Fortnite
(Save the World mode)
PC Review
Fortnite (Save the World mode) is a multiplayer fort defense game designed by Epic Games where players play cooperative with each other to take down zombie-like AI enemies in various types of missions, most of which have an objective you need to defend, which can either be full-frontal assault by your character or by using traps applied to your defensive structures. There are currently 4 regions to go through & it takes a LONG time to get through the areas, running numerous missions before you can proceed. Every player has a skill tree, which they can spend skill points by raising your Commander level (done by gaining Commander XP from running missions, provided the mission is gray on the map). Aside from skill points, Commander level & Commander XP, there is also an advanced leveling system for Schematics (Weapons & Traps), Heroes, Survivors (your primarily method of raising your Homebase level) & Defenders (a special type of AI defender, mainly used when you are lacking a full team of actual players). Weapons consist not only of various types of guns, but the game also contains a plethora of melee weapons for those who like to get up close & very personal.
Pros:
Quirky humor that is guaranteed to keep you laughing (or at least rolling your eyes)
The game allows for a high range of customization & various builds to experiment with, until you find a method that works for you.
The game gives you your own home bases (called Storm Shields) which you can customize to your liking & nobody can interfere with the design of (unless you give them building privileges).
Character builds are highly customizable based on other Heroes you may have gained (support skills) or what weapons (schematics) you may have acquired.
Seasonal events that offer special opportunities to get Heroes & Schematics exclusive to that event, among other high-quality (or rarity) purchases with money (gold) you can gain in game.
Cross-platform between PlayStation 4, XBOX One, Nintendo Switch & PC.
Neutral: (positive or negative, depending on the viewpoint of the player)
Microtransaction, P2W (pay to win) mechanics in a lootbox system; some people may see this as a positive, I see it as a negative seeing as I've never been a fan of microtransactions or P2W mechanics.
Alternative PvP mode (called Battle Royale); this would be considered a positive if not for the fact that the Battle Pass has attracted an OBSCENE amount of negative attention to the original mode (Save the World, otherwise known as PvE).
Online-only; this may not make a lot of sense as to how it could even possibly be considered a negative, but I've had a number of games that went under (many I never even got to play) due to the servers getting shut down without single-player modes (of course a single-player mode wouldn't make a lot of sense in this game), causing the loss of your purchase & inability to even play it offline.
Battle Royale (PvP) skins can be brought to Save the World (PvE). This is a positive for people who purchase skins in BR, but Epic Games only went a 3rd of what was possible when this was done, only showing that it was done so they could profit from purchase of BR skins for those who would play in StW. The other 2 steps that could have been taken would have been allowing StW heros to be taken over to BR as skins & allowing StW heroes to be used as skins on other heroes in StW (not to mention their back bling, as it's referred to in the game). Only a 3rd of what could have been done with this function actually was taken into consideration & it was only the step that would have gotten pure StW players to pay for them, but you still have to go into BR mode to purchase them. The reason for this function being listed as neutral rather than positive is because only 33% of the function was actually implemented, the rest was either not even considered or completely ignored.
How your pickaxe appeared used to actually mean something in StW; the farther you go in the game, the cooler your pickaxe would look. Now how pickaxes display is nothing more than a cosmetic option, only showing that you've wasted money on BR cosmetics if you are using one of those pickaxes.
Many changes have been made to push Save the World more in the direction of Battle Royale by forcing functions into Save the World that were originally exclusive to Battle Royale. While Battle Royale players my find this favorable, many Save the World players have had negative outcomes with these changes. Among these changes include (but are not limited to):
Short hopping was removed from Save the World. This was a method of being able to tap the button to do a small hop & came in useful in certain cases. Battle Royale players complained that they couldn't full jump with the tap of a button like in Battle Royale, which resulted in full jumping being forced in Save the World. As a result, being able to jump over low to mid walls (not full walls) became a problem unless you did additional building over the top of the wall so that your jump would be stopped once you hit the ceiling (so jumping & hitting a structure over top of the wall wouldn't prevent you from getting over it). Additionally, I personally used short hopping to be able to farm items off the top of shelves before breaking the shelves themselves; I don't bother to do this much anymore since the function was broken & it became difficult to do so... Another issue is it's near impossible to jump onto the shelves where lootable stacks are (such as treasures/safes or stacks of bricks/planks/pipes), so many times those items on those shelves can not be collected & just have to be passed up (trying to build up to them many times just destroys the shelves themselves or the items on them).
