Pretty much what the title says. In my opinion, out of every new gamemode that Epic has released, Ballistic had the most potential, and genuinely could have had a massive playerbase if Epic didn’t screw it up.
The launch of this mode could not have gone worse, releasing it in early access before it was ready was a huge mistake. There was only 1 map on launch and the mode’s servers went down almost immediately meaning they hyped it up just for no one to be able to play.
This mode just needed longer to cook. If Epic added at least 3 high quality maps on launch and started rolling out paid or reward based tournaments immediately, the mode would have been a lot more possibly. If it had received the amount of time and attention and updates that the LEGO mode received, it would be far more popular and would have built a large, dedicated community.
The gameplay loop has already been proven to be highly profitable and popular through games like CS:GO, Valorant, CoD SnD, and R6, so Epic just abandoning the mode after they’re the ones who messed up the launch is so frustrating.
TL;DR: Fortnite Ballistic could have been Epic’s best mode in a long time if they actually put effort into it.
Forgot that gamemode existed
It’s okay. Epic did too.
They made a quest to play this mode so they at least remember it enough to force player retention on it
More unnecessary fragmenting the number of players; glad it kind of went that weird racing mode's route
There's like 2 million daily Fortnite players man splitting that number up between 5-8 game modes isn't going to get in the way of finding a few dozen non bot players to fill your lobby.
Don't dunk on Rocket Racing like that
RR is okay but it takes way too long to advance through the ranks each season and you don't get anywhere near enough exp for the amount of time it takes to play it. Needs some love from Epic.
i think a lot of players, like me, also just thought it was really boring. like you'd think a racing game in fortnite would be more fun but it's just buggy and boring
Yes it's definitely not the most exciting racing game. It feels half finished.
I play four times as much rocket racing and festival as I do any shooter modes
Of all the shooter modes, I could totally get into Ballistic more
They keep making new gamemodes and practically (or fully!) abandoning them after a few months. It’s an awful cycle
The potential this thing got and it's not used at fucking all. Played some games last night. Besides the people disconnecting the moment they start losing it was okay-ish. Guns bugged out at some point and only half of them rendered (as in, only the front half). The overdrive still doesn't work properly and only lets you speedplant in a couple maps. The other maps are still untextured. And honestly if they just have added ways to play TDM or FFA it would've been up there with Reload and Blitz. Coping really hard here but it's still early access so I really hope they can finish and add onto it because god I really don't want to play "skibidi toilet first person team deathmatch" or whatever is out there
It really just needs a TDM to attract a solid base of players. I'd love another fast game option besides Blitz.
Definitely needs TDM to lock me in, a recovered CoD addict going half a decade strong.
"I used to be addicted to crack, can you slip a little in my morning coffee" ahh post
Let them cook/marinate?
FN has damn near anything you could ask for
Wrestling (Rumbleverse) & Kickball (Knockout City) modes would be incredible!
If they just did a 1st person Zero Build Team Death Match game mode, that used POIs from the current island as the maps it would be a blast
I know that's all it would have taken me and my friends to be happy. Blitz proved people wanted more fast paced modes anyway, not the literal slowest low energy mode to ever exist in shooters.
If they did that, and added a free for all option too for when my friends aren’t on, I’d probably never play Call of Duty again lol
as someone who never plays with friends anymore, that’s what I love about team death match, yes you’re in team but you don’t really have to talk, and as long as you’re getting kills you’re contributing
Yeah but FFA is just personally my preferred way to play. It’s less “I’m playing this because my friends aren’t on” and more “I’m playing TDM because my friends are on” lol
I don't understand why the mode wasn't more like Unreal Tournament personally. Counter Strike sweats just don't fit with Fortnite vibes IMO.
You think arena shooters are less sweaty than CS?
UT lobbies where you're just getting instagib'd from across the map and snipers that hit you despite you moving faster than anything theyve seen in fortnite
the way the fortnite people talk about movement, there's no shot any of these kids could keep up with the arcade shooter movement speed.
