Fortnite OT3 Release Notes

Major Features

TL;DR:

  • You can now play Fortnite on your Mac! It's early, so if you have a Macbook Pro or higher we need your help testing out the build as we work on improving crash issues and performance.
  • A new party system lets you invite and play with friends across multiple missions.
  • An overall world map has been added to the game showing all the places players can push back the Storm!
  • New daily rewards system.  Make sure to click that button to collect those rewards!
  • New weapons including the Assault Ray Gun, Space Pistol, and Firecracker Gun.
  • Many other awesome things below!

Party with Friends

  • Party up with friends for your entire gaming session. Players in a party can join up before heading into a game, go into a game together, and come back out victorious from a zone to do it all over again. And chat with each other all while doing so!

  • Join a friend’s game, accept a game invite, or invite friends to your game from the new Invite/Join panel.

World Map and Mission Selection

  • Campaigns have been replaced by a new World Map that all players share together! Pick from one of three currently available locations, Stonewood, Plankerton, and Canny Valley. Get your homebase level up to get access to all three!
  • The World Map shows multiple locations where players can push back the Storm!
    • All players see the same Locations.
    • Use the pins to select a Location. They're glowwwwyy. Click them!
    • Each location has a difficulty level. A legend explains the difficulty levels shown by the pins.
    • Each location has its own persistent inventory. You can transition between different games and social groups without losing your items within a Location.
  • Each location has a unique set of missions. The missions that are available will cycle over time. All players in Fortnite will see the same missions as they cycle.

  • Pick a mission that offers the rewards you need to further your Home Base! Missions have varied rewards that are picked when the mission is generated.
    • The more difficult the mission, the better the reward.
    • The more difficult the location, the better the reward.
    • Missions have between two-to-three rewards.
    • Missions always have at least one reward for Power or Building Parts.
    • Choose Priority missions to help players in need.

Matchmaking and Priority Missions

  • After selecting a mission, all players will automatically go through matchmaking. A new game will be created if no open slots can be found.

  • Jump right into the action without picking a specific assignment and be rewarded extra for it as well! Meant to help players looking to fill out their game or get you quickly into the action.
  • Players who accept priority missions will get 20% bonus XP upon completion in exchange for giving up their ability to choose the exact mission they want.

Choose Your Hero and Go!

  • Choose which hero you want to bring into the game after selecting a mission.
  • You can see what hero class your teammates are choosing to help inform your decision.
  • No more waiting for everyone to be ready. Players now have a faster lobby experience that allows players to join the action independently of each other. Pick your hero and hit the Launch button to go into the mission immediately. You can also use the 2 minutes to tweak your Home Base to get the most out of your team rating bonus.

Homebase

Crew Overhaul Phase One

  • Design Intent: We're in the process of making some big economy changes that significantly impact the crew in your base.
    • ○“Managers” are now called “Chiefs.”
    • ○“Workers” are now called “Crew Members.”
    • ○We want chiefs to be more important and interesting, and transition crew members to be support for chiefs.
    • ○As support, crew should be configured to support the chief and help the player achieve progression goals.
    • ○Chiefs should be highly valuable and rewarding items that have a bigger impact on player power.
  • Changes:
    • ○Most of the existing workers have been removed. There are no more crew members with specific jobs, like Doctors or Engineers. Only chiefs have jobs.
    • ○Chiefs and crew members can now be leveled up.
    • ○Introduced a new set of chiefs, including unique high-end chiefs. These chiefs are still early and will grow in future builds.
    • ○Heroes can no longer be slotted into buildings, and there are new slots for Chiefs.

Survivor Personality & Set Bonus

  • Chiefs and crew members now have personality (you can see that in their tool tip - see picture). If crew’s personality matches chief’s (in the same building) he will get increased rating when slotted. On the other hand, mismatched personality may cause decreased rating (depends on chief)!
  • Crew members now have the possibility of having a set bonus. Pairing crew members with the same set bonus in the same building activates the bonus.