Beta missions were introduced around the 2nd year of the game, these were missions in testing which brought functions from Battle Royale into the game, like the shrinking safe zone in the storm. Some people enjoy this function, but it's one of those functions I particularly hate & mission-types I tend to avoid (unless there's a particular reward in the mission that I want to get, such as V-Bucks). One of the existing mission-types that had this function forced into it was the Retrieve the Data missions (also referred to as weather balloon missions); this forced element into these missions changed one of my favorite mission-types into one that I try to avoid because I don't enjoy that mechanic.
Speed building is another function that was brought to StW from BR. While I'll admit this function can be useful at times, there are others where it becomes a BIG problem (particularly when you end up wasting traps on a wall that wasn't even there because the game's speed building function just assumed that was what you were attempting to do). This is a big complaint for a lot of StW players, crafting of traps aren't exactly cheap & wasting them because the game threw up a wall simply because you were attempting to target a wall at an odd angle isn't ideal, but this is what we got stuck with. My personal opinion about this function is the game should allow a togglable option as to when it's supposed to be used; this means it's either active at all times, togglable on & off with a tap of a button, toggable by holding a button (which is probably the option I would use) or always off. Additionally, there should be a secondary option to block building of structures to put traps on when they are not present to avoid more loss of traps (which appears to be the biggest complaint regarding this function); the only time I have intentionally built a structure behind a trap with one click has been in Dungeons missions, it's always been a waste of traps & structure mats otherwise.
A number of BR-hybrid event missions were released into the game (these are typically mission types that don't allow you to craft weapons/traps & stick to simple inventory mechanics found in Battle Royale of having to find those weapons/traps rather than crafting them). While some Save the World players may have enjoyed these missions, many original StW players didn't & saw this as more favoring BR players, which drove off a lot of pure StW players.
User interface changes continue to push closer towards what BR players are used to, which favors BR players, but alienates pure StW players. These changes lead to the discontinuation of a number of useful functions that StW players had access to for years, only because Epic Games was trying to please a playerbase that doesn't even play StW seriously (BR players for the most part only play StW for V-Bucks to take back to the BR store for cosmetics). After some bad publicity over the discontinuation of certain functions that defined StW, some of those were brought back, but MANY still remain missing & it's a hit against real StW players that came to rely on those function when they no longer exist in the game.
Cons: (anything in green is multiplayer related)
Idling is similar to leeching, however this has to do with a player simply joining a match & not doing a damn thing the entire match. There are fail-safes that are supposed to be kick a player if they idle for too long, however I've noticed that some people have ways to get around this & I rarely see anybody get booted on idling alone. Sometimes a player will move themselves to a location they believe to be safe (like a house), then idle the rest of the match, it's almost always apparently who was idling when you look at the scores at the end of a mission (unless they were late joining).
An anti-AFK function was later added to the game to battle this, which boots people after a given amount of time of inactivity to avoid leeching of mission rewards from the active players. Note that this supposedly only affects public missions however & there is no option to toggle it when you want to use it or not in private or friends-only missions. This avoidance function also sometimes hits players that are still active in those missions (I personally have been hit by it while placing traps on a defense structure built by another players, resulting in a loss of traps that were contributed to the defense the game did not allow me to take part in).
Jump Pad griefing is a means where the player will grief a player by throwing a jump pad under a player, many times launching them off the edge of a cliff. Originally this was used to deal with idlers, however it wasn't only used on idlers & later started being used to grief people crafting, dropping items (material, weapons, traps, etc.) or typing something in chat. Dying originally caused the player to lose durability on their equipped weapons, that mechanic was later removed, so launching player off the cliff now only penalizes them if nobody revives them (each player has a limited amount of lives they can revive themselves during a mission, other players have to revive them if they run out of lives or to prevent the player from having to use a life to revive themselves).
Fall damage griefing is a form of griefing that usually happens when a player is high above the ground on a suspended platform. What happens is the griefer takes out the supporting structure, then the whole thing comes down, resulting in the player falling & taking falling damage (or flat out dying if high enough) or even falling off the edge of the map (which could be accurate in the case of taking out anomalies).
Structure griefing is perhaps the one form of griefing that I run into the most, it's when a player throws walls around the player to interrupt their ability to attack (causing durability loss on their weapons, including ammo if it was a gun), as well as to stop them from being able to farm. I actually have a number of videos where I became a victim of this type of griefing, it's perhaps the majority factor of videos I have published online where the individual later retaliated to the video getting published & in some cases I've near had to get the police involved due to escalated harassment afterwards.