Surprised they haven’t tried to make an arena shooter in Fortnite, although I’d imagine the audience has grown past older shooter types.
This mode was doomed from the start, they didn’t lean into making Fortnite’s take on a first person shooter, they made a generic first person shooter in Fortnite. So none of us were attached.
Even worse, a generic CS/Valorant rip-off which is objectively one of the most polarizing game modes AND the complete opposite of what the Fortnite crowd wants. They should have leaned into fast paced quick games like Blitz and not slow paced 1 life rounds where the full game drags on and on with literally not 1 match containing all players by the end
I always thought the gameplay and shooting mechanics all felt pretty unique to fotnite. I know SnD is a very popular thing in shooters but it’s popular for a reason, I don’t see an issue with Epic doing their take on it
Fortnite has 3 main things going for it. There’s the wacky gameplay and syle, there’s the collabs and there’s the building. Some people like all 3, some people like one or two but those are the main things that the Fortnite audience likes.
This mode has none of that, everything feels generic and grounded, there’s obviously no collabs and building because they don’t fit this type of mode, the mode would have probably also resonated with people more if they chose guns people actually like instead of the chapter 5 roster. Couple that lack of familiarity with the first person gameplay style that also means that you never see the hundreds of skins you paid for, and it’s easy to see why no one in the main Fortnite audience cares.
That’s a really good point and kinda what I was saying with the maps. They needed to fit Fortnite’s artstyle way more and instead they just feel like generic shooter maps.
or it was just something that was made possible with them adding ADS to the main game, so they made it.
It didn’t launch. It’s still in alpha.
All their non BR game modes are mismanaged.
STW should have been made free to play long ago. Simplify the metagame (get stronger mainly via leveling instead of survivor squads), make the mission select more like Payday 2 or Helldivers, and let people use vbucks to buy loot llamas to fund updates.
Lego Odyssey needs to work more on improving the core experience rather than adding collabs that sidestep the entire progression curve.
Festival isn't bad, but it could be better with a more reactive crowd. Let them boo you when you suck, and go crazy when you are on a roll. Different venues would also be cool. Guitar Hero 1 for the PS2 is more feature rich than Festival.
Racing is too buggy and has too low a skill ceiling. Anyone that likes competitive kart racing is playing MK or Kirby.
Rumble is actually fun, but it should have randomly selected gamemodes (attack/defend, king of the hill, payload, etc) and slower respawns. And add revives and more healing things to increase team play. Also let people select or even design their loadouts. Whatever loot you scavaged is gonna be replaced pretty quickly anyways. Honestly just make it like Star Wars Battlefront.
Brick Life, Party, etc should all just get scrapped.
Brick Life and Party Royale modes are good for people that feel burned out from playing and just wanna log on to chill and talk with friends on mic.
Is it just me or did ballistic get so much worse after they added more maps after skyline 10? Skyline is the only map that feels balanced to play one, while others like hammer fall or k zone commons just feel one sided.
I haven't played ballistic since early access but this sort of balancing issue isn't really new for the genre.
It's part of the reason why you switch sides.
me and my coworker created the whole visual look for the promo graphics so I’m bummed we haven’t seen more of it. We were pretty hyped with how it looked
Agreed. Epic spread themselves too thin by releasing too many modes outside of BR. Rocket racing, festival, delulu, blitz, reload. Epic can’t keep up putting out fresh content for all these modes when BR is still their main focus.
The result is lost potential.
They killed it by having a casual and ranked mode for a game mode that is explicitly competitive.
They need to remove unranked from it and focus only on ranked.
unranked has actually been removed for majority of the year. initially it was meant to be ‘re-added because of bugs,’ which happened and then was removed for some reason and forgotten about. now more casual players are forced to play with sweats because the matchmaking absolutely fucking SUCKS and I doubt they enjoy that.
