Unfinished: EX: Fortnite 07/26/2017

brad, still bad at leading a gameplay video.

Epic dude sounds like Jon Blow.

WHAT?

It was the epic dude who's view we watched. lol

It's a shame because the part that's shooting cartoon zombies and buildings forts with friends looks pretty fun. But the menu ui looks like there was an argument over whether they should be like clash royal or dota, and the answer was both.

Not sure if they did this game justice but this quicklook made it look boring. The first mission seemed way too easy where you might as well not even build a fort, and the second one had that guy building and rebuilding that one wall, standing on a ledge and shooting the enemies below that were crowding up at the wall in the same spot.

And while in the trailer they showed off the huge forts that you can build but I'm guessing that's fun like a couple times that you wanna spend extra time in the build phase since it's not permanent and that in the end game you'll have to do what the "power players" do and funnel them down a murder/trap corridor.

And weapons having durability is a huge bummer.

The base building interface seems well made and intuitive though.

Seems rare that people don't react with default negativity or unwarranted excessive skepticism whenever a game's shown on here. Meh.

Wait, are they back to the "Unfinished EX" title for these? Don't get me wrong, I love that title, but I thought these had made the shift to "We Played Some [Game] With [Game Devs]"?

After watching this video I'm still not sure what it is

I have several questions. What the hell is a power player? How does one attain the rank of power player? What, if anything, distinguishes a power player from a more experienced regular player? Do power players make deals on the stock and/or real estate markets? Is that another system within the game? Why does this guy keep saying power player and what do we have to do to make him stop?

I think this game has a really neat idea to it, i just don't know about the pricing?

I saw it had a 60 dollar price tag. If I played this, i'd want to play with my friends and I just don't see a 60 dollar value ($240 if you have 3 friends). Like I said, neat idea, but I don't want to play it for 60.

Neat looking game though.

@rocketskates: Any idea why they did that?

So like. You have Ride The Lightning. You have Lars. And no one says Metallica out loud. Dang.

@upperdecker: They have a $40 version that gets you into the game now. The $60 version gets you extra "stuff".

They also have a $90 version that gets you more extra stuff plus a code for a friend (the $40 version).

Then they have a $150 version that gets you lots of extra stuff plus 2 friend codes.

@jones24: Yep missed opportunity. also lars should have been a small spindly drummer man in the game

@lanechanger: I haven't got around to watching the QL yet, but a few bits of info for ya:

You have a permanent base that you can build and upgrade. The missions are temporary, and they get to where you need to build defenses eventually, though the first area is pretty easily doable with a couple walls and shooting.

I've also found that weapon durability is almost a non-issue, because by the time one breaks, you have more than enough stuff to build multiple new, better, weapons as long as you've been playing the game and searching stuff. Weapons you find around in chests and such are low durability, but free. You can also scrap 'em before they break for a couple of parts.

I've been enjoying the game a ton, both with friends and solo with random people. There are definitely things that could be polished (the menus, definitely), but overall my experience has been positive.

I'm more annoyed by all these complaints about the dev using "power players" than by the dev using "power players". POWER PLAYERS.

This all sounds good to me, thanks for the info. Downloading on my ps4 as I type this.

Ahh I might have missed that. That's good to know and would make the base design consideration worth more.

Nice, it would suck to have to manage inventory and weapon durability and have that get in the way.

Yeah it seems like a good mindless game to squad up and shoot the shit while you and your squad shoot the shit.

@pmurph03 said:

Power USER is certainly a common term in software. Power PLAYER is definitely not anything like as common in gaming - especially the way he was using it, as evidenced by how much it has stuck out to people. But that's not really the issue anyway. A term being in common usage doesn't preclude it from sounding empty & obnoxious. "Influencer" is a common term for a new media celebrity, doesn't make non-ironic use of the term any less cringe-inducing for many people, especially when it's repeated quite a bit in a relatively short time span.

What a confusing mess of a game.

This exactly.

I just did my first lvl 19 Mission, The Storm (the purple stuff that the monsters spawn from) was moving all over the place meaning you have to be on your toes or it all goes to shit.

Years ago when this was announced I was hoping it was the co-op game I was looking for to replace my love affair with Left 4 Dead/L4D2 (now long dormant), but for me the whole progression and F2P stuff just ruins the purity of the experience. Maybe I'm just old and crotchety and don't appreciate modern multiplayer game design.

I guess basically the metagaming aspects of skill/stat maximizing from character progression just doesn't appeal to me. It ruins the spontaneity of the experience. Back in the day the most fun I had with multiplayer gaming was drunken pickup sessions and setting weird rules and stupid goals because there were no consequences beyond the immediate game. Having to nurse a character mutes that opportunity for spontaneous and silly expression.

Whether sonny was wrong intentionally or not, still hilarious.

I feel like I want to try this game, but the F2P nature definitely turns me off. But at least it will be free, so I can get my buds to try it then dump it if the grind is too real.

I think it's kind of nuts that he spent nearly the entire QL explaining the game.

And I'm still not entirely sure of everything that's going on.

If your game takes an hour to explain, there might be too much going on...

If I log in to the epic launcher, the cheapest version of the game is on sale for $19.99, which seemed totally reasonable to me. Been enjoying the game so far! The fact that you do get at least one permanent base sealed the deal for me.

I like it here because your material gathering alters the world. There are entire houses you can explore and you can break down any part of the house, all the furniture, any of the walls, the stairs, the roof, etc. Then you've altered the stage and can then rebuild it how you see fit to alter it further.

This is utterly baffling; feels like they had like 3 or 4 good ideas that had absolutely nothing to do with one another and then like 20 mediocre ideas and they all got mashed into whatever the hell. Also Power Players.