Ignoring the objective is usually related to a player not caring about the objective & just farming in the same area or only there for Storm Chests (the latter usually meaning they are primarily a Battle Royale player & don't really understand that the best weapons come from schematics), however for the most part is usualy unintentional (unless they are throwing a wall in front of you, which is detailed in building griefing). With the function of being able to damage farmable objective with ranged weapons, this added another layer to the problem, where somebody can follow you around & shoot whatever you are attempting to farm for materials, negating your ability to collection those materials (they don't gain materials from shooting those objects, so this would only be done to cause problems & it's something I ran into less than a week ago).
Of course harassment in chat is a given when it comes to any multiplayer game, you'll run into it regularly (especially while the scamming issue continues to be a problem), be prepared to block/mute people when it happens, but from personal experience, it's probably better you don't tell them that you blocked them, it only causes retaliation & name-shaming, which you won't even know is happening after you've blocked/muted the individual...
Some players have no team ethics on them, simply in it for themselves & will take advantage of what they can even if it came from another player. This isn't far off from scamming, but I've noticed particularly when BR players started playing StW that when you drop a supply drop, some will run to that location to steal what they can before you can grab what dropped from your own supply drop. While I don't normally have a problem with them grabbing what I don't pick up, it is annoying to have somebody run to your location because it showed up on the minimap & grab what they could from your supply drop that you slotted before the missions so you could restock supplies simply on the bases of greed by other players... This could have been rectified by putting a timer on what spawned from the supply drop to only the owner that dropped it; once the timer had expired, others could pick up what was dropped from the supply drop (similar to Guild Wars), this should give the owner that activated it enough time to grab what they have room for or otherwise had an interest in before somebody else simply comes over & steals it at the player expense that brought it into the mission.
NOTE: I know there are some details I am leaving out of this review, I will have to add them later when I remember what those details are...
Personal opinion
In my opinion, the game is fun (that is when I can get into a team, soloing missions is usually not fun, but now preferable in lower-level V-Buck missions as there are always leechers in these), but not really worth the $40 price tag... The Twitch dailies offered early in it's development was one function that kept making sure I would play the game at least once a day (unless something came up that prevented me from doing so), but since those dailies broke, I've lost a good portion of the interest I once had in the game, which lowered the frequency I actually played the game from every day to every 1-3 days (when standard dailies filled up), unless there were V-Buck missions available. Of course the Event Store got added to the game later, which breathed new life into the game & gave me some interest in playing it fairly normally, if only to farm event gold to purchase from the event store (just not as high a priority as it was when Twitch dailies were still around). I still regret the purchase of the game due to it having microtransactions & P2W mechanics & don't really care about the PvP version (Battle Royale), not to mention the constant scamming in Global trade & the game getting near impossible to get a team together due to name-shaming circle-jerk blocking, I won't be surprised if I eventually drop this game & my experience of the game making it the last game I ever purchase from Epic Games...
UPDATE: Unfortunately with the degradation of the game, lack of interest to add new content & most events now revolving around the Ventures mode (a BR-hybrid mode that doesn't allow you to craft weapons and focuses on gun-buying mechanics taken from BR, but still allows you to craft traps), I have lost the majority of my interest in continuing to play the game & the only thing that really gets me into it is functions that reward V-Bucks. Of course with the lack of new content, I now have too many V-Bucks & nothing decent in the Llama Store to purchase, so even V-Buck rewards have lost their appeal to get me into the game & acquisition of them (even through dailies) are a lower priority on my daily schedule (sometimes fully avoiding the game because I either have higher interest in something else or just don't feel like messing with Fortnite even when V-Buck missions are available or I'm full on dailies). My current standpoint is that the Save the World mode is not longer putting money into, seeing as BR is currently the development standpoint & it's only going to be a matter of time before StW gets killed off, so my recommendation is that if you don't already own StW, best to avoid it...
Review last updated 2/10/2022
Current known bug list
The Quest Progression option on Play with Others currently throws you into a mission that targets the top main quest on your list, regardless of whether there's actually anybody in that mission, meaning it's acting more like a Play option on a quest rather than actually doing what it's supposed to be doing & putting you into missions with other players.
More a bug with the Epic Games launcher, but the Recent Players list is frozen & does not update during gameplay or between sessions (after shutting down the game). This unfortunately effects the game as well & your ability to file reports against people between gaming sessions, as well as clears EVERYBODY from your recent players list were you to attempt to add them as a friend or rejoin them in a later gaming session, everything has to be done in the same gaming sessions, otherwise you're back to square one & only the names that as in that list when this originally became a problem in 2018.
When Rosie was first introduced to the game, there was no way to rebind the key to exit it, the ability to rebind it later being added. After the black hole event (if you can actually call this an event, more accurately an intentional server outage), the ability to exit Rosie was completely broken, later re-adding that function to a default key, but key rebinding for this function is still not an option (best you could do is rebind a button on your mouse or a function key on your keyboard to E, as I have done on my mouse). This particular function does still exist for rebinding in Battle Royale, but was never brought back to Save the World after the Black Hole event.
