Chapter 3 Season 1 of Fortnite
What a Drift! (And some nostalgia)
I think it was a month back when the talks of Chapter 2 Season 8 being the last Season of this Chapter. I am assuming that if you have made it to this page, you would know some (likely even a lot) of the background about Fortnite — the basic idea, mechanics, weapons and the Map.
The build-up “The End” was a lot. I would like to believe that the leaks which about the Island flipping did not mare my excitement for the event. The new Chapter’s video was leaked too, so, I pretty much knew what was coming. What I didn’t know was the crazy End event and the strange feeling of nostalgia for the Chapter 2 Map.
Background
Chapter 2 Map was my introduction to the game. I started playing it back in April 2020, amidst the COVID-19 lockdown. I had nothing to do, my friends had nothing to do and we couldn’t hangout — so, we decided to hangout in a free-to-play Battle Royale game.
My Battle Royale Experience
I will keep saying this — I am and plan to be a casual gamer. I never really had the time, nor the resources to play the latest and greatest AAA games. In terms of gaming, I had stuck to older versions of FIFA which were forgiving in terms of smoothness on my onboard graphics card PC. Almost 2 years ago, I bought my first PlayStation, a PlayStation 4 Slim and my first game was — PES 2020. I thoroughly enjoyed playing adventure games — God of War (2018), Uncharted 4, Last of Us II (when it came out in 2020). I stayed away from FPS games like COD-Warzone and PUBG, because mobile games and First Person Shooter perspective would give me a headache.
The fact that Fortnite is in Third Person, was a plus for me and it being completely Free-to-play (not requiring PS Plus to play with my PlayStation Friends) was a plus-plus. The excitement of coordinating with three of your friends, to get the elusive Victory Royale was an adrenaline shot of the highest order in an under-stimulated COVID lockdown. That’s how I started playing Fortnite in Chapter 2 Season 2.
We started playing regularly for an hour. Fortnite had an element which was alien to us — building. Building on controller is anyway a little difficult, and on top of that, we had no idea how to ‘crank-up’ or ‘tarp’. We didn’t even know that those were concepts, until we met players who would wreck us with their edit-shoot-reset sequences. When the life came back to some normalcy in the end of 2020, we got less and less time to play the game.
Chapter 2 Season 4 was the first season that played a lot. I kinda skipped the Season 5, but have been playing almost regularly everyday, since Season 6.
The End of Chapter 2
By beginning of November 2021, there were plenty of theories of Season 8 being the last Season of Chapter 2. People were thrilled the news, I know I was. After playing the Chapter 2 for over a year, I knew the map like the back of my hand, even though I landed in a handful of POIs. For the sake of nostalgia, I would mention - the Spire Tower near Retail Row, the Lake House near the Spire Tower, Dirty Docks (not the most popular POI, but was one of my favorites simply because I landed there too often), Believer Beach (earlier Sweaty Sands), Weeping Woods (From the time of Wolverine being there) and even Boney Burbs. Over the Seasons, Chapter 2 had become unpopular for lacking Map changes, very few POIs were added, and all the changes were kind of underwhelming. Even my friends, who at this point had stopped playing regularly, would come online to find the Map to be pretty much the same.
In terms of Loot, few things were added, but nothing game changing - Pumps were still the Meta weapon. The trusty Assault Rifle was the go to gun (even though I liked the Pulse Rifle from Season 7). Rail Gun offered some novelty, but was quickly boring. The basic strategy to win fights remained the same - pump - build - edit - pump.
When 'The End' even was finally made official, I was thrilled! For me, it was quite late in the night - 5th Dec 230 am. But, I was too excited to care about sleep. I cleared my schedule and was all set for the event! I also planned to visit the map for one last time, in the BattleLab, drove around the Map, visited favorite places, set foot on my favorite POIs, which I knew would never come back (by this time, it had leaked that the Island is going to flip over), so there would be a new landscape and no storyline in which my favorite drop spots will remain.
The End
I queued up for the match 30 mins before The End, as soon as the door opened. The Event per se was exciting - the music was amazing, the cinematic transitions were awesome, it was a little like being in the middle of MCU's Endgame. When The Foundation finally came along, it was... something. Dwayne Johnson, with his usual swagger, carried the character very well.