Reduced Number of Homebase Resources

  • Persistent Home Base resources have been reduced from four to two. Buildings now only cost some amount of Power and Building Parts; Supplies and Food have been removed.

New Daily Reward System

  • Added a daily reward system:
    • Each unique login day allows you to collect one daily reward by hitting the Daily Rewards button in Home Base.
    • This reward count is not streak or calendar based. There is no penalty for missing days.

Schematic and Crew XP Changes

  • Design Intent: We want to retain the depth of interacting with and upgrading all of the objects in your vault, but we want to reduce the frequency of destructive and error prone actions.
    • You no longer feed schematics directly to schematics to level them up. Instead, you just hit an upgrade button with an XP cost.
    • Many of the places where we would have given out dupe schematics, such as mission rewards, instead we can just give the XP for you to use directly.
  • Adjusted schematic and crew XP requirements and recycling rewards. The new curves are linear and increase with the rarity of the item.
    • Recycling rewards no longer scale with level (for now)
    • Recycling XP rewards drastically increased
      • White = 100
      • Green = 500
      • Blue = 2,500
      • Purple = 7,500
      • Orange = 15,000
    • Updated loot to drop larger XP amounts to account for new curves.

Vault Changes

  • The Vault has been changed to work with the new Schematic and Crew XP system:
    • Level up your schematics and crews members by selecting one and clicking the “Upgrade” button. Make sure you have enough Schematic or Crew XP to afford the cost.
    • Earn Schematic and Crew XP by playing missions. You can also disassemble schematics or retire crew members to gain more Schematic or Crew XP.
  • Bangs (“!”) that indicate new items in the Vault do not appear after they have been shown on screen at least once.

Gadgets and Traps now have Levels

  • Traps can now be leveled up to make them more effective
  • In order to facilitate level-scaling, gadgets which are intended to deal damage to enemies are now craftable. Unlocking the gadget on your skill tree will grant the gadget schematic. Gadget Schematics cannot be leveled, and are only equippable by the class which can craft them.
    • Added a new Gadget UI element for Crafting and Inventory screens
    • Ninja Stars, Dragon Slash, and Smoke Bomb are now craftable.
    • Plasma Pulse is now craftable
    • Frag Grenade is now craftable, and has 3 "charges". When a Grenade is thrown it consumes a charge. 1 charge regenerates every 25 seconds.

Major Store and Card Pack Update

  • New store front with improved presentation, usability, and overall purchasing experience. New version adds revised card design, iconography, and new animations.

  • Card packs have been overhauled. This is the first big step in a series of changes to the economy and card packs to make them more exciting, more consistently rewarding and more engaging.
    • Existing packs have been removed and replaced with Bronze Packs and daily rotation packs.
      • Daily rotation packs have limited max purchase quantity and randomly change each day. These packs are more specific versions of card packs, such as a Gun Pack or a Trap Pack.
      • Daily rotation packs drop an entire set of the item that matches their description, such as getting 5 melee weapons from a Melee Pack.
    • Schematic and Personnel XP can now be found in card packs. These resources can be used to level up schematics and chiefs/crew respectively.
    • Bronze Packs now have a chance to contain a Jackpot Pack. The Jackpot Pack has very valuable loot in every card.
    • Card packs automatically open
  • Chance to jackpot! Any card pack has a chance to upgrade each slot to more valuable cards, or contain even more card packs inside!

Weapons and Combat

New Guns

  • New Raygun Assault Rifle: this rapid fire laser gun is a high-tech alternative to the trusty Striker, and is great at clearing crowds of husks at mid range!

  • New Firecracker Pistol: this improvised gun fires bouncing firecrackers that explode and deal area of effect damage. Every day is now the 4th of July!

  • New Space Pistol: This powerful pistol shoots fast moving bolts of energy that bounce back and forth off walls, making it a deadly and tactical close-quarters weapon!

