Fortnite: Save the World
Fortnite takes place in modern-day Earth, where a sudden storm wipes out 98% of the world's population and lets zombie-like creatures attack the people who are left. Epic thinks of Fortnite as a mix of Minecraft and Left 4 Dead. Up to four players work together on different maps to collect resources, build fortifications around defensive objectives that are meant to help fight the storm and protect survivors, and build weapons and traps to fight waves of these creatures that try to destroy the objectives. Players get rewards from these missions that they can use to improve their hero characters, their support teams, and their arsenal of weapon and trap schematics so they can take on harder missions.
Microtransactions allow players to buy in-game loot boxes that can be used to pay for these upgrades. In September 2017, Fortnite Battle Royale, a separate battle royale game, came out for the same platforms. The player-versus-environment mode was given the name "Save the World" after the game came out.
Synopsis
98% of Earth's population vanished all at once one day, and those who remained discovered a sky covered in dense clouds, unpredictable storms, and creatures known as husks, who resembled zombie-like creatures and attacked the living. The survivors learned to create "storm shields," or fields that pushed storm clouds away from the sky and hindered husk attacks. They established bases for survivors all around the planet using these shields. In charge of one of these bases, the player must venture beyond the storm shield in search of materials, survivors, and other allies who can aid in the construction of the storm shield and the discovery of a method for returning Earth to its pre-storm shield state.
Gameplay
Fortnite has three different ways to play: Fortnite Battle Royale, Fortnite Creative, and "Save the World," a cooperative player-versus-environment mode that is only available in the main Fortnite game for an extra fee.
Quests and events
According to its description, Fortnite: Save the World is a distinctive blend of a sandbox survival co-op light RPG tower defence game. The game combines player advancement, exploring, acquiring goods, sharing limited resources, crafting weapons, erecting strongholds, and battling waves of enemies. Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic, compared the game to "Left 4 Dead and Minecraft." With a third-person perspective, players alternate between maintaining their base's resources and venturing out on missions to advance the plot and earn prizes.
Players can view their current tasks and plot progression at any time. Quests can be broken down into daily, weekly, side, challenge, and event quests, with completion of each yielding a monetary or resource reward.
There are themed events in Fortnite: Save the World that have their own ways of improving, new locations to visit, and rewards based on the theme. The first of them was the "Fortnitemares" Halloween event, which granted players heroes, characters, weapons, and traps with a Halloween theme that they could use elsewhere.
Map and missions
There are four places on the globe where missions can be done, and some of them can only be reached after the plot has moved a certain amount. There are also other places for timed events and the Survive the Storm mode. Locations show the type of mission, the terrain it takes place on, its difficulty rating in relation to the player's current power level, and whether the mission is currently in a "storm" that adds random effects, like buffed husks or minibosses, but could give better rewards if it's completed. For more rewards, the player can choose a special "play with others" option that puts them on a random mission with other players who have the same power level and plot progression.
Players can construct their fortifications during missions using one of three base materials (wood, brick, or metal) and a variety of configurations, including floors and ceilings, walls, stairs, and ramps. Players can also edit these configurations to create even more variations, such as adding a door or window to a wall. Each component of a fortress can be strengthened by adding more resources of the same kind, and when they are destroyed, they can be fixed by investing more resources. Traps, which can only be set off a certain number of times before they disintegrate, can be positioned in different ways on walls, ceilings, and floors to increase their potency or effectiveness against husks. Players-friendly resources like launch pads, defender posts, and healing pads can also be found in traps. Similar to this, players have access to a variety of weapons, but these have finite durability that degrades over time or as a cost if the player is taken out by husks and must respawn alone. New weapons, ammunition, and traps can be built by players using collected resources, or they can be discovered by searching various containers on the map. The game's day-night cycle is accelerated during missions; during the day, the husks are less active and rarely present a threat, whereas at night, groups of husks may spawn and will actively seek out players.