No one wanted to play this mode from the start. Not because of the things you mentioned, but because it’s SnD
People are also getting tired of the BR formula. There’s no win-win situation.
If that’s the case then why are games like CS:GO, R6 or Valorant so popular? SnD is a very popular gameplay loop
It may be for that certain group of players but among the BR players (or for most of them) it’s not.
If we’re being real it’s because Fortnite has been out so long that a lot of children have grown up on br and not snd like the good ol days. It’s a googoogaga type game that we just happen to also play.
I still play it all the time, it ain’t bad! I enjoy it fs
Same! I have an entire group that plays it all the time
So you're the five guys I'm playing against!
Same, don’t understand the hate.
I was really hoping they would make a TDM mode.
They need to launch a big deathmatch mode.
They really missed the opportunity to do a more casual mode in first person
tactical shooters are somewhat hard to get into, also the mode felt a tad clunky because it was their first shot at trying first person
Some BR experience in first person would have worked way better
I almost exclusively play Ranked Ballistic. It’s got a pretty decent-sized player base.
Could have been a death blow to COD if it was even 80% as good as the multiplayer in CoD.
I dont think a tach shooter can do well in the FN space. You need to play a certain way which is so far out of the realm of fn gameplay.
I personally think them focusing on a less grounded fps deathmatch mode would have done better then trying to chase valorant and CS.
Also cosmetics alone would turn off a lot of serious tac players due to the clarity mess that is fn skins.
It should have just been a regular battle royale mode with First Person gameplay. That's what everyone wanted it to be before it released anyway.
Why not both? Make ballistic a mode but just add first person as a setting for BR
Cus nobody asked for a gamemode like this. There's already plenty of popular team based tactical shooters in the gaming market and we didn't need a Fortnite rendition of it. People who like this style of game will always choose something like CS2, Valorant or Rainbow Six Siege over an objectively lesser version of it made in Fortnite. Fortnite is trying to be a jack of all trades but it simply ends up being a master of none (except the original br mode and variations of it).
People don’t need to ask for something for it to be a cool idea. I remember Save the World players saying the same thing you are when Battle Royale was first coming out, and look where we are now.
How many other well liked and established competitors in the battle royale genre were there?
I think Ballistic is a great example of the decline of Epic. The started Fortnite by innovating the BR genre, and doing it better than anyone else. Ballistic didn't need to completely innovate, but it should have been extremely clean right from the start. Instead it was released in a broken state, and honestly never improved enough. It was embarrassing, but so was Rocket Racing, and even the Lego mode (their best effort, but still lacking in so so so many ways). Epic is dying, clinging to life by milking their only cash cow.
As someone who plays some Valorant and a lot of Fortnite, I have little interest in it and I’m not sure what they would need to do to pull me in. I’m open to it honestly! Just not sure what would make me play this over Valorant, which I prefer due to it more leaning into the OW-powers side of things.
Then there’s CS and R6 as well, which you mentioned. It’s a hard genre to break into I feel. It’s already somewhat-niche by its very nature as a more tactical/hardcore round-based nature.
I love this game mode and ill continue to play until the day they actually fully update !!
People say that about everything. Everything has potential. That's nothing special.
Have they still not fixed the issue where you can't rebind buttons on controller? Because why the fuck is the scoreboard bound to circle????
Look if epic get rid of the recommended modes being whatever brainrot crap, maybe people would see that it was a thing.
I always thought this was a nice experiment but never a full product. Fortnite’s player base just doesn’t overlap with these kinds of shooters. Ballistic is a competitive game mode and Fortnite already struggles to get 1/10 of its player base to occupy Ranked.