Improved Firing Mechanics

  • Improved targeting reticle for all weapons, with more feedback and better indications of gun fire spread. Added a revision to the ranged weapons' crosshairs.
  • Shotguns now have a reticle that more accurately represents their spread of fire and is distinct from other types of weapons.
  • Made significant improvements to how ranged weapon recoil and spread behaves for all ranged weapons.
  • Added charge-up functionality to the Zapotron weapon. When fully charged, the beam will pierce through multiple enemies.
  • Changed the Thunderbolt shotgun to damage and knockback all enemies within a cone
  • Added knockback to the Lawbringer Pistol.
  • Many weapons have had visual and balance modifications.

Smasher will smash your fort

  • The Smasher will now attack your base buildings, not just the path to the ATLAS (he is the "Smasher" after all!)
  • Significantly improved the Smasher charge rapidly breaking through multiple objects.
  • Fixed issue where Smasher was doing 10x intended damage to players during his charge.

Release Notes

AI/Enemies

  • Enemies now scale their damage at differing rates from one another.
  • Improved the ramping of enemy variety into the game over time. Why and when they appear should feel better.
  • Added quick-turn radial melee attacks for Husks. These should happen when players are circling around a Husk that cannot turn in place fast enough to catch you with a normal or lunge attack.
  • Fixed Husk's attack on wall with doors.
  • Husk now has a short-range lunge attack for when he's too close to the player for the normal one, but not close enough for the regular attack.
  • Ranged Husks prefer distance and range attacks to attack destructibles.
  • The Husk Pitcher is now an assassin-type enemy.
    • Focus on finding players to attack and hanging around until they find one.
    • Increased range.
    • Accuracy tweaks.
  • Fixed Poison Skull projectile collision. After impact, the center sphere will no longer have collision.
  • Changed the animations so that husks that are getting up can be knocked back.
  • Fixed the Husk Lunge Attack hitting floors he is standing on when he is actually intending to hit a player instead.
  • Fixes to the 'Sploder propane tank projectile.
  • Fix for Beehive Husks sometimes stopping their trail making behavior when they still have the hive.
  • Lowered Blaster health.
  • Gave the Blaster beams some thickness so they won't fire through the cracks in player built wall geometry.
  • Made sure the Blaster attack, Bee Burp, and Husky Husk Burp are never used to attack buildings.
  • Fixed Taker getting stuck while trying to fly over a low wall in low spaces (indoors, caves, etc.)
  • Fixed issue with Taker opening a portal under its target.
  • Fixed the Taker sometimes not rotating to attack his target.
  • Fix for Smashers accidentally being able to bump other Smashers out of the way.
  • When bumping into objects, the Smasher will no longer automatically smash objects that are too large.
  • Fixed issue with AI walking into a cliff wall instead of taking long detour to gate.
  • Improved the ability for AI with ranged attacks to make movements that allow them to use their ranged attack again.
  • Enemies can push players and other enemies out of the way when executing movement
  • Fixed enemies oscillating between attack points when their target was in a difficult to reach location like an elevated position.
  • Fixed enemies thinking they could fire through geometry when they were trying to attack from a position that was really close to the geometry.
  • Fixed exploit where players could use multiple Floor Trap: Jump Pads to stun lock enemies

Art

  • Redesigned the weak point effect to look more inviting and be a little more obvious on the first impact event.
  • Damage numbers increase in size in the distance to maintain a similar apparent visual size.
  • Husky Husk will react to attacks from the back with unique react animation from front/side attacks.
  • Improved the husk's skin textures and materials. They now use sub-surface scattering.
  • Lighting and post-processing adjustments were made to take advantage of Dynamic Exposure control. The world should feel more Vibrant, having more contrast between light and shadow, while more detail should be visible within shadows.
  • There is now a new-and-improved model for the Taker.
  • Fixing lighting in the sky. The sun no longer flares up when the lightning flashes.
  • Softened edges of throbber source material to prevent aliasing when shown at smaller sizes.
  • Enemies can now dissolve in a number of ways to indicate what weapon was used to kill them.
  • Made a subtle change to our global shader to improve visuals across the board, surfaces should appear less washed out and have more vibrant colors.
  • Fixed an issue with some potted plants that was causing them to appear unnaturally pink.