The majority of missions are set in procedurally generated environments. The majority of missions include finding the spots on the map that correspond to the goals, setting up defences around those areas, and then fending off waves of husks that try to destroy the goals. Although this direction can alter in more challenging missions, players are typically provided a "storm forecast" during completion of these missions to help them improve fortification in that direction. Other time-limited tasks require the players to find and aid numerous survivors, construct several radar towers, or eliminate various encampments of husks dispersed over the landscape before time runs out. In order to build the fortifications, weapons, ammunition, and traps required to protect or attack the husks, players are encouraged to explore the map and farm for resources (either by searching objects or chopping them down with an axe) (either by searching objects or chopping them down with an axe). In order to complete some mission objectives, players frequently need to find bluglo, a unique resource that does not transfer between maps. While some missions result in a loss if the goal is destroyed or the time limit expires, other missions permit the players to rebuild their defences if the goal is destroyed. Maps frequently have optional goals that can be found through exploration, like human survivors in need of assistance. Successful completion of these results in instant in-game rewards like resources, weapons, and traps. The bonus objectives that missions themselves may include—such as the need to finish it within a specific amount of in-game time, use a specific number of fortification pieces, or save more survivors than is absolutely necessary—have an impact on the types of rewards that players will receive following the successful completion of the mission's primary objective.
Storm Shield Defense (SSD) missions are one special kind of mission. In each of the four world locations, the player is given a persistent map that shows the location of their base's storm shield generator. During storm mode, the player must return to this map to expand the storm shield, which necessitates the addition of a new objective to successfully defend in order to advance the plot. The player can enter this map at any time and begin construction on the fortifications and traps without first starting the defence mission. They can also add resources to a designated storage area just for this map. "Endurance Mode," which players can access after completing SSD-missions successfully, lets them test their fortifications and skills against an ever-difficultier siege on their base.
Command and armory
The player can choose from characters who help, protect, or fight (called Survivors). The player can use one of four classes for a hero character during a mission. They can also be sent on missions to gather resources, which means they can't be used again until the mission is done. When there are less than four players on a mission, defender characters may be asked to help defend. Support characters, which are called "Survivors" in the game, are used to make non-playable squads that improve the player's attack power, building speed, armour, and health without them having to do anything. If a player can find a group of people with the same personality traits, they may also get extra benefits.
By completing missions, the player can earn commander upgrade skill points, which can be used to unlock new base support skills, devices, and tools. Points for technology research can also be earned over time. These can raise a player's starting attributes, which they share with other players while on a mission. They can also unlock higher schematic and character evolution levels, new squad roles, or generic skills that players can use in the field. Together, the player's progress on the commander rating, the members of their survivor squad, and the hero character they've chosen make up their current "power level," which affects the level of difficulty of the missions they should accept and the game's matchmaking features.
The player has also collected materials and made lists of schematics for weapons and traps. The crafting plans are used to build weapons and traps on the field. The player can level up characters and schematics by using the different experience points and resources they get from completing missions. Most of the time, unlocking new "perk" bonuses for attributes increases the effectiveness of weapons and traps. However, levelling up a hero character will raise their stats and let them use their unique field talents. Schematics and characters usually have a rarity rating that determines how much they can level up and change. At any given time, a player can only have a certain number of schematics and characters in their inventory. But players can choose to retire any schematics or characters they no longer need to earn experience points and other resources and free up inventory space. They can also use one or more of these schematics or characters to turn them into new random items, or they can put anyone they don't need into a collection book to get rewards when certain collection sets are finished.
Locker, store and item shop
The player in Fortnite has access to a complete gallery of every cosmetic item for every game mode. This comprises clothing, jewellery for the back, and harvesting equipment. To level up and improve schematics and characters, the player can use real money or various in-game currencies, experience points, and materials acquired as mission rewards, from loot boxes (which resemble llama pinatas), or from other sources.
The power and abilities of the heroes in a player's locker can be improved by upgrading them or strengthening their support team with Survivor XP or Hero XP. On the other hand, the improvements can't be used until a few tasks, including the Storm Shield Defense missions, have been completed. Heroes have varying rarities as well, however unlike Battle Royale, you can use Hero XP and other account resources, like Epic or Legendary Flux, which you can purchase from the weekly store or by completing select objectives, to raise a hero's rarity.
