1. The absurd amount of RNG in the game. It's actually insane. You've got randomized chests which have a very slim chance of dropping the very precise combination of items you need (Assault rifle, bolt action sniper, tactical shotgun, and ALL of these have to be of a somewhat high rarity). Considering they keep adding new items into the game, that just makes your chances of getting the items you need less and less. By the time I quit the game there were so many junk items that it was actually ridiculous. Even healing items are hard to come by now, and when you do find them they hardly give you anything, such as the small shields (which I also have an issue with but I'll get to that later) and overall it's just a mess in my opinion.
Let's have a look at the chances of getting a good loadout. I went to the fortnite wiki, and it was absolutely horrible. Considering it's one of the most popular games in the world, it's documentation is terrible. I couldn't find ANY data for the drop chances of anything except a few weapons, and the data given is mostly inaccurate. If you look up a location in the game, you can't even see how many chests are there. The wiki gives you the most simple, brainless description ever (the description for flush factory was "toilets are made at this factory" or something like that, I think it was even shorter), shows you it's location on the map, and then gives you a few vague tips that don't help you at all because it mentions things not even found on the wiki. "You can hide behind the crane" What crane? Nowhere on the page does it mention a crane! There's no screenshots of the place or anything! It just gives you the most simple text ever and expects you to figure out the rest from there...
Anyways, let's have a look at this data. Apparently, you have a 31% chance of getting a weapon in the Assault Rifle Category, which consists of 16 weapons, meaning you have a little bit less then 2% chance of getting any given assault rifle type. Naturally though, not all weapons are going to have the same rarity. I found a nice site that gives you the adjusted chance of getting each weapon, and to get a Legendary Normal Assault Rifle (as the other 4 types of assault rifles are pretty much useless, and lower rarities are as well), you have a mere 0.2% chance per chest. Of course, you could probably make do with a rare assault rifle, right? Possibly, but that's still barely a 1% chance. And again, the ideal kit also consists of a shotgun and sniper, which have even LOWER drop rates. Again, there are so many junk items that actually getting the items you want is near impossible.
And I WISH that was all the RNG in the game. Next up you have bloom, which is an issue that affects assault rifles. If you don't know what that is, it basically makes the bullets spray out in random patterns instead of in a straight line. It's not that bad at close range, but assault rifles are supposed to be long ranged weapons, meaning they absolutely suck. I prefer burst assault rifles myself, because they're more consistent in how they shoot, but they deal almost no damage and their firing rate is far too slow to do any long ranged damage. Once again, they're best at close range where you can more easily get headshots.
Next up, we have shotguns. Now these are, or WERE I should say, one of the most consistent weapons in the game (they still would behave erratically from my experience sometimes) but apparently Epic Games decided to change them, and now they're broken. Great. The problem with them is because they're so consistent, they're always the best weapon to use if possible, meaning that Epic Games tries to nerf them, but that ends up just making a different type better. We see this problem with Double Pump (and once again, I have quite a few words to say about that). Literally every decent player was using double pump, and epic decided to nerf it, which changed absolutely nothing, as then people start using double tactical shotguns, which achieved exactly the same effect, if not something better. But this means that players have to keep adapting to different things, as the one consistent weapon, never stays the same for long.
Finally, we have Sniper Rifles. Now what's the problem with these you may ask? Bullet drop. And the time it takes for the bullets to reach their target. Snipers are supposed to be long ranged weapons, however these 2 problems prevent them from actually being effective at long range. Bullet drop means that you have to aim above your target for the bullet to actually hit, which kind of makes sense because that's how it works irl, however this feature is HORRIBLE in shooters. The bullet drop is exaggerated so heavily that it's just horrible. Also, the time it takes to shoot. A quick google search will tell you that the average bullet travels around 2500 feet per second, which is about 800 meters per second, however it's waaaaaay slower then that in game. Getting a kill from 50 meters in game with a sniper rifle isn't the easiest thing to do, 200 meters is almost unheard of. That should take a FOURTH of a second. And once again, you guessed it, the bullets don't even fly straight all the time. So y'know what? I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I thought to myself "maybe sniper bullets don't travel as fast because they're heavier?" So I did another quick google search, and sniper bullets actually travel FASTER. The average sniper bullet goes 3400 feet per second, which is about 1100 meters per second. Getting kills with these should be exponentially easier, however due to the game's horrible mechanics, if you were to aim straight at the person, you would miss. If they were moving, and you shot, and they stopped moving, or turned ever so slightly, you miss. And that gives your posistion away, making sniper rifles, one of the 3 things you pretty much require in order to win a game, almost useless.
Then you got the circle. The fact that this just adds more RNG is bad enough, but combined with the building mechanic, the one thing that sets this game apart from the rest (aside from it being free >_>) it just ruins the game.
