With Fortnite Season 3 Delayed, Fans Are Growing Restless and Bored
With fans excited over the release of the newest season of Fortnite, Epic Games has announced that they are pushing back the new content to June 17. The Device event is set to take place on June 15, leaving some fans restless to experience the new content and explore a new map with new POIs and places to explore. Epic Games made this announcement on June 3 and the gaming public has been reacting strongly to it ever since.
Most just want to experience the fun new Fortnite content to take their minds off of real-world happenings and the return to semi-normalcy after the coronavirus. However, some streamers are angry and refuse to play Fortnite until the new update happens due to the game becoming "boring."
In a recent Ninja stream on Mixer, the popular streamer admitted to finding Fortnite boring, citing that the past two seasons have taken half a year, whereas, most other seasons average around 80 days. This season fatigue is not completely unheard of - many players are experiencing the same feelings regarding chapter 2's first two seasons. Chapter 2 Seasons 1 and 2 have spanned three times as long as any other season in Fortnite, and despite all of the new content Epic Games has rolled out, from party royale to live events, players are finding it difficult to play the game's main aspect, battle royale.
Many are bored of the map already and want to move onto something new and exciting. Players also seem to want new content of some kind, even things outside of the season 3 release. Some of the most vocal responses to the Season 3 extension to June 17 were asking Epic Games for something, anything, to hold them over until the upcoming release. At this point, players just want new content, especially after playing the game through the quarantine for the past two months. It seems players have become so familiar with the map that they want a complete change of pace from the old grind.
In response to a viewer comment about Fortnite during one of his streams, Ninja exclaimed:
I don’t want to play Fortnite right now. This season -- it’s boring. There’s nothing new. I’m having a little bit of fun, sometimes, but we’ve been playing the same map. The only new places that they’ve added are places with Henchmen that beam you [and] laser you.
Click to enlargeIn mid-May Ninja addressed similar concerns in another stream of his. Aim assist is a major element of the game that has been keeping Ninja from playing it as much, that and the lack of new content in-game. Ninja stated:
I haven't played Fortnite really. I haven't legitimately played Fortnite in a long time. I'm literally just waiting man. Right now, it's just not in a healthy state on PC. I think Fortnite is doing a great job, I really just want that controller aim assist on PC balanced.
Just before the initial launch date of the third season in early June, Ninja and several other streamers started criticising Epic Games for making the feature too overpowered. The feature has still not been fixed, much to the dismay of many keyboard players, however, the impending release of Season 3 is more of a concern at the moment.
It is unknown whether or not the massive Season 3 update will bring changes to aim assist, but only time will tell. Whether it is fixed or not, it seems like many, including Tfue, will return to the game simply for the new content. Tfue expressed excitement at changes finally coming to Fortnite, and knowing his outwardly negative stance on the game, this is definitely surprising.
While players patiently await Season 3's release, many interesting things have been occurring in the world of Fortnite. Recently, some Fortnite players with the Mac version of the game have been experiencing a bug that only allows players to enter a lobby once half of the players in it have died. This creates a significant advantage for these Mac users, as they have fewer players to compete against, however, a massive disadvantage is lack of resources and supplies to build with. This bug only occurs after starting the game after a computer reboot, and it only happens during the first game after reboot. This might not seem like a big deal, but a player experiencing this bug could have the upper hand in the game and unfairly win a match without having to participate in most of it.
For the sake of both online matches and tournaments, Epic Games should look into this bug further and seek to update it as fast as possible, especially before Season 3. Word of the bug is getting around quickly, and if too many people find out about this severely unbalanced element in the Mac version of the game, it might create major issues for competitive play.
Click to enlargePerhaps when Epic Games stated that they needed extra time to balance the game in their extension announcement, this bug and many others that players might not even know about were what they were referring to. Maybe Epic Games were even trying to flesh out the Device event, to make it even more exciting than previous Season finales. At this point, all we can do is speculate until the actual release date, which is slowly but surely approaching.
Speaking of slowly but surely, in lieu of the Season 3 setbacks and flurry of live events in the Fortnite world, Destiny 2 tried to host its own live event... to little fanfare and mostly criticism. Riding on the heels of the multitude of successful Fortnite concerts and events, Destiny's live event was supposed to showcase the fall of the Almighty, a massive spaceship. Players were told a live event was happening and many showed up.
Click to enlargeFor ten minutes, no one seemed to know what was going on until players began noticing small changes to the background, lasers being shot at the Almighty from afar. Not much seemed to happen until the last ten minutes of the event, where the Almighty fell from the sky, crash landing and creating a massive shockwave. The event was roughly 90 minutes in length, and players were upset that not much of note happened during it. The last ten minutes were exciting, however, most players had left or gone away from the keyboard when it did happen.
Many are comparing this failed live event to its much more successful counterparts in the Fortnite world. Epic Games knows how to pace its live events and in-game story-driven ones, which is why the Season 3 delay, despite being annoying, doesn't seem so bad in retrospect. Rushing out content results in an overblown or minimal experience, which is why it is good that Epic Games cut their losses and extended both the Device event and the Season 3 start date. A boring map for an extra week is much better than a boring live event and a weak start to the new season.
Click to enlargeIn fact, with fan theories circulating about the map being flooded and Season 3 and Season X being linked with the inclusion of a character, named the Visitor, opening a rift above the dam, Season 3 seems to be building up to something huge. Some players have even gotten teaser loading screens of a black screen with nothing but low-volume ocean noise until the match begins. With all of the teasing and small in-game clues, players can only hope that the extra time spent in Chapter 2 Season 2 was spent making Season 3 even better. Only time (and the next week) will tell.
Images via Activision and Epic Games