Some areas have poorly set boundaries, causing a grainy static mist in caves that will impede your ability to see within them, even if you are able to move into it (this grainy mist seems to have been introduced into the game to improve performance when looking outward from the maps boundries). This can cause player to miss rare farmable deposits in stone or metal and other items that can be looted (chest at least make a noise when you are close to them, but other items you may not even know is there).
The SMG, Wild West Heroes, Rad Heroes, Vacuum Tube, Neon Weapons & VinderTech Weapons sections of the Collection Book does not give you a checkmark when completed.
Some mission types that have reduced time to complete them (those that dock a visible timer near the top of the screen) may not trigger as being that type of mission, making that mission impossible to complete. A dead giveaway of this being the case is when the timer does not show at the top of the screen.
Bringing up the banner selection window open the page for last banner you used. Scrolling left or right does not scroll you from that page that you started on, but rather from the Standard page, regardless of what shows when you first bring up the window.
When somebody sends you an invite to a mission or BR match, you get an exclamation on the tab that shows your online friend count. This marker bugs & doesn't disappear until the game is restarted, preventing you from knowing if you got new friend/mission invites unless you open up your friend list & go search for them.
Missions can sometimes time out while attempting to pull rewards for that mission, which can (some times entirely) negate your rewards for the mission you just ran. Epic Games does at least have a reputation for giving you back rewards that were revoked on error (at least from my experience), but note that not all revocations that were caused by errors will be restored & many times won't (such as in the case where you may have been auto-booted because the game classified you as AFK when that wasn't the case).
Survivor markers found in survivor huts don't always spawn a survivor on the map.
After a few years of this bug not being fixed, I
determined it was time to start a video playlist of the issue to show
how often it happens:
Blueglo & enemies can sometimes spawn inside natural structures, making them impossible to get to. It is still possible to kill enemies that may be stuck inside natural structures with certain event or expansion weapons (such as the Obliterator or Neon Sniper, however if you are unable to craft a weapon that allows you to shoot through natural structures, you won't be able to kills them & some are still able to hit you through walls of the natural structures, even if you are unable to hit (or see) them.
The game has problems with disconnects during missions, which can (and will) cause losses on missions, loss of rewards, loss of completion towards quests & guaranteed loss of traps used during the mission. If you're lucky, you may be able to rejoin the mission & hopefully still be able to complete it (if enough time is left before a forced evacuation), however your score is typically reset when you rejoin, negating most of the rewards you would have gotten if not for the wipe in points when disconnected.
Your movement & skills can stop responding after using an ability (confirmed to happen after using Going Constructor).
Certain locker items (such as sprays) can now become persistent in the locker, overlaying items that it shouldn't be (like loading screens), such as can be see in this screenshot.
Your team privacy can sometimes be locked after ending a mission & not be able to change it, the only time this seems to be exempt is when you have your privacy set to Private. This can sometimes be worked around by leaving the game mode, then going back into it (using the Select Game Mode button). Additionally, the option may sometimes unlock on it's own after completing another mission.
More a graphical bug, the weather balloon in Retrieve the Data missions will continue hovering over it's drop point if not shot down before the defense starts. This does not effect the defense itself, just a bit of a sight hindrance if you are standing on top of a 1 or 2 block structure or looking directly over it. It will eventually disappear, but it will take a while before it actually does, rather than immediately disappearing when the objective drops.
The Outlander's Anti-Material Charge will end prematurely if the punch would move you off ground support. This does give you a boost forwards, but the damage & harvesting affect once you go beyond where ground is ends will not take place.
Pylons can sometimes be bugged to only supply 1 blueglo, despite taking 2 from your inventory. This was a rare bug I noticed on 9/18/2020 where a boost pylon took 2 blueglo per 1 to power that pylon, essentially taking a total of 4 to actually enable it.
Riot Husks can sometimes appear they aren't holding a shield (you can still tell them apart however based on how they walk). This is a graphical bug, they still have their shields & still knock you back regardless of not being able to see the shield they are holding.
Riot Husks can sometimes leave their shields behind when they are killed. This is just another graphical bug that still shows the model of the shield left behind; the shield isn't actually there, but the remnants of the shield left behind can still impede visibility if between you & a husk you may be attempting got attack.
