 10 less base damage than an unsuppressed bolt action. It comes in both the epic and legendary variety. I can’t really see this weapon being used too much, but it’s something new nonetheless.
There were also a few items added and removed. The biggest change is the removal of the burst assault rifles from the uncommon to rare variety. Personally, I think this is a good thing because whenever I play Fortnite nobody used to use them. If you killed a player they’d usually never have one in the inventory, and if they did it was most likely early game. If you had one in your own inventory you’d be constantly looking for any other type of assault rifle even if it meant downgrading rarities just for an automatic rifle. Overall, it wasn’t used at all. The six shooter pistol was also removed and the dual pistols were added back, but it doesn’t seem like anyone cares about those two.
For gameplay changes there were a few bug fixes for zip-lines, but the Biplane changes were the big thing. Since they were introduced, the planes have been seen as pretty overpowered. It seems like most of the nerfs made to the planes were increased damage taken from hitting structures and the increased health damage penalty from 25 damage to 50.
Overall I think that the item and weapon changes aren’t bad, but the I think the planes and Boom Box could use some more balancing. I’ll probably still be playing in order to keep up with all the updates that are coming out.