The First Drop of Chapter 3
Every aspect of launch of Chapter 3 was a badly kept secret. The BattlePass trailer leaked a day before, so did all the new features. There's a theory that the Downtime for Chapter 3 was supposed to be longer, and Chapter was supposed to be launched on Tuesday (7th December). Somebody posted a tweet about a conversation with PlayStation support that the Chapter 3 would be coming online at 830 pm, 5th December, with a downtime of barely 16 hours. Right at 0830p, I was in front of my console, half-fearing that the hype had been for nothing. At 0831pm, the screen became washed out, and my character started drifting.
And that's when Fortnite servers went kaboom. So many players were trying to login, that nobody could get in. I was one of the lucky ones to play the first game of Chapter 3 as soon as it dropped! People started tweeting about not being able to find the Friend List (I played my first game a Duos). @FortniteStatus tweeted that literally every aspect of the game, except the game itself was down. It was frustrating, to say the least. I couldn't really play any game to the fullest of satisfaction, but it was thrilling to be part of something that so many people were hyped about.
The New Things in Chapter 3 Season 1 of Fortnite
After 2 days of playing the Chapter 3, maybe for a combined total of 4 hours, I would list out the new things about the Chapter. There are comprehensive videos about them, so I would refrain from stating the obvious and I would write from a perspective of a Controller Player -
All The Weapons are New
Not a single weapon from Chapter 2 made it to the Chapter 3. There are similarities, but they have different names and different qualities.
The Assault Rifles
There are two of these -
1. Ranger Assault Rifle - Pretty much like the Heavy Assault Rifle. It does higher damage, has slower fire rate and has first shot accuracy. If you can hit head-shots from far away, this gun will reward you
2. MK Seven Assault Rifle - This gun is being talked about a lot. It is the first gun in Fortnite, which gives a First Person Perspective. There's a red dot, to help you aim, it feels like a gun from any FPS game. It has very high fire rate, and shreds through builds. If you catch someone unaware with this gun, they will loose pretty much all their health, before they could place a build. It's like the Combat AR from the C2S8, but with a scope and almost no recoil. There's a slight right-ward drift which can be easily managed with even a joystick. My impression is that, it's a low-skill gun. All you have to do is point and shoot, with a high fire rate, all you have to do is make sure that you control the recoil by pulling your joystick towards left. There's a mythic version of this gun, found in Sanctuary, and you have to defeat The Foundation to take this gun from him. This gun is a **must have** in your inventory, even if it's of common variant.
Shotguns
Shotguns of this chapter are underwhelming. For the longest time, Shotguns were the meta. If you don't get a shotgun early in the drop and the other gun has a shotgun, you are pretty dead. They changed it this season. There are two shotguns in the game as of now, and both are for players who like to keep a traditional load-out -
1. Striker Pump Shotgun - It is the pump shotgun of this Chapter, and it's a far-cry from pumps of past. It does way less damage than the old pumps and has a slower fire rate. Unlike pump, it is inconsistent i.e. it has a higher damage drop-off. Even in its legendary variant, you cannot one-pump someone with full health. This gun goes with the theme of Fortnite trying to welcome new players. With old pumps, if you knew to build and edit, you can pump someone to oblivion without them being able to to do anything. Now, the fights are more balanced, even against seasoned players, because with lower damage everybody gets the chance to parry shots. The fire rate is slower than the older pump, so the muscle memory of when you can shoot the next shot is useless. At this moment, if you really want to use this gun, you have to carry two of these. After 2 days of using the gun, simply for traditional reasons, I've decided to drop it from my inventory if I find two rare SMGs.
2. Auto Shotgun - This is supposed to be the new tactical shotgun. On paper, it is as good as, even better than the old tactical shotgun, but the reload time in-game feels way slow. It does way less damage, even in its legendary variant, I would prefer using a Primal Shotgun for a spray shotgun, instead of this.
Sub-machine Gun
There's only one SMG in the game this Chapter - the Stinger SMG. And it stings. it's surprisingly good at medium range, it's fire rate his higher than the classic SMG and it does more damage than older SMG. It's magazine size is my only complaint - it's 30 even for the legendary variant (it's 35 for the legendary SMG). Being a controller player, I like to get into people's faces with an SMG, I feel that it doesn't melt builds like P90 (the Epic and Legendary variants of Old SMG) used to. I have decided to carry two of these, if I find rare variants, instead of a shotgun.