Audio

  • Added early crystal shard impact/break sounds.
  • Added Flaming Pumpkin Launch and Doppler-Scream-Jets on the pumpkins themselves.
  • Added loop, charge-up, and fire sounds for charged AMR rifle.
  • Added new shell-casing impact sounds to match the shell casing VFX when projectile weapons are fired. Pistols, assault rifles, shotguns affected.
  • Added sounds for when you add sub-buildings to main base in Home Base.
  • All Outlander spheres now have sound effects, plus the dimensional orbs have some personality.
  • All projectile weapons (and soon melee weapons) will play a unique “ready up” sound when you whip them out.
  • Thunderbolt Shotgun reload sounds set to proper content ... much more satisfying now.
  • Changed the 2-minute, 30 seconds left until capture music sets; helps clarify how long you have left to fight.
  • Continued tweaks to audio readability to burp cloud damage; new signature damage sound happens when you enter cloud.
  • Distinct sounds for various HUD menu items.
  • Fixed VO to play when a player spawns.
  • Flinger was spamming feedback, increased timeout to 20 seconds.
  • Gave the lonely grandfather clock ambient and impact sounds.
  • Generic husk updated to support death via red lasers as well as regular deaths.
  • Home Base and associated UI are now a clicky happy place. Also, check out the new music tracks for each context.
  • Husk pain and death sounds weren't reading clearly during combat. Tweaked their sounds to be more clear.
  • Husk slash, body impact sounds had been dropped somehow, they're back in.
  • Low health sound was getting annoying with repeated/long low health conditions. Updated sound and frequency of triggering.
  • Made Constructor class boots/foley a bit louder.
  • Made the ambient volume of the treasure chests a bit louder. Now players can hear them but not see them when they're in buildings.
  • Made the Atlas sounds better, clearer, and (in some cases) not as annoying.
  • New RPG and Grenade launch sounds.
  • New weapon fire and reload sequences for the AMR beam and Automatic Rifle Laser weapons.
  • Noticed the Cobra did not have unique reload sounds; updated.
  • Loot Llama now has a glorious death sequence and updated impact sounds.
  • RPG and Grenade Launcher weapons audio hadn't been touched in a long time; new fire, projectile and explosion sounds hooked up.
  • Several of the old and new pistol weapons had outdated audio; pistol fire and reload sounds updated to NewFresh (tm) quality.
  • Several of the pistols and a couple of shotguns had wrong/old/obsolete fire and reload sounds; all have been improved/updated and tested for quality.
  • Some doors had a HUGE attenuation radius. Made door falloff shorter.
  • Some of the Storm sounds (thunder, wind) were redundant due to the new Atlas/Storm setup. Mix during Atlas/Storm is now a lot more clear.
  • The Husky Husk pain/death sounds were super hard to hear ingame; refactored the sounds a bit so they cut through better.
  • Trap placement sounds were pretty quiet; turned up the volume a bit.
  • Turned on the streaming audio engine feature for music. Let's see if it helps with memory and performance.
  • Updated Cobra firing loop sounds to have more oomph.
  • Updated many "drop" and "pickup" sound for resources and items.
  • Updated mission update sounds.
  • Updated reload sound to have the chamber spin and shells fall out.
  • Some player and enemy characters were missing Stun feedback dialog
  • Improved guitar swing, impact sounds.
  • Player run footstep timing has been off for a while; fixed it so that the footstep sound interval is correct :) So, instead of ba-DUM-ba-DUM it's now dum-dum-dum-dum-dum. It's technical explanation, we know.
  • Improved health audio feedback to be much more clear. Folks had no idea they were being healed. So sad!

Environments

  • Three PvE areas are available from the globe map. Each with a different difficulty level (Normal, Hard, Nightmare).
  • Eight new buildings/terrains added, as well as minor improvements to many existing buildings/terrains.
  • Fixed compile errors on the crosswalk material, you can now safely cross the road in the legally defined spaces, without fear of getting a ticket for jaywalking.
  • It is no longer possible be prompted for a double search in the farmstead zone.