The amount of RNG in this game is already enough to make me want to quit, but when you factor luck into it, it's honestly just a nightmare. Like I stated earlier, most of the weapons do best at close range, which means if someone is able to sneak up behind you, they have an enormous advantage. And this happens WAY too often. With 100 players on the map, the chances of noone being behind you are quite low. If someone gets behind you, just three bullets from a blue assault rifle, which is many many times more common then a purple or yellow, which is what you ideally want, is enough to kill a person with full health and full shields. If someone gets behind you, you might as well be dead. It's so sudden, there's almost nothing you can do to stop it once they get there, and it's annoying as hell.
Where players land, where your bullets hit, what items you get, literally the whole game revolves around luck and RNG. And that's terrible.
2. The building. Probably the only thing unique about the game is it's building aspect and it's absolutely horrible. It's complicated to learn, with all kinds of weird pieces that you can make but no explanation of how to make them (I hear save the world has that, but what do you know, it's not free. Or at least, it wasn't when I was still playing the game), the control scheme is horrible, it can be exploited to an extreme extent, and there's just no good way to go about doing it. You build your tower too high, someone's gonna knock the bottom out and you fall and die. You build too low? Then someone with a high tower is gonna snipe you. And did I mention the controls suck? You have to press a button to switch between your weapons and building controls, and then use the overly sensitive mouse wheel and hope you don't scroll too far.
The time spend just gathering resources is incredibly boring and repetitive. Seriously, since building is the only thing that separates the good players from the bad, if you want to win you pretty much have to spend a good few minutes hacking away at trees, while also watching behind you for enemies. This also leads to a "spam-build" meta, where people just get as many resources as they can, and spam walls everywhere instead of actually facing the opponent in combat. It's incredibly annoying. Bases also take soooo many resources to build. The standard 2x1x2 base takes 150 materials assuming you do it on a completely flat surface and don't mess up at all. If you choose a bad spot, it could cost you up to 60 more, and mistakes cost yet more. Then you have to spend even more resources repairing it when it inevitably just gets shot down by someone with a minigun and bullets to spare.
Then you got the storm, which I mentioned earlier. You spent all those resources building a nice base, but guess what? Because of RNG you're forced to leave your cover, meaning anyone can shoot you since you have no protection, run a long distance, preferably find some high ground, and then spend a ton of resources building another.
3. Horrible item management
The item distribution in this game makes no sense. It seems like the developers just slapped a random number on each item without accounting for how it would impact the game at all. I mentioned small shields earlier. You get three of them, but you can only drink 2. What's the point? Now you're just left with a useless item in your inventory that restores a measly 25 shields, but won't bring your shield count above 50. Bullets can be very annoying to come by, and I often find myself running out by the end of the game. Items like the minigun rely heavily on spamming bullets, but normally you won't go above 200. And like I mentioned earlier, resources for building. Very annoying to acquire, and you often run out.
4. Microtransactions. Yes, it's a free game, But that doesn't excuse the fact that literally every skin, emote, glider, pretty much any item has to be payed for, and they're absurdly priced. It's 10$ for 1000 V-bucks. The LOWEST tier of GLIDERS cost 500 V-bucks. $5 for a GLIDER is absolutely insane. and that's the lowest tier! Legendary items cost $20. I think that's enough said. $20 for a single, cosmetic item.
You take a game like Neptunia (yes, I'm bringing neptunia into this and noone can stop me) Most of the dlc is free or $1. I would MUCH rather pay $40, even $60 up front if it meant I could unlock cosmetics through gameplay.
5. This leads into my next point. The fanbase. It's absolutely awful. I honestly can't stand to be around people who like the game. They talk about it nonstop. Most of them are complete jerks who like to make fun of other people. They have horrible mentalities, saying things like "players without skins are bad at the game" which is completely untrue and is just making fun of people who can't afford it or don't want to put money into it. It's really bad. You'll get yelled at for not liking the game, I've literally been threatened by people for saying the game is bad. It's literally all you hear about. Young people, old people, hardcore gamers, people who don't play any other games, people who don't even play the game but are talking about it just because everyone else is. I'm soooo sick of it.
And if you say the games bad, people just assume you're bad at the game, and there's no way to convince them otherwise.
"Fortnite sucks"
"You're just salty because you can't get a win"
It's such a toxic mentality and it really needs to end.
6. Limited time game modes. When you have 120 million players playing your game, there is NO reason that a mode like 50v50 couldn't become a permanent thing. But no, none of the game modes that people like stay. And when they do come back, it's often ruined due to meta changes, and ridiculous changed made by the devs. Just look at Blitz for an example.
7. The developers are horrible. Broken promises, weird ways of communicating with their audience, shutting down paragon and pretty much abandoning Save the World because they only care about one game. I could go on and on, but it's 4 in the morning and I really don't feel like writing any more.