There are a few cosmetics that cannot be utilised in Fortnite: Save The World, but the majority of them may be used in Fortnite: Battle Royale. These include all gliders, all contrails, and some backblings. In Save the World, some backblings might not be reactive either. A skin for the exclusive Save the World hero Metal Team Leader is now available in the Fortnite Battle Royale item store. Some players were irate as a result. Because they had already purchased the item in Save the World that they were informed was uncommon, some gamers felt that Epic Games had tricked them.
Development
History
Conception
A trailer for Fortnite was shown for the first time at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards by Cliff Bleszinski, who used to be the creative director for Epic (VGA). Epic's creative lead Donald Mustard said that the announcement was made "three weeks after we had the idea, but before the game was finished." The game, which began as an internal game jam project after Gears of War 3, is different from what the studio has done before. Bleszinski said at the Spike event that the goal of Fortnite was to "shake things up a bit and make something new and exciting." He said, "It's a world where you explore, find things, build, and eventually live." In an interview with Engadget, he confirmed these statements and emphasised that the game would be different from the Gears of War series: "No dudebros are included... Is that right? Not that there's anything wrong with that. But Gears has been great for the team in terms of ideas. But sometimes it's fun to let your imagination run wild and do something different." Roger Collum, who made the game, says that it was made by combining two popular types of games—building games like Minecraft and Terraria and shooting games like Gears of War—to make something new. He said it was like making peanut butter cups out of chocolate and peanut butter. When they told other programmers about this plan, they found out that the idea had been thought of before, but it had never been turned into a working solution. As a result, they saw that they had a strong base from which to grow.
The game was still in its early phases at the time of the VGA reveal, therefore the objective was to gauge public and prospective publishing partners' interest in the game. This would aid in choosing the game's release date and platforms. At the San Diego Comic Con in July 2012, Epic declared that Fortnite would be a PC-only title and the first to use their brand-new Unreal 4 gaming engine. The video game was planned to release in 2013. The game was initially created using the Unreal 3 engine, but as work progressed, the creators realised they could leverage some of the fresh functionality and scripting language in Unreal 4 for Fortnite while the game was still compatible with the majority of PCs at the time. Additionally, they decided against making the game for consoles so they could avoid the hassle of certification. The PC approach would allow them to do this without the limitations that console makers often impose as they planned to constantly monitor and update the game, functioning as a dungeon master. Later, according to Bleszinski, they wouldn't exclude out releasing the game on several platforms as they worked on it.
Fortnite's development was spread out over numerous of Epic's satellite facilities. The game also included contributions from the Polish firm People Can Fly, which had previously collaborated with Epic on other games and was acquired by Epic in 2012. For a brief period in 2013, People Can Fly was known as Epic Games Poland in order to be consistent with Epic's other studios. About 90 game developers were working on it as of March 2014. Later, in 2015, People Can Fly returned to being a standalone studio operating under its own name, but they continued to collaborate with Epic to improve Fortnite.
Transition under Tencent
There were some problems when Fortnite was first being made. First, Epic started using Fortnite to test the new Unreal Engine 4, which stopped development for a short time. Realizing that the game needed complex systems like those in computer role-playing games for player growth and itemization was another factor. They talked to system designers for well-known massively multiplayer online games, like Darren Sugg, to find out how to build these kinds of systems. The biggest reason for the slowdown was Tencent's investment in Epic Games in 2012, which led to the departure of several top executives, including Bleszinski. Epic has said that they needed to get ready to sell "games as a service" before they could do so. Tencent knew how to do this well in China, so in exchange for a big share of the company, they agreed to help Epic. Mustard says that Epic's choice to make Fortnite the main focus of its "games as a service" business model has caused one more problem. Because of the change in management, the team working on Fortnite needed new people in charge. For example, Sugg and Bleszinski, who was in charge of the rest of the design, talked at length about how the game worked. After Bleszinski left, Sugg had to become the main designer to try to keep the team's vision alive. 18: Rod Fergusson left Epic in 2012 after Tencent invested. He said that if he had stayed, he probably would have cancelled Fortnite by now.