Gameplay

  • Due to internal changes, saved keybinds and control settings have been reset and will have to be remade.
  • Added “/RideThePony” emote.
  • Difficulty starts off low and ramps up quickly before reaching a lower, steady increase over time.
  • Diving boards will bounce players into the air.
  • Fix an issue where sometimes players would not see their default building pieces after selecting them on the quickbar after spawning, causing building to be broken until swapping to another item and then back.
  • Fixed a bug which would not allow the player to build under a floating Atlas device.
  • Fixed a bug with allowing the player to build through the gate but not being able to build on top of the Atlas after placing.
  • Fixed an issue where walls would persist if destroyed in a single hit.
  • Fixed switching weapons while stunned breaking the stun
  • Reworked how players & AIs are bumped out of geometry when it gets built.
  • Valuable wooden resource piles will now block building, so you do not accidentally destroy them. Loot them first!

Heroes

Commando

  • Commando: “Waste Not, Want Not” now properly awards two shots of whatever ammo type the Commando's gun was using.
  • Incendiary Round fixes.
    • Reduce Damage per tick by 90%
    • Now correctly stacks to 10
  • Enabled new Commando model in-game.
  • Ammo restored by Tech Clip skill will correctly save, will no longer have negative ammo in the magazine.

Outlander

  • Fixed a rare issue where an Outlander could become unable to use any abilities after using Anti-Material Charge.
  • Fixed an issue where Matter Collector could sometimes damage structures it was not intended to.
  • Fixed an issue in which Keen Eyes would show already looted containers as unlooted.
  • Female Outlander has a new and improved head model.
  • The Outlander now has new VFX and detection abilities when using the "In The Zone" skill.
  • Lloot Llama no longer spawns loot when he times out.

Ninja

  • Assassination stacks should now correctly remove when switching to a non-edged weapon.
  • Tuning to Dragon Slash.
    • Increase hit area of Dragon Slash.
    • Dragon Slash's impact should now display properly.
  • New material FX for the Ninja's "Shadow Stance" ability.
  • Added a shield effect to Ninjas.
  • Added visuals for a new Dim Mak ability to Ninjas.
  • Fixed Mantis Leap effects not appearing being visible for players other than the one performing the ability.

Constructor

  • B.A.S.E influence on floor pieces is now more accurate.
  • Rebalanced Constructor's Containment Unit ability.
    • Now deals 18 damage instead of 25.
    • Damage is reduced the farther away from the B.A.S.E. the target is, to a minimum of 7 damage.
  • Male Constructor now has a new-and-improved head model.

Weapons

  • Reloading a weapon no longer prevents you from opening doors. Instead, the reload will be interrupted by the door opening animation.
  • Changed melee weapons to only reduce durability when a melee attack actually hits something.
  • Axe combo attack incorporates a new default right click attack as well as more responsive base swings.
  • Fixed a bug where players could sometimes keep using an equipped weapon after trying to disassemble it.
  • Fixed a bug where weapon loot pickups were not always found containing ammo.
  • Lasers and rayguns now deal laser damage.
  • Added a hit-confirm icon to ranged weapon crosshair, to signal that you've successfully hit an enemy.
  • Found weapons start at half durability. Crafted weapons still have full durability

Homebase

  • Added tooltips to better explain the purpose of Home Base resources.
  • Added a tooltip the player's Home Base rating to more clearly explain it's purpose.
  • Updated Home Base building descriptions to better explain their benefits.
  • Made it easier for the player to understand the requirements of unbuilt Home Base buildings in terms of what levels other buildings need to be before being able to construct the selected building.
  • Fixed text for building upgrades so that they accurately display what bonuses you get.
  • Updated UI for browsing, specializing, and recruiting Heroes in Home Base.
  • Cleaned up the info displayed in the hero screen. Attribute values should be all be coming from the correct sources, fixed several buff/debuff indicators, modifications to the same attribute are grouped into one entry.
  • Command Center now properly grants inventory size bonuses.
  • The exclamation point above buildings will now be visible until you view the building, instead of persisting until you do the action that is new on the building.
  • Reduced the rating bonus on random chiefs/crew by 1 so that their rating equals their level + rarity bonus.
  • The Sparring Guild is now called the Combat Academy.
  • The flag icon you choose to represent your Homebase will now be visible on the flag flying over the Command Center

