The main gameplay for Fortnite Battle Royalefollows the battle royale genre's standard format: up to 100 players skydive then deploy a glider from floating buses ("Battle Bus") onto a consistent map, which includes random distribution of weapons, shield, and other combat support features. The goal is to be the last player (or team, if playing in small squads) alive by killing or avoiding other players. Over time, the game's safe zone (representing the eye of a storm that is ravaging the world), decreases in size, and players caught outside the zone will take damage, potentially dying. This directs the surviving players into tighter spaces, forcing player encounters. Players can loot defeated enemies for equipment. Random supply drops will occur during a match, providing random weapons and items.
Fortnite Battle Royale's primary distinction from other battle royale games is the building system. Nearly all objects in the environment can be broken down into materials (wood, stone, and metal), which can then be used to build fortifications of limited durability, such as walls, ramps, floors, and roofs. These objects may be used to help traverse the map, protect the player from gunfire, or slow down progression of other players.
The game is free-to-play, supported by microtransactions that allow players to buy "V-Bucks", the game's internal currency. V-Bucks are also shared with the main Fortnite "Save the World" game, which offers players the opportunity to earn V-Bucks by completing missions or daily quests.[1] V-Bucks can then be used to buy cosmetic improvements to the player (heroes, character and weapon skins, and emotes). V-Bucks can also be used to buy Battle Passes which accelerate the rate that a player increases their Tier within the game's "seasons" (each season lasting a few months). By raising their tier, they gain automatic rewards of cosmetic items typically around a theme. Players can still increase tiers without a Battle Pass, albeit at a slower rate.
Fortnite had first been revealed by Epic Gamesin 2011, considered to be a combination of Minecraft and Left 4 Dead as four players would work together to scavenge resources to built fortifications, traps, weapons, and other objects to survive monster attacks.The game ended up with a protracted development period, in part due to both external pressures, with the industry transitioning to a games as a service model, and internal shifts of focus within Epic (including focusing attention on their first free-to-play title Paragon) to meet the external challenges. During this period, Epic made a deal with Tencent, giving them about 40% of the company in exchange for their support for the games as a service approach as well as ready access to the Chinese video game market. Fortnite was confirmed to have a planned 2018 release in June 2017, with a paid early access period starting a month later; the game is planned otherwise as a free-to-play title supported by microtransactions. With release in early access, the game featured its primary gameplay mode, "Save the World", where players in teams up to four would work cooperatively to survive and complete objectives on randomly generated maps.
During the latter part of Fortnite's development, PlayerUnknown's Battlegroundswas released in March 2017 on personal computers in early access, and quickly became a popular and successful game, becoming the defining example of the battle royale genre. According to Mustard, the Epic team "loved Battle Royale games like [Battlegrounds]", and explored how they could make a similar mode within Fortnite's engine. They kept this mode in a separate development team from the main player versus environment modes for experimentation and as to not throw off the balance in the main game. The Battle Royale mode development was led by Eric Williamson with Zack Estep as production lead. Their goal was to develop the Battle Royale mode quickly from the core "Save the World" mode, putting off any complex features that weren't already in place as to launch the new mode as soon as possible; while they explored such potential ideas, they held off inclusion until after the main mode was launched. The development of the Battle Royale mode took about two months starting in July 2017 after the "Save the World" mode had shipping, and was aided by the Unreal Tournament team. Key differences for Battle Royale that differed from "Save the World" included a more limited progression for weapons, a small subset of traps, and a smoother, more natural terrain for the maps.They also wanted to aim for games not taking longer than 25 minutes, which led to some decisions of which elements from "Save the World" would not carry over. They had including Fortnite's building mechanic for fortifications, not sure how players would use that since the safe zone would continue shrinking, but found quickly that the mechanic helped to distinguish the game from Battlegrounds and was used by expert players frequently to win matches, and had since implemented more features to help players with rapidly constructing temporary bases.
In those two months of development, Epic's plan was to include Battle Royale within the paid Fortnite game, and originally announced this approach publicly in early September 2017. Only two weeks before it was released did Epic decide to make it a separate free-to-play title, fearing that having it as part of the paid package would slow down the growth of the title. Epic announced this change formally about a week after first announcing Battle Royale, allowing those that had purchased early access to Fortnite in anticipation of this mode to request refunds.This release, which beat out Battlegrounds to consoles, caused some concern with Battlegrounds developer Bluehole, as they had been working closely with Epic for Unreal engine support in Battlegrounds, and were worried that Fortnitemight be able to include planned features to their Battle Royale mode before they could release those in Battlegrounds.
With the popularity of Fortnite Battle Royale by the start of 2018, Epic split off a separate development team to focus on improvements for this mode. Epic said that their attention to Fortnite was causing some of their other games to see lower player populations, leading them to reduce development efforts on these games, particularly Paragon.By the end of January 2018, Epic announced it was shutting down Paragon by April of that year, providing refunds to all players.Players on a Fortnite-dedicated Reddit forum had expressed concerns that a similar fate could befall the Save the World mode of Fortnite, as externally, the Save the Worldmode has not received the same attention in providing updates and improvements compared to the Battle Royale mode since that mode's release.
Since release, Epic has added more features, such as new weapons and vending machines. It has experimented with alternative modes available for a limited amount of time, such as having 50-vs-50 matches and 5 teams of 20 players each; this was done to help explore what other gameplay features as well as to keep the game fresh for players.Epic does plan to add in ranked competitive play to be run in seasons, which is expected to start mid-2018. Epic is also able to deploy hot-fixes to the game to adjust aspects like weapon attributes and distribution, pushing these out in minutes if necessary should they or players discover critical issues.
Tencent, who is a partial owner of Epic Games, will bring Fortnite Battle Royale to China; the company is already involved in bringing and supporting Battlegrounds in China as well. Tencent plans to spend up to US$15 million to help promote the game in China, set up eSports tournaments, and fight against copyright infringement and clones of Fortnite that have appeared in the country.
Mobile
In March 2018, Epic announced it was making Fortnite Battle Royale for Android and iOSmobile devices. These versions are expected to have cross-platform play between the Windows, macOS, and Xbox One versions, which was enabled on March 15, 2018.While Epic has expressed interest in having full cross-platform play with computer, mobile, and both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions, cross-play between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One is an issue related to Sony's policies, according to Microsoft. The iOS version was released first, and is expected to be followed by the Android version.The beta version for iOS devices launched on March 15, 2018, and opened to all players on April 2, 2018.
The mobile release of Fortnite Battle Royalebrought in an estimate US$1 million in microtransaction revenue within the first three days of in-app purchases being available, according to analysis firm Sensor Tower. Sensor Tower considered these numbers impressive, compared to the early success rate of other popular mobile games, such as Pokémon Go and Clash Royale which earned US$4.9 million and US$4.6 million in their first four days, respectively. Sensor Tower further estimated that after one month, the mobile title had earned more than US$25 million in revenue, surpassing revenues from any other mobile games and other several top-grossing apps during the same period.
With the release of the mobile version and the interest from younger audiences, teachers, parents, and students have found that the game has become popular in schools, and can be a disruption within classrooms.Epic has since added warnings on the game's loading screens to discourage students from playing it during classes.The UK's Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Matt Hancock, expressed concern at how much time children were playing Fortnite Battle Royale and similar video games without a balance of physical exercise and social interactions.
SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA'S PAGE
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