In the meantime, Epic made some decisions about how to play that it thought set the stage for Fortnite. At first, players would have had to finish a minigame while building walls and other defences to finish the building. They found that the game worked better when these fortifications were built separately. This made it easier for players to build forts quickly. They chose to keep the game like this. Also, they were able to add some game types that were supposed to be in Gears of War 3 but couldn't be because of how the game was made. Because the game world changes when players build and destroy fortifications, artificial intelligence was used to help opponents find their way. Epic thought they were giving players a toolbox they could use to make new game mechanics based on the missions, which they could then add to with new objects as the game went on.
By November 2013, Epic had said that Fortnite wouldn't come out that year and that it didn't have a target release date, but that several of its studios were still working on the game.
Mike Fischer, the vice president of publishing at Epic Games, said in 2015 that the company "announced this game too soon" and that there were "very good reasons" for why it took so long to make. In the May 2014 issue of Game Informer, there was a story about Fortnite that said the game would be given away for free.
In 2014, when most of the bugs in the Unreal 4 engine had been fixed, Mustard said that Fortnite was at a "fairly functional prototype" stage. Epic thought that it would take another three years to finish the game and set up the important backend parts for the games-as-a-service model, on top of the time it would take to polish and balance it. Epic did several closed alpha tests to get feedback from players and help with development. The first closed alpha for the game, Online Test 1, ran from December 2, 2014, to December 19, 2014. The second test, Online Test 2, ran from March 24, 2015, to April 14, 2015. Epic says that the first alpha was made to "make sure all of our basic systems work" and "set a standard for how people play" so that Fortnite could get better. In the fall of 2015, after a Mac demo at WWDC 2015, Fortnite went into a closed beta test. A little more than 50,000 people took part during this time.
Epic showed off Paragon in November 2015, which was being made at the same time as Fortnite. In March 2016, Epic's CEO Tim Sweeney said that even after Paragon was up and running, the company would still work on Fortnite. He said this because a lot of the work on Fortnite would take time to get the right balance for playing. But it looked like Epic was now focusing on Paragon, so there wasn't much news about Fortnite. "After a good start, we think we should only do one big launch at a time. The next game will be Fortnite."
Early access release and Battle Royale spinoff
Fortnite was now scheduled for a 2018 release across Windows, macOS, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, according to an announcement made by Epic Games in June 2017. Prior to this paid early access period, which began on July 25, 2017, the game was made available to all platforms; gamers who had purchased Founder's Packs had access to it starting on July 21. According to creative head Donald Mustard, the prolonged wait from the game's early phases was caused by building Fortnite as a games-as-a-service model. Even though the game had been playable for the previous two years, Epic wanted to be able to create ongoing content for players to keep them interested in the title. To do this, they followed the strategy used by games like League of Legends and Warframe by planning timed events with distinctive rewards. Epic decided not to use their Electronic Entertainment Expo time or space in June 2017 to re-announce the game because it had already been announced in 2014 through Game Informer. They did this out of concern that news of the game would get lost in the flood of other gaming news that would be coming out of the event. Instead, the Epic marketing team collaborated with game streamers on Twitch and other platforms to give them early access to the game to play and promote on their platforms in the weeks preceding its scheduled release date of July 25, 2017. A few weeks prior to this deadline, Epic realised the game was playable but lacked all of the necessary content for a full release. In order to receive active feedback on the game as they advanced in production, Epic chose to release the game into paid early access on July 25, 2017, as opposed to delaying it any longer. Gearbox Software assisted in the game's physical media distribution at the time early access began.