Items

  • Adjusted base coins to use a new scale, 1 card pack = 100 coins
    • Increased the cost of all card packs
    • Increased the amount of base coin drops to compensate
  • Fireplaces now always have loot.
    • Fireplaces are now more likely to have coal.
  • Received feedback that Coal was too dark and difficult to see. Adjusted the visuals of Coal so it is much easier to spot in Caves.
  • Account Level Rewards
    • Stripped down account level rewards and shifted those rewards to other faucets in preparation for future plans
    • Levels typically give two rewards now, instead of a higher variable number
    • Removed all currency and resource rewards from levels
    • Removed high tier weapons from account rewards
    • Added high tier pickaxes to account rewards
  • High-end chests are a little more likely to spawn in the world.
  • Increased bullet crafting output quantities
    • Heavy Bullets from 7 to 9
    • Shells 'n' Slugs from 7 to 9
    • Medium Bullets from 12 to 16
    • Light Bullets from 20 to 28
    • Energy Cells from 50 to 60
  • Increased weapon damage scale per level from 3.5% to 5%.
    • If a weapon is below its base power level, it now loses damage on a diminishing return scale. They lose 5% relative effectiveness instead of 5% cumulative effectiveness per level.
  • The crafting menu now only shows the highest level schematic when you have two of the same type
  • Updated crafting recipes for ingredients, score, and tier as needed for better balance and consistency
  • Starter schematics have been replaced with normal schematics.
    • Schematics that are given on account creation cannot be recycled.
  • The Clean Sweep showed as a purple item, but it was a blue item with blue stats. It should now appear as blue.
  • World gadgets:
    • Added bottle rockets!
    • Reintroduced and revamped M80s
  • Supply drop no longer uses homebase resources
  • Fix issue that could cause the sentry gun to fail to place if the player was walking/running at the time
  • Fix issue with sentry gun attempting to fire through walls when it has no chance of hitting anything
  • Prevent players from dropping their backpack items if they are kicked from the game, or if their connection times out

Tutorial

  • The Tutorial was adjusted to match the new world map and mission selection UI. It is a work in progress and does not cover all parts of the game
  • There is now an option to skip the tutorial for players who played it in previous versions of the game. If you skip the tutorial you will need to buy a hero building and recruit a hero to start playing the game
  • Decreased the amount of text in the tutorial and the number of clicks required to get through it.

Primary Missions

  • The type of gate mission will now be displayed via the mission info when choosing a zone to play (single gate, double, triple, etc.)
  • Fixed issue where in Multi-Gate mission the bonus for placing all Atlas within set time was not being started on mission loading.
  • Fixed an issue with Gate bonus objectives not completing properly.

Social

  • Chat output will automatically switch to Party when joining a Party with other players.
  • Chat with other players now functions while in a lobby together before entering the zone.
  • Fixed "Join Game" text styling, and renamed Join Game to Join Party

Traps

  • Fixed a bug where spike traps would visually get stuck in the up position.
  • Fixed a bug that caused traps to crit more often and do more damage than they should.
  • Remove scale, rotation, and position interpolation from the preview of items placed by the trap/deco tool

UI

  • Added new item and gadget icons.
  • Gadgets have their own inventory & crafting tab, replacing the Skills tab in the inventory UI.
  • Updated the enemy above/below icons for the radar to ones that read more clearly.
  • Added placeholder UI controls for game privacy settings. These will be enabled at a later point
  • Updated look and layout of confirmation window, login window, and error dialog to better match existing UI art style.
  • Added directional indicator to icons for wall, floor, and ceiling traps.
  • Added weapon-specific pickup icons for dropped weapons in the HUD radar.
  • Allies class icon will appear next to their name over their head.