Hunter's Bolt Action Sniper
This is Hunting Rifle + Bolt Action Sniper. What it means is that you can shoot three bullets before having to reload, but it does way less damage than hunting rifle or the bolt action sniper. Even the legendary variant, does not one shot head-shot, the maximum damage is 198 to the head. The meta seems to be - Snipe + MK Seven. There’s a slight screen shake animation after you shoot this gun and the scope of this rifle is noticeably slower than pure snipers.
Sliding Mechanics
This is probably the biggest change in this Chapter. Adding Sliding to the game, changed a lot of things in the game. You can do everything that you can do while walking/sprinting. So, you can shoot, you can ADS (so, you can snipe while sliding!), you can build and edit while sliding. Sliding down hill is way faster than running down — practically though, if a hill wasn’t steep enough, players used slide down, but sliding with your knees, adds a refreshing way to play the game.
It gives a slide speed boost if you slide while walking on plains. Slide — Jump — Slide. The Slide keybind was a little annoying for me. I had to change three of my controller keybinds to incorporate sliding into my game, and it’s still not my first instinct, since, sliding can be so disorienting after almost 18 months of never sliding. Earlier my L3 button i.e. pressing the Left joystick was for crouching.
There’s a Slide Hold Time which is by default 0.15 seconds. I reduced it down to 0.1 seconds (the lowest Slide Hold time that’s allowed. I had to change my Crouch/Slide button to TouchPad of my DualShock Controller. Earlier it used to be my Toggle Pickaxe. Now, L3 is Toggle Pickaxe. It’s been nothing short of a nightmare to get used to pressing L3 to get my pickaxe out.
As a controller player, I would never use Rotate Build option, since I would hardly ever need to build rotated ramps. However, with sliding, you can very quickly build rotated ramps and just slide down a high point. So, tha’s something else I am yet to try. Tarping is a little faster with sliding and is certainly something that professional players would exploit. There are already, many sliding exploit videos of players editing and sliding into people’s boxes.
Knockdown Mechnanics
There have been so many instances when I would be knocked down and my teammate is trying to hold the wall and he runs out of material. I am knocked down and have max mats and heals, but I am of no use to my teammates. Not the case anymore! In Chapter 3, when when you are knocked down, you can access your inventory and drop down AND pick-up things, you can even open chests. Basically your ‘Interact’ button is active when you are knocked down. So, you can technically use the ziplines too!
While knocked down, if two people are revving, it is 2x faster and so is rebooting. Reboot vans are much louder than they used to be. This is important — you are not rebooted on the top of the reboot van, but you will come through a rift, so no instant drops of heals, mats and weapons by your teammates. I am yet to be rebooted even once, so more on this later perhaps.
Changes in the Build Mesh
This is the most annoying thing this Chapter. If there’s even a leaf of a tree, you won’t be able to build there! This has gotten my killed multiple times, especially with MK Seven in the game. I couldn’t build any cover for myself because of the stupid new Build Mesh. This will take time to get used to, but it’s certainly more difficult to fight in forest areas.
New Healing Items
Small Shields, Shield Potions (minis and big pots), bandages, medkits, chug splashes and chilli chugs (from Llamas) made it to this Chapter. There are two new healing items — Med Mist and Guzzle Juice. Med Mist has 150 units of spray. This is the only healing item in the game which you can use while moving! So, you could be sliding down a hill, healing! You could also, use it to spray in the general area, and if any player is in that area, they will get white health too! Guzzle Juice, when drunk, will bring you to full health, slowly. However, the healing effect stops, the moment you take damage. So, you cannot heal in storm with the Guzzle Juice, but you can pop a Guzzle Juice (takes very little time), can hold the walls as you heal!
Pine Trees Which You can Chop Down
There are certain types of trees, if chopped down, give you less wood, but break-off as a large log, you can use the log to float on water… That log can also break builds and can instantly kill a boxed up opponent — it’s like throwing a huge truck on a opponent from back in Chapter 2 Season 7.
That’s all for now, it’s been 2 days of playing Chapter 3 Season 1, and certainly more and more to talk about! I didn’t even touch upon — Tents, the new POIs and rotation routes which I would, in the next posts!