A patch in September of 2020 caused an issue in Fortnite where the top of the active panel for the game would be cut off from being displayed, this would the very top of the screen if in the options, just under the information bar at the top of the screen if in the game interface (right across the top of the top of the tabs that navigate you across the menus for the game). This wasn't exactly game braking, but did make it a bit more difficult to navigate the game (particularly when you had the options open if you needed to access the close, maximize or minimize buttons).
A workaround to this bug was found after the 3/15/2021 patch, which sometimes allows you to remove that black area by pressing ESC, then once again before going to any other screen.
Emotes that get marked as Favorite after being assigned to a slot in your Locker loadout will not visually update in the loadout as being a favorite unless unassigned, then reassigned.
The last patch in Fortnite (bug noticed on 9/29/2020)
resulted in Banners not loading correctly when switching banners. Note
that this bug also affects both modes, not just StW.
Banners that would be listed in each set appeared to be priority-based in
order of Battle Royale, Founder, Special & finally standard, negating
the banners for the actual set you were looking at:
The Standard set of banners now mixed together with Battle Royale banners listed first, then Founder, then Special, negating listing of Standard banners.
The Founder set of banners now mixed together with Battle Royale banners listed first, then Special, then Standard, negating listing of Founder banners.
The Special set of banners now mixed together with Battle Royale banners listed first, then Founder, then Standard, negating listing of Special banners.
The Battle Royale set of banners now mixed together with Founder banners listed first, then Special, then Standard, negating listing of Battle Royale banners.
It became clear that I wouldn't be attempting to change my banner until this was resolved, (which is unlikely giving the report function is not pretty well useless with the negation of the text entry field on reports), where I would normally change it before each gaming session.
Click zones are not anchored on the trap wheel, meaning there may be an offset on where you need to click if you are using an odd ratio to your monitor. You can still get around this by using the number keys on your keyboard, but it's not really ideal. A better method would have been to anchor the click zones to the graphics for each trap on their own.
Crafted items will sometimes not show in your backpack after being crafted, this was confirmed on 10/10/2020 after attempting to craft 2 Pulverizers (leveled to 130, but crafted down to 106). Both attempts to craft the weapon resulted in loss of mats, but no weapon. I first attempted switching modes to see if this would fix it, no difference. The workaround to the issue appears to be you need to restart your game when you run into this problem, meaning completely exiting out of the game & restarting it from the Epic Games launcher. The weapons will show in your inventory after restarting the game.
The game is currently showing incorrect classes for other players based on icons next to their names (where they may be playing a Constructers, but it displays them as playing an Outlander). This is a recurring bug that sometimes manages to get fixed, but usually gets reintroduced to the game in later patches.
Crafting while in a mission currently has a bug that won't allow you to craft onto existing stacks of traps if you have full inventory. This is an older bug that has apparently been reintroduced in the last patch (noticed to be present again on 10/23/2020), however it currently only appears to be affecting traps being crafted down with lower tiered mats than the trap is leveled up to.
A bug that's been around since the game's release is where audio of from husks can stick around in an area anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes after they are killed. This can be anywhere from a living husk that may sound like it's in pursuit of your characters, attacks after you killing the husk (mostly with pitchers & lobbers); the most notable persistent audio after killing all husks in the area being the sleeping audio for a group of husk that has already been killed, which can continue for an additional several minutes (at least).
The availability display of grenades appear to have a bug where they will remain grayed out (still on cooldown), regardless of whether you have active grenades you can use or not. This same bug also affects the Outlander's Phase Shift, as well as the Hover Turret gadget.
Timed bonuses can sometimes start AFTER already being completed, this can result in a loss of that bonus & higher rewards simply because you completed it before it showed & the completion of the bonus task didn't register as being completed. While this bug is rare in other mission types, this will happen EVERY TIME in Retrieve the Data missions, making you have to avoid approaching the drop point until the bonus is announced if you want the bonus.
This issue was originally reported on the official
Fortnite Discord server on 4/2/2021, however after the issue
remained unresolved for almost 5 months, I determined to start
making a collection of videos showing this problem via YouTube
playlist:
Most schematics were supposed to follow the same material details throughout their evolutions, however on 3/10/2021, I realized that a number of weapon schematics have a different value of the same type of material on the first slot that changes when it gets to tier 4 or higher (a higher up on their Discord later stated that this wasn't a bug, just an oddity, but I'm still considering it as a bug, this was only noticed after the mat adjustment after that patch). This bug appears to be related to what was previously referred to as "Crystal" weapons in the Collection Book (Crystal weapons later being removed as a slotting option in the Collection Book), Crystal weapons being anything that you evolved to Shadowshard (rather than Obsidian) at Tier 4 of the weapon.