They also don’t want to fully commit by doing what other shooters have done, build better servers and netcode for the game. Shooting doesn’t feel the same. Everyone can be wearing skins so hitboxes are inconsistent. I don’t even think they have different audio cues for the material you’re stepping on. You’re allowed to leave the game and ruin the experience for everyone who wants to try it out.
fortnites netcode is too shit for something like ballistic
I play ballistic everyday and think its better than valorant and cs. Just has annoying bugs at times
I played some many ballistic matches. I couldn’t agree more. I loved being able to play zero build and ballistic interchangeably. Felt like two different games. I tried the Lego, the racing, and other modes but none of them felt as good as ballistic. Such a shame
They could’ve branded Ballistic as an entire group of first person arena style modes and been a legit competitor to Call of Duty’s regular multiplayer, just as BR is to Warzone. Instead it’s just a single mode with matches that go on way too long, and is Fortnite’s answer to search and destroy and similar game modes, which is in my personal opinion the worst game mode in Call of Duty.
I’m holding out hope that they add some more official first person modes to Fortnite eventually, whether it’s branded as Ballistic or not, because first person Fortnite honestly goes pretty hard, but I kinda don’t wanna play Ballistic as it is now lol
All they need is to make each name location into a bubble, bomb points random, and we have the best search n destroy games, every name location in a bubble for each map/game
My squad and I play a good amount of Ballistic mainly because if 5 of us are on, that means we're gonna get a few rounds of Ballistic. We got really good at the first map to the point where most teams will disconnect on us. We still get dogged every once in a while in other maps, but we're getting it down. If one person on our squad has to do something like take care of their kids or something, we go back to other game modes. Ballistic is CS with Fortnite skins and emotes, and I'm really all for that. Wish they'd give it more love. It's a great game if you've got a 5 piece and can't play other modes.
Off topic real quick, but I miss 6 person Blitz because of this.
Idk if they fixed it, but pinging was totally useless. "Ah yes teammate, go to the top of that skyscraper over yonder. Its a fantastic vantage point for your pistol."
Never would of passed up br
I forgot it existed. They literally released it and dropped it fast af.
I'm in a Ballistic match while reading this lol.
It’s a fun mode but so much wasted potential
Fortnite is the greatest game of our generation, it didn't miss it's opportunity
No game will ever be Fortnite. It was a once in a lifetime experience - for those that were there they know, but no modern experience will ever replicate those first 3 years of Fortnite.
IMO, every game mode of fortnite feels half baked except the BR variants. They all needed way more work to stand their own ground.
Like all the anger at Epic despite none of you realizing that we're riding down the waterfall of money from those first 3 years lol
Once that waterfall of money runs out and the player count drops beyond X, the game is done - which is why they are diversifying so much to get more games and more people to keep them fortnite engagement numbers up.
Played this a ton on release and had a blast despite the many issues. Put it away after a couple weeks and decided I’d play again once the game had more time to cook.
I came back a couple of months ago to a new game. The had new unfinished maps that had me thinking my game didn’t download all the files. Nope, just unfinished maps the released for no reason.
What’s worse though is the gunplay was changed to be normal Fortnite. It isn’t a tactical shooter anymore, people were jumping and sprinting and spraying me down. The whole appeal of a tactical shooter is that it’s more slow, methodical, strategic. I’ll never play this again, which is sad because I really enjoyed the game when it came out.
Nah; STW lol
I just wish they didn't apparently permanently get rid of unranked. I don't play that type of game much but it sounds fun, but I'm not going to play ranked since I'm not good at games in general and would probably get teammates pissed because of that.
Haven't played this since like th first night it released... Did they ever add any other different maps or changes etc?
It got boring really quick for me.
Epic: Tries to make Counter-Strile style game
Also Epic: Makes it a Fisher price feeling knockoff that doesn't feel anything like Counterstrike. Including terrible graphics and bad gameplay feel.
I thought it was gonna be a TDM respawn mode with not much stakes so you can just chill out and complete challenges, if I wanted to play CSGO or Valorant I would just simply download those games
Truth nuke
It should’ve been FPOV Blitz
“______ is the all-time worst!!!1!!!”
This sub never stops being dramatic crybabies
I play this a lot with my girlfriend I wish they’d update it
I only played Ballistic for the Poppin' Dark wrap
No it didn’t
My biggest issue is I can't find a game to save my life. I have to change servers in order to even get into one.
