Fortnite likes to play with mobility. The idea of the player moving beyond what can be done on foot is something Epic has toyed with for a while. Golf carts, planes, quads and hoverboards are all in the game today. The question is why. Vehicles in certain games make sense, but do not belong in Fortnite. Vehicles do not play well in Fortnite and ruin the competitive scene. Casual players like vehicles, but serious players know vehicles are trouble.
2 games played 2 times died to planes that randomly start shooting me, i love planes i wish they could should rockets😍
— FaZe Martoz (@martoz) February 20, 2019
Skill Cap
Vehicles in Fortnite require no skill, therefore lowering the skill cap. In the early seasons of Fortnite, players had to rotate based on the bus route in order to get kills. This increased skill cap because it allowed good players to be rewarded with kills. Now with vehicles, players fly all over the map looking for enemies to third party. While 50 health/shield per kill makes this easier to deal with, it still rewards bad players. Anyone can hop into a plane and spray down an enemy rotating in solos. Players who do not know how to build or aim can kill skillful players on a regular basis.
On the competitive side, vehicles provide an easy way out. Dr. Lupo tweeted a while back about surviving until late game easily by using planes. Flying up to the flight limit and boosting up allows players to glide down slowly. This makes it easy for anyone to place during tournaments and pop-up cups. Epic continuously nerfs planes and needs to recognize that they do not have a place in Fortnite. The competitive community pleads they will go away in season eight.
Bad Habits
Vehicles also encourage bad habits and stupid plays. Another broken mechanic with vehicles lies with the quad. Building two ramps and boosting off the top allows players to fly across the map. Using this mechanic, players can take fights in the storm and not worry about dying despite having no launchpad or rift. This makes it so bad players who don’t rotate well can push enemies despite the storm closing. Fighting these fights makes it harder for good players to rotate into zone.
Players also use vehicles like the golf cart and the hoverboard for too long. When players are using these vehicles to shoot or get away from enemies, they think the vehicle is going to save them. Staying in vehicles too long is a bad idea because it leaves the player exposed. Driving away will not save the players life.
Getting out of the vehicle is the best bet because it lets players build and shoot at enemies. Trying to escape gives the enemy shooting that player an easy kill. The same goes for planes that dive bomb or quads that boost past. Getting out of the vehicle and fighting will give that player a better chance of living. Good players will just shoot the enemy out of the vehicle, making the fight easy instead of fun and challenging.
Map Size
The Fortnite map is also just too small for vehicles. Games like PUBG and H1Z1 have massive maps where vehicles are needed to get around in time. Fortnite is easily playable without vehicles, players just need to be smart. Fighting in zone and using vehicles as an escape just promotes bad plays.
Back in the first seasons of Fortnite, it allowed good players to gain popularity on media sites because of their gameplay. Players like Nick Eh 30, Ninja and Tfue all got popular because they play the game well. Nobody wants to watch people divebomb players with a plane, it does not show skill. Watching these players rotate into zone and kill people with the zone pinning them was great.
Even with the addition of the winter area, vehicles still do not have a place on this small battle royale map.
Feature Image Courtesy of @_NicholasRivera
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3 Comments
Your article is actually terrible and it brings up no good points whatsoever. Your argument is weak and full of complaints rather than actual fact, you use both the benefits and the failures of vehicles to try and prove your point but you only hurt your argument by doing so.
You must have some common ground and be able to admit what vehicles do well and what they do not but you can’t even do that. According to you, planning around a random RNG rift drop makes you a better player than someone who plans around a vehicle that they can see right on landing. How does using a launch pad over a vehicle make you a better player?
It doesn’t, but you seem to think to does and that’s why you should be ashamed of this article. For a journalist (assuming that’s what you are), I would expect a stronger argument than this.
Please tell me your kidding, you mean to tell me that aiming and clicking with a gun that shreds through player health and structure health to secure an easy win in a fight takes more skill then planning when to use a rift that exposes your location, may force you to engage and plays into your rotation heavily which consequently decides if you will die to the storm or players or not die at all. You say that the article provides no good points and is just opinion however I can see one right here. “Using this mechanic, players can take fights in the storm and not worry about dying despite having no launchpad or rift. This makes it so bad players who don’t rotate well can push enemies despite the storm closing” It almost is if this is factual information against planes, however I can see you just must feel attacked because this game is probably how you determine your self-worth, so when someone challenges your opinion you have to respond without thinking and thats what you did. For a bad player that likes planes I would expect a better argument.