Fortnite’s newest season receives mixed reviews

We are just weeks into the newest season of the world’s hottest game, and here’s some things you should know.

Let’s begin with the blackhole. The community was met with a blackhole on Oct. 13 when players were jumping in to take part in the live in-game event that was to celebrate the end of season 10, but instead, the event ended up causing the whole Battle Royale map to be sucked in, and once the event ended people who were in the game were just stuck with a screen with a blackhole on it.

When the community saw this, many of them believed that this was the end of Fortnite for good. Parents all around the world had their children raging at the television screen asking why they couldn’t play, and if the game was ever going to return.

Fortnite didn’t give any updates as to when and if the game was going to return, so much of the community felt that it was over and that they should probably move on to a new game.

Only two days later, Fortnite returned and better than before. It included a brand new map, new battle pass and vaulting and unvaulting of items and weapons that the community had been asking for.

Let’s talk about the map changes first. When a new season begins, the map typically gets new points of interest, but for this season Epic Games decided to give the community a brand new map. 

Many felt it was time for a new map anyways, as they had started to get bored of having to play the same map for 10 seasons. This new map is bigger than the first one, and has many new different POI’s while also bringing back some old favorites such as Retail Row, Pleasant Park and Salty Springs.

A new season means a new battle pass, which means new skins, pickaxes, gliders, gun skins, emotes and so on. These add-ons cost 950 “vbucks” which translates to $9.50. Is it worth getting?

The new battle pass is pretty awesome. I love all the skins that come with it. I also like that each of the skins has a variant that you can earn as you complete certain challenges throughout the season. With each skin you also earn all of its extras that include that characters backbling, pickaxe, glider and gun wrap. “If you play Fortnite religiously like I do, then I highly recommend it,” said Palomar student Chris Garcia.

When each new season begins with healing items, transportation to get around the map and guns either get vaulted for being too strong or un-vaulted because it will help with the current trend of the game. This season was filled with many items and guns getting vaulted. In total there were 27 items or guns that were vaulted. The main concern of the community was the vaulting of all the transportation items such as launch pads, hover-boards, bounce pads, rifts and so on.

Getting around the new map is a big pain. With the loss of those transportation items, Epic did add boats which is the only way to get around the map other than walking. With the map being big it is really hard to go from one side of the map to the other, especially if the storm circle is far from where you decide to land which many players get angry about.

The new season was welcomed by the community and there weren’t too many complaints as to things that need to be fixed, but Fortnite did add one major change to the game that many players are having a problem with: skill based matchmaking. With this, you will be put into matches with players of the same skill level. Epic also added bots (AI’s) that are not real players. The reason for this was for people who are just jumping in and playing for the first time.

Many newcomers were complaining that they were just running into sweaty players that have been playing the game since season one and weren’t enjoying the game like usual, so Epic thought by adding a skilled based matchmaking systems that players would only get matched up with players within the same skill level.

Players feel that this was not a good thing to add to the game, because some players feel that every game they jump into they have to try their hardest to get the win and sometimes they don’t wanna go hard and would rather enjoy a casual game with their friends. With the addition of bots, it can sometimes make the game too easy for someone who is really good at it.

Fortnite is in a really weird place right now as a game. The community is split on whether or not they like the new map as well as other new features. The only way for you to find out is to jump in and get a win!