Fortnite Battle Royale, which was first made available in early access around September 2017 and quickly gained popularity by early 2018, inspired Epic to create a distinct development team with the sole purpose of enhancing this mode. Epic claimed that their focus on Fortnite was resulting in decreased player counts for several of their other games, which forced them to scale back development on these titles, particularly Paragon. Epic announced at the end of January 2018 that it would shut down Paragon by April of that year and provide all players refunds. Players had voiced worry that the Save the World mode of Fortnite would suffer a similar fate as the Battle Royale mode as the Battle Royale mode has garnered more external attention in terms of upgrades and enhancements since that mode's inception. As of March 2018, according to Epic's Ed Zobrist, "Save the World" retention rates have been high and have increased since the launch of Fortnite Battle Royale. The company has since improved communications with the player base by sharing development road maps and known bug lists, among other things.
To ensure that it would be equipped to handle substantial influxes of new players, Epic said in October 2018 that the game's free-to-play release will not take place until at least 2019. The game will receive a sizable upgrade in November 2018 that will overhaul a large portion of the metagame interfaces and offer some automation and practical guidance through recently introduced characters for hero outfitting, survivor teams, and other tasks. A change in its loot box system was implemented in January 2019, which allowed players to know what goods they would obtain from the "loot llamas" purchased via the in-game store, akin to an x-ray; contents of such loot llamas will be randomised on a daily basis.
Final release
Epic announced on June 29, 2020, that the early access period for Save the World was coming to an end and that the game would be released in its entirety. The game's initial plans to be free-to-play were scrapped, and it will remain a premium title. Because of this change, they couldn't use shared items that were often used in both Save the World and Battle Royale modes of Fortnite. Epic planned to add season-long events called "Ventures" to the Save the World game. These would be different from the annual events and would give players new challenges. Long-time players of the Save the World mode criticised Epic for this change. They had noticed for a long time that the Save the World mode got less attention than Fortnite Battle Royale, with many planned features being dropped, and that the game's campaign, which was supposed to take place over four major acts, was only 75% done and didn't seem to be a priority. Both of these gamers and other Fortnite Battle Royale players who agreed with them started a hashtag campaign called "#SaveSaveTheWorld" to get Epic to put more resources into this mode of the game.
Art and design
In earlier iterations of the game, Epic used spookier and darker designs for the husks and other adversaries. The dark, sad tone was heightened by the use of assets from the Gears of War and Unreal games in many of the scenes. According to Bleszinski, this led to a "exhausting environment" that was too dark. In order for users to enjoy spending time in the game's universe without making it compete with games like DayZ, they chose to make the design more cartoony while keeping it spooky. Pixar, Tim Burton, and Looney Tunes movies as well as cartoons served as inspiration for the designs.
The "procedural generation" technique in Fortnite is used to create the maps for each mission. The game also contains a "AI director" that monitors player performance and modifies the complexity of the enemies they encounter in accordance with that performance. For instance, the toughness of the enemies will decrease if players are struggling to survive. The game once had a team-based player-versus-player mode in which one side attempted to establish a base around a central objective while attempting to assault the other side's target after breaching their own base. The final game did not have this.
Fortnite players on Xbox One and PC will soon be able to play the game on both the PC and PlayStation 4, but Epic hasn't announced anything regarding cross-platform play between the three platforms. However, on one day in September 2017, players had access to all three platforms at once for a short period of time. This problem—which Epic later fixed—was referred to as a "configuration error."
Reception
Sales
On July 26, 2017, it was announced that more than 500,000 digital copies of Fortnite had been bought ahead of time. On August 18, 2017, Epic said that more than one million people had played Fortnite.
Legal issues
A class-action lawsuit was filed against Epic Games in February 2019 after the firm introduced x-ray prize boxes. The prior loot box methodology used by Epic Games, according to the lawsuit, was unfair since it failed to inform gamers of the likelihood that rare items would be included.
In February 2021, Epic made an offer to resolve the dispute by awarding each Save the World player 1,000 V-bucks, or around $8. "It's the correct thing to do, and we feel passionately about random item loot boxes," said Epic's legal team. Additionally, Epic would retain around $26 million to cover substantiated claims from the class, particularly those from minors impacted by the case.