Structures can sometimes lock when you are editing them, meaning they can no longer be edited, many times by any player in the mission. The only way around this issue is to destroy the structure & put down a new one. One thing that seems to cause this (not the only thing however) can be if you move (or fall) out of range while you are still in edit mode for that structure.
Epic Games started stacking events with voice-overs between tasks early in 2021. This lead to one event overriding others if you had 2 or more that were supposed to be voiced at the same time. In particular, the new Ray event in April had this issue that made it so you weren't likely to actually hear it if you hadn't finished the Blackbeard or Blockbuster events, so most of what Ray was saying in this new event ended up getting missed as a result of the event voiceovers fighting over which was going to be active (one cutting off early when another decided it was time for it to run).
Slots on character builds (such as your Commander character, Team skills & support skills) can sometimes lock & not allow you to change them. You can switch back to the mode selection screen, then re-enter Save the World to fix this issue.
While the issue did appear to be fixed for a short time, it was noticed again on 5/6/2021 that the issue of the task board in missions glitching violently once tasks in the list extended beyond it's visual capacity.
The Constructor's Plasma Pulse skill sometimes duds out & doesn't discharge any damaging projectiles at all.
Build the Radar missions can sometimes have radar blueprints inside of natural structures that can't be destroyed (the ground, cliffs, etc.). In some cases, there can be so many of these that it's not actually possible to complete the mission. Scurvy Shoals is a primary example of land masses where it's fairly common you may not be able to complete these missions.
A returning bug from before (as many bugs in this game do) is that selecting certain schematics for crafting from your Inventory screen can cause the schematics to line up in a single column rather than 2 separate columns (as it's supposed to be). Currently the following schematics have been verified to cause this problem:
Corsair
Tree of Light
Sometime in 2020, I noticed the landscapes weren't exactly flat anymore, running down a ramp would more have you skipping down it like you were sprinting down stairs (only hitting every few steps). While this really isn't a big issue in most cases, this can cause problems with causing your abilities to misfire (not activate) if you happen to not have your feet on the ground when you attempt to trigger it (or prematurely cancel the ability, as has been seen with the Outlander's Anti-Material Charge).
Damaging (and not killing) a husk as they are about to despawn (from a random patrol) can cancel the despawn, but their visual presence may still disappear. This leaves an invisible husk roaming around the map that you won't be able to see (you can still damage them however, if you're lucky enough to attack in the correction direction, use AoE skills or kill them with traps.
The respawn function on the banner gadget was noticed to have been broken on 9/22/2021. The respawn function for players was one of the functions that made the excessive wait time on this gadget acceptable (currently only functional for it's early acquisition function of healing surrounding structures), however in the banners current state, I expect most people who used to use it fairly regularly will start using other gadgets that work as intended (as I intend on doing).
A new bug was noticed after the 9/28/2021 patch that results in loot/drops sometimes not being able to be picked up (this has been confirmed on wood, stone, metal & ammo, from destruction of objects, supply drops & a Constructor's BASE). This was fixed during a patch sometime in October of 2021, however broken again by the next patch...
A new bug noticed since a patch around October 12th, 2021 was that there are now reoccurring arrows on the homebase menus that shouldn't be there. This is expected to be a tutorial or "new" item function that has just been bugged on more experienced players, more of a graphical glitch, so not in the game-breaking category & not a high priority to be fixed, but still worth mentioning due to being a new bug being introduced to the game (with all the other bugs that have gone unfixed for years, some that are game-breaking or at the very least, crippling to the game in some shape or form).
Items can sometimes become invulnerable to being destroyed, sometimes even invulnerable to being hit. In some cases you can get around this by destroying it with a skill or gun, other times there is an invisible layer over the top of the items you are trying to hit that is preventing you from hitting it; in the case of the latter, you can sometimes get around it by changing your angle you are trying to hit it from.
The Supply Drop gadget can sometimes bug & not allow you to interact with it after it's on the ground, negating the loot you would have gotten from it. This bug was first noticed on 11/10/2021 after placing a Decoy (Constructor ability) directly after dropping the Supply drop in the middle of an Encampment, where the button prompt to activate the Supply Drop did not appear when I went to open it.
After the December of 2021 BR outage event (intentional outages between BR seasons, which not only prevent BR players from being able to do anything in the game, it also completely locks off StW mode), I started noticing that game music was overlaying each other, 2 running at the same time, particularly when loading or finishing a mission. The Home Base music would eventually phase out after you have fully loaded into your mission.