I'd be down for this game, but the "gathering" phase at the start is kind of unappealing. I loved Dungeon Defenders because you had the same fun looting/leveling/tower defensing/shooting hybrid as this game, but you didn't have to spend 15 minutes at the start running around (what looks to be) a pretty boring map.

I feel like this game could be awesome if it wasn't drowning in F2P bullshit.

This seems like it could be fun at least insofar as a framework with which to hang out with friends.

Also that bar on the main menu is so insanely close to the Windows 10 task bar that I was almost thinking they were playing windowed on PC a few times.

This definitely isn't going to be something I'll be playing now, but I'll happily take another look once it leaves early access.

The graphics look ripped right out of Wildstar, and it's basically a horde-mode with light building elements game. How boring =/

This is an Unfinished...

You're definitely a power commentator.

I dunno, I’m still not certain this is a game.

What I *did* learn, though, is that I have less than zero interest in ever seeing it again. Amazing that it’s taken this long to make something this unappealing. I sorta got the appeal of crafting when it was a new idea relegated to one or two games. But enough already. It’s incredibly boring.

I think i get a better grasp of what the game is than whatever they have tried before. Still not 100% there but it looks to be more than just a tower defense/survival game and looks good. Still need a better explanation though.

Here are the things this game needs to make me excited for me ...

blood - i spent half my life running around Epic games blowing things in half, and seeing no blood in this game makes it look really lackluster like there is no impact or weight behind fighting things they just poof and disappear. lame.

corpses - I want to see how much damage I am doing to the enemies around me. Let me stack the bodies as high as the sky. Why do the enemies disappear so soon? This is unreal engine 4 YOUR engine make some frickin magic happen and let us be able to bathe in piles of corpses.

UI - just fucking drop a nuke onto it and start over.

systems - half your systems/currency in this game seems unneeded. less is better in some cases and this is definitely one of them. the general consensus is this game is overwhelming and filled to the brim with BS and it is clear as day when you see that UI and start going through menus.

mod support - let players fix your problems. the fact is that there are some games that would have been so much more successful if you could have modded them. I can already think of a ton of great things players could do to make the game better on some custom mod servers.

but I don't have much faith looking at the game in its current iteration compared to previous videos of the game. it seems to have progressed very little in the past few years.

I think I hate this game. And not only because it looks (the ui is horrid) and feels like mumurpeger without being one.

This looks rad

This reminds me of the Sanctum, just adding in everything I hate about popular modern video games(durability, resource gathering, loot, etc.)

Man I wish they would make a Sanctum 3.

Absolutely - on par with some developer/publisher embrace of "influencers" as important to include in some aspect of the game (see Battlefield 1 as my most recent example that made me cringe)

It's so bizarre how casually he talks about how incomplete this game is.

Meanwhile this is on store shelves for $60.

I've been in the beta for this for a while and i've played here and there and all the systems have always seemed impenetrable.

Sanctum is good stuff. Maybe they'll make another one once they're done milking that goat (simulator).

I see some definite similarity to the little known game "Sand-Froid: Tales of Werewolves" in here.

The day/night cycle and setting traps followed by actual battle cycle for instance

@jensonb: It is pretty much an established thing and has been for many years, probably dating back to the first MMO's, it usually goes by the term "no lifers" but that's hardly an appropriate term to use for a guy who wants to sell his game.
It's simply a term for people who spend a lot of time on a game blasting trough content at a much higher rate than the average player. If he'd said "hardcore players" then people would still complain because they somehow feel like it hurts their "gaming honor" as a casual player. But it's a fact of reality that there are different types of players investing different amounts of time and effort into games.

Desecrating graves & taking pickaxes to book shelves, great job...

I'm actually quite interested in this, and I love the look of it. It seems like it would take a pretty consistent time investment to truly enjoy, and I'm not sure I want to pay into it at this point since it's still being ironed out.

@lanechanger: Yeah, it's definitely better with friends to just chill out and build/fight things, but the matchmaking is pretty good for solo in my experience. Though people do tend to wander off and do their own thing until someone starts the mission and everyone gets together to defend. Oh and just for reference, I've been playing this on the Xbox One. It's had a few crashes here and there but never constantly.

Wrote a bit more on the base and weapons, gonna put it in a spoiler tag so it's not a huge wall of text.

@corwag: Glad I could be of help.

Just a tip for anyone trying it out: After you get your bearings, once you get into the city, pick a building and just loot everything in it. Do that a few times and you should generally get a good chunk of materials to build things with. My Fallout 3-NV-4 impulse of "go into all buildings and pick up everything" transferred well to this. You can also see what rewards the missions will give you when you hover over them in the map (I only realized that a few days in, and it really helped with a specific item bottleneck in my ranged weapons crafting). Also: pickaxe every garden gnome. They drop power cells every once in a while.

Also take your time learning the systems. They did...a lot in the game. You can level up basically everything. There are two "skill trees". There's a collection thing (and you can level up what you've put in there, I just learned last night). Expeditions. Squads. Just take your time, listen to the robot lady explain stuff, and read. I've seen a lot of people overwhelmed, but you really do get used to it. Just give one thing a look over, try to understand it, and then do a mission or two, and then try to understand another thing - that's how I got used to it.

Edit: Oh, if you see a radar tower outline for the first time, do it. Complete it. That was pretty much the single most helpful thing to learn how the building / editing mechanics worked.

@obamasamerica said:

I guess Breath of the Wild was a miss for you as well. TBH durability is fine so long as I can repair easily and have a selection of weapons to choose from.

Doom 2016 didn't have durability but the limited ammo forced you to swap your weapons frequently, rather than just milk the shotgun all day. Challenge isn't boring by default.

This reminds me of Orc's Must Die, just slower and needlessly complicated and... empty and... soulless?

That's some real limbo world championships level bar setting.