Fortnite - My View Of Things

 I will first say here that I am new to the game having only had played it about 9 weeks now.  Compared to most other players I have been encountering, that is basically a brand new player or a "newb" as they like to call us.  

Fortnite Battle Royal, which is what I mostly play, is an open world battle ground where 100 players are dumped into this world and you must survive until the end to win the game, otherwise known as Battle Royal victory.

You jump off of a flying bus and glide to wherever in the world you want to land.  People learn where the good stashes of loot (guns/ammo/health etc) are and they pretty much land at the same places every time.  You try to loot up as fast as possible because other players will be doing the same thing and instantly trying to find others to destroy.

Anyway, the game is interesting because it is so realistic.  Footsteps, leaves bristling as you walk through a clump of plants, swimming and the sound of the water, the action with holding a firearm, all of it s crazy real.  You get into a car, it runs out of gas eventually and yes, there are gas stations, but player beware, people like to hang out at those gas stations and ambush you!  

But there are some very bad things about the game that I find disturbing.  First, most of what you will find with players that actually have microphones to be able to talk to your team and try to coordinate where you are going and what you will be doing next not to mention helping out in the heat of combat are very young kids.  You come to find out they mostly don't have adult supervision and they are sitting there letting out strings of F bombs and cussing other players out because .... they can.

Fortnite has an answer to that tho, all conversations are recorded, the last 5 minutes of it.  If you report a player, they can hear exactly what is being said.  Many of these children don't understand that and just act out, but with some of them it's ridiculous. 

Second, this idea that it's only for kids. It's actually intended for mature audiences based on the content of the game with shooting other players. A large percentage of players are over the age of 18, so that dispelled that myth that kids bring up all the time: this game is for kids only, I am going to report you if you don't leave.  Notwithstanding the fact that THEY joined MY party. 

In Battle Royal, there is the option for solo, duo, trio and squads.  I far prefer solo for I don't have to put up with the nonsense from other people who are demanding you do this and that.  I will play the game the way I want to, thank you, I have won enough victories to prove that point.  But, when I do play a squad or a trio, you almost never find adults with microphones. Occasionally, yes, but few and far between. Most players don't have microphones at all as it stands. 

Well, got off the topic, people joining your party.  I don't go looking for other people, at all. I don't have to, they always find me.  For whatever reason, I level up quickly and was at level 638 on the last season, they just launched a new season so the level meter went all the way back to level 1.  I don't quite understand why they find me, but my lobby fills up quickly with people once I get online.  When you first turn the game on, you are in a lobby, standing on a circle style platform. As people join your party, they come into your lobby and they are also standing on 1 of 4 platforms. After 4, they are just standing around all over the place.  

Let me insert here that I play the game because I have a lot of waiting time at my job.  Sitting there doing nothing but waiting for the next thing to happen, surfing the web on my mobile phone is nice, but it kind of gets boring after a while.  The family I live with got me started on the game, I had been watching them playing it for a long time, I just never ventured into it.  I kind of shy away from video games, I find them mostly boring.  This one is far from boring and time passes quickly while playing it.  

Anyway, the other thing I find disturbing is the number of kids that stay up until midnight and later playing the game and then get up for school in the morning. And, playing the game constantly.  I don't understand parents allowing their children to play games like that constantly, day in and day out and again, having no supervision. There have been a few times I've heard a child cussing out another player that a parent comes storming into the room and starts cussing out their child, lol.  One of them went so far as to call their kid a racist and to "get the hell off of that game, NOW!"

I have heard that there are groups that you can join to find the types of players you are looking for. I haven't really looked.  I'm sort of in this funk where I am not that great at the game, at least not compared to a lot of what I come up against, so finding people of a certain bracket isn't really in the cards yet.  Most of these people have been playing for years and they don't remember the time when they first started and really weren't good at it at all either.  

I just felt compelled to give my view of this game. It's "new" at least to my world, I gave up on video games long ago, never really thought I'd get back into them but everyone here plays some version of them on various consoles and Nintendo Switches and the like.