During Ventures in 2022, running consecutively with the Valor, No Dancing, Blockbuster & new Brawl of the Wild events a Ventures quest (Destroy: Good Morning!) was added that was bugged with no way to increase your progress bar (even if you somehow managed to complete during a single mission, the progress of it was always stuck at zero). Despite this being reported on the Official Fortnite Discord, it's now March & it doesn't appear it's going to be fixed before of the Mild Meadows Ventures season.
With the addition of wildlife in StW, a new slew of bugs was also added to the game. One of the most problematic noticed so far has been that your animals can fall through the ground, sometimes getting them trapped directly under the visible ground, other times falling completely off them map (through the lowest point of the map with nothing to land on, so more or less the same result as falling off the side of the map. This can lead you to having to tame a new animal several times throughout a missionn.
Bug list last updated 3/21/2022
48 recorded bugs and counting
Discontinued functions
The game at one point had Twitch integration, where anybody who had associated their Twitch account to their Epic Games account could game a daily mission to complete & any viewers in your stream had a chance to gain a daily mission after you completed yours if they had also associated their Twitch account with their Epic Games account. This function was broken within the first year of the game running, remained broken for a several months, then eventually Epic Games just decided to discontinue the function because they couldn't fix it. I've spoken with other Save the World streamers on Twitch & they've stated the same thing regarding the discontinuation of Twitch daily missions; this was one of the things that kept them not only playing the game, but also streaming it.
The game at one point allowed you to short-hop by tapping the jump button,, which was a useful means of being being able to jump over low walls, amoung other various functions (see neutral section of this review). This function was discontinued to appease BR players that were complaining about not being able to do a full-jump with a tap of the jump button as they could in Battle Royale. While Battle Royale players may not have understood the significance of being able to short-hop, those that used it prior to the function be destroyed took the hardest hit from it gettinng pulled. One option that Epic Games could have done rather than fully pulling it was they could have allowed a toggle in the options to Tap to full jump (similar to the Tap to loot option already in the game), so people that actually found the functional use in short-hopping could still use it.
The game at one point had a function that would allow you to track mats to craft specific schematics. Later the game allowed you to craft down on those schematics so you could craft lower tiered weapons & traps of the same schematic, but the tracking function was never updated to allow you to track lower tiered versions from what you had leveled them up to. Later the tracking function was almost fully broken early in 2020, the tracking display being removed after the overhaul of the third-person mission HUD, rendering the tracking function near useless (only thing it was useful for was tacking up to 2 schematics at the top of the the tabs for those specific types of schematics). After a number of reports in an attempt to get back this function, Epic Games instead decided to fully remove it in the 4/21/2020 patch, now players have no choice but to continue going back to their inventory to see if they have enough mats to craft something while continuing to farm that mat from objects that would give it when destroyed & not being able to tack the schematic at the top means players now have to go through their schematics to see what they still need to craft it.
The game at one point showed how many items (or stacks of items) were in your inventory, this gave you something to watch if you were getting close to a full inventory. Since the overhaul of the mission HUD (third-person interface), the inventory counter was removed, so people trying to watch their inventory no longer have a method to do so outside of having to open the inventory screen every so often (or wait until they start dropping stuff they just picked up & hope they notice that they dropped something that they may have wanted to keep, but didn't know they were unable to pick it up because Epic Games took this indicator away from us).
The report functions at one point provided a name entry when reporting a player, this was later removed for recent player selection when it was pointed out to Epic Games the use of non-English character (which basically tags the user ID of the player rather than the name, so reports stick to the player regardless of name changes). This unfortunately became a problem when the game was restarted for those that had their Recent Players list frozen in the Epic Games launcher, any reports filed needed to be before the game was shutdown (or crashed).
In-game contact functions use to provide Feedback, Bug reporting & Player reporting. After the patch on 8/5/2020, the text entry fields on Player & Bug reports was removed & the Feedback option was removed entirely. This rendered the contact functions in the game almost entirely useless, particularly when it came to bug reports & feedback about the game. It is currently uncertain whether this is a bug or not, we could be waiting for months if contact is attempted over email support & Epic Games normally doesn't respond to posts on their social networks (Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, etc.). For the time being this is being considered as a discontinued function that has rendered the in-game contact function almost entirely useless, we'll find out after the next patch if this is accurate or not...
Some of the more detailed cosmetic features from Save the World Heroes (such as the coat that Quickdraw Calamity woar) were dropped from the game after Battle Royale skins were introduced to it through the Locker option, just showing even more StW functions that got ruined to please their BR customers (luckily this particular point only included cosmetic items, however other functional features have gotten destroyed by BR-player preferences in the past, as well as dragging BR-functions into StW, I'm certain it won't be the last time it happened either as Epic Games continues to ignore the voiced of actual StW players)...