I think so too. I get the impression that Epic is probably stretching themselves too thin with trying to balance all of their other game modes
It’s a small but decent and consistent playerbase. I’ve gotten unreal twice, and there’s definitely a consistent community there Some devs are on the ballistic sub too, and it’s clear that they are trying to fix the balancing and have plans.
I think the team is just too small to get the gamemode moving tbh. The balancing is fine, some maps aren’t great and some gadgets are definitely better than others, but it’s not bad. But the bugs/exploits take a while to get fixed, and majority of the maps just being grey globs is tiring. The lack of updates, or better the frequency of the updates is what’s holding it back imo. After those main problems, they can expand the game to get more players
I mean if they give the official launch the proper marketing push it could still live up to the potential.
I doubt they will, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.
Not a miss at all. Counter Strike exists. Play that.
I hate how it reeks Creative mode rather than being an original mode like the other one, I hate the fact you have 7 rounds so make fights longer and boring, the maps are awful with enemies camping dirty.
Personally I just think that it was fundamentally doomed from the get-go.
It draws inspiration from tactical shooters but also remains very heavily within Fortnite's pre-existing shooter identity, so even if I try to play in a very deliberate way like I would with CS:GO or Valorant, I'm still going to be outdone by someone basically just playing Zero Build in first person mode.
If there's no reason for a player to play it like a tactical shooter regarding the most basic of mechanics, then it's not going to beat out any other tactical shooter regardless of how many updates it gets. The effort of closing Fortnite and loading up CS:GO or Valorant is tiny compared to the mild annoyance of something that's 90% Fortnite and 10% CS:GO being dressed up as something that's a 50/50.
This gamemode is just worse than the games its copying, plus its fortnite, even if it was better than R6 or CSGO not a lot of people would take it that serious. Me personally, i hate the csgo mechanics and would have liked if it leaned more to something like R6 or COD SnD
They haven’t updated anything about it. I love this game mode, but I took a 2-3 month break from the game and the only difference was that they textured the castle map.
It’s like they add new modes just expecting everyone to like it and when the numbers don’t hit as expected they just don’t even feel the need to try to improve it.
It was dogshit lol
They honestly need to age verify users I’m sorry when someone enters the game picks up the bomb goes mid with it gets dropped and then says “I’m winning I’m winning” like a 9 year old and then crying the mode will stay doomed until it becomes a separate M rated game it’s a CSGO clone in Fortnite
No game will ever launch then
Seems nobody understand what early access means anymore. It’s still in development and it’s has gotten better every update.
The last update was in august
it hasnt gotten an update in over half a year wdym
I love this game mode, but I'm so, so bad at it. I play it first thing just to piss me off enough to lock in for blitz lmao
I wish they’d made more parallel to their other core modes. The gadgets could have been 1:1 items from other modes but don’t look/feel consistent, and we could have had more of them be things you get in any of the core modes, like remote explosives or even traps.
I like Ballistic but there’s not enough reward since the playtime XP was reduced (across the boards). Games take a good amount of time and when I played, I wouldn’t go up in level at all…even for a win where I contributed on kills.
Tbh you right. I’d if it’s because the demographic( children ) don’t really care for this type of game mode. Ngl I wish it wasn’t just SnD maybe capture the flag or some other competitive game modes just to keep it not stale. When you point out that LEGO gets more update the demographic thing kinda hits even more. Epic not tryin to cater to a small net group esp when it actually makes no money if you think about it. What can you possible sell to make Ballistic more interesting? More goofy skins with weird hitboxes? Does that even still work lmao
It's still in early access.
For an entire year atp?
Yup.
It's not even out yet but I like it more than br but that's because I just hate the br game play loop.
And I heard there making a first person reload like mode but I just got that from some random YouTuber so I don't know how credible that is
It was like playing OG counterstrike but awful.