Functional bug & player reporting was removed from Save the World, which was reporting that allowed text entry. Player reporting at least still has minimal functionality, but players can no longer provide details about why they are reporting a player or a video of what happened (doesn't seem like player reporting has really done anything anyways, we used to receive "Offender is not a bear" messages when a report was accepted & a player was penalized, which I haven't seen since mid-2019). Bug reports were rendered completely useless when this change was made, apparently taking a screenshot rather than allowing a description of what was wrong, however the screenshot had the drop down menu covering the top-half of it it, so bug reports are not ineffective & existing/new bugs are unlikely to be fixed... Additionally, the Feedback function in Save the World was completely removed, negating any form of in-game contact that would allow developers to actually receive something a user had to say.
This particular discontinuation gives indication that the game won't last much longer & for that reason, I can't really suggest any new players getting into it; you may not be wasting much time when the game is ultimately shut down, but you will be wasting your money to gain access to Save the World (is suspect the game won't make it past 2021, if it even makes it past 2020).
Star levels used to show on traps & weapons when you looked at them while in a mission (without having to pick them up first). This was later removed, but served as a useful means to tell for players that were looking for specific materials for crafting, as traps would always give mats of that star level when scrapped. Now players have to pick up the traps to even see what the star levels is, which is a lot of wasted time if those players have already run out of space to even pick them up.
Late March of 2022, it was noticed that V-Bucks had been locked to BR mode & X-Ray tickets were now being forced on all users (even original founders of the game). This was a change coaxed by BR players that hit StW-only players the hardest, stripping V-Bucks they were saving for use in StW & locking them to a mode that they may not have even played (as was the case in my case & Epic Games support was not willing to convert V-Bucks to X-Ray tickets, so many of those players that felt a portion of their lives had been stolen from them just quit the game entirely. This also appears to have been a way to force StW-players into playing BR (or at least spending currency on that store).
Spending of V-Bucks towards unslotting from the Collection Book also was changed for flux (which is gained by spending gold in the event shop), meaning you no longer had the option to pay a micro-transaction for easy currency to unslot something from your Collection Book, you had to grind StW to have that option..
Discontinued functions list last updated 4/1/2021
V-Bucks locked to BR mode
On 3/31/2022, I became aware of an update to Fortnite that felt like 4 to 5 years of my life had been stolen from me, this being that the V-Bucks I was collecting in StW were locked to the BR mode/store, so I no longer had that premium currency to be used in the mode I played. Because of this, I determined that I was done with Fortnite on a whole (including the StW mode), at least until I was able to convert the V-Bucks I had gained into X-Ray tickets (which is apparently the currency necessary to purchase llamas in StW now, which is something you have to grind by completing V-Buck missions or dailies, no longer leaving an option to pay micro-transactions for a quick llama when you don't have the currency to purchase them). Over 37,100 V-Bucks was stolen from me & re-assigned to a mode I don't even play, which I looked at the equilivant of 4+ years of my life being stolen from me & enough reason to say I was done with the game (at least until I'm able to access those V-Bucks in StW again).
A support ticket was created in a last-ditch attempt before uninstalling the game, this was to have 37,000 V-Bucks converted to X-Ray tickets, a request that they denied on 2 occasions, so the game was uninstalled & I left the official Fortnite Discord for the last time. Given I don't have the game installed anymore, it would be up to a friend that I made in Fortnite to get back to me to let me know that an acceptable change had been made that would bring me back to the game, which in my experience, hasn't happened in any other game where I requested friends to let me know when an acceptable change had been made that would bring me back to the game, so it's unlikely I will ever have Fortnite back on my system again...
The only real plus in all of this is I never spent money for V-Bucks on their platform & at this point it shows that it's a good thing I didn't because they would have been locked under a mode that I don't play. On the other hand, had I paid for V-Bucks & then they got locked in a mode I don't play, I would have had a legal reason to dispute the charges as they purpose got changed from what I would have purchased them from. Because I hadn't ever paid for V-Bucks, I decided not to make a BBB complaint against them, but had I paid for V-Bucks, I would have been filing a complaint against Epic Games for the return of charges for V-Bucks that were re-purposed to a mode that they were not originally purchased for use towards; in this case, collection of V-Bucks for use in StW was what kept me playing the game & this change stole over 37,100 V-Bucks from me to be realocated to a mode I don't play (nor do I touch that store), but because there was no monetary exchange for them, I can't say that any money was stolen from me when this change hit, only a digital currency that I spent 4 to 5 years of my life collecting, which only gives me right to complain that 4 to 5 years of my life was stolen from me in this one patch...
