Fortnite BR is a departure from my usual quake/ut content. It is my first taste of the genre because the underlying games are not that interesting to me. Fortnite got my attention because of the art style and more arcadey combat so have been playing it since it was added to the base game. It is now free which has resulted in quite an active playerbase, very good for Australia/oceania as we now have our own servers and active community, which is important to me as playing with lag is not interesting. Have plans for a BR as a gametype article at some point but for now.. A streamer called Rhinocrunch seems decent at the game and has been trying to get a solo squad win – queue as solo in squad without checking fill.
Towards the end he sums up the reason he lost:
“I don’t know what I could have done, Its like RNG. If I would have just had, maybe, more shields and more meds, I think I would have been alright, honestly.”
If you have read my content you probably understand my stance on this, even though I have not written specifically about it. Decision making and playing a +ve game over relying on aim. A huge part of this is knowing when to be aggressive and when not to be aggressive, I am talking it. Lets look at this guys video and see if we can work out where he went wrong. Jumping into the action at 12:26 after he cleans up in the spawn town and proceeds towards the circle. Timestamp 12:25.
I have watched a few of his clips on youtube and not seen him mention “My primary goal is to play aggressively”. The below is based on the assumption that his goal is to win.
12:25 – After leaving the landing zone town with a fistfull of excellent weapons (Purple scoped AR, Blue AR, Blue GL) he comes across two players at reasonably long range. They are unaware that he is watching them and decides to fire on their position from long range, in the open with his scoped AR. If the goal is to win this is a questionable decision. Firstly it is a 2v1 encounter in a location where you cannot “cut” one of the players off from the other to kill. At a basic level it is a open shooting gallery where you are hedging your accuracy+weapons vs their accuracy+weapons, but there are two players, so even if their aim is less than yours, the amount lower it needs to be in order for you to roll them is significant.
Continuing a fight, even in a 1v1 encounter after missing the initial shots as you lose the element of surprise and opening damage. The fight changes from you dealing opening damage (ahead on damage) and then a kill (perhaps with damage taken) to trade damage from the same health points.
So the taking of this fight is questionable. If the fight setup was different perhaps it would have been acceptable. At a closer range the initial shots have more chance (easier to aim, less effected by spread vs target size, maybe damage falloff?) to down one of the targets, leaving you in a 1v1 with the remaining player. You could also say that he missed his initial shots but with the moving targets we were looking at the maximum effective range of the weapon he had equipped so were less likely to take them down quickly.
Allowing the enemy players to return fire rather than high tailing it after whiffing his initial shots was a mistake if shields were super important, or at all in my opinion. The 2v1 odds as mentioned before are quite bad in a direct conflict type scenario like this. At this point of the game it is unlikely that you will stumble upon extra shield potions, so conserving what you have is a great idea. Taking that bullet and burning the shield potion was a bad move. Rhino is obviously aware that shields are important as his closing remarks focus on them.
So after reviewing how could we play this with a better outcome? The first is to simply avoid the conflict itself – go west around the hill and closer to Retail Row, before heading towards the circle again. If engaging is the goal, and there are arguments for/against this, then moving to the house on the hill before engaging is probably the best option, which is what Rhino ended up doing. He got two knock downs while taking more damage. This would put you closer (more reliable first kill) to the two enemy players while also taking you away from the open area which was key to them hitting your shield the first time. So if this had been the first choice he would have preserved the shield while also engaging from a less vulnerable position that was closer to the enemy players.
Sure, if you picked up 2-3 shield pots you could take more encounters, but you did not pick them up and playing to what you are dealt is important. Most people, myself included can stand to look at their decision making and polish their game from that perspective rather than writing losses off to RNG, bad team mates and the like. Not to say all situations are winable but approaching them from the best direction for what you want to accomplish is important.
Edit : About a day after posting this it dawned on me that more needed to be added in relation to RNG. This comment could also be phrased as “If I had hit those initial shots then I would have gone much better”. And this is correct, however the goal is to hone ones decision making and positioning in order to lower random or less reliable aspects of a game. Blaming aim or not hitting shots is similar to this. Of course there are bad situations (like the end of the video) where you are in a terrible location and have very little choice in the matter, but this is not what we are talking about. Yet even in those situations one could review a game and go “well maybe if I did X things would have turned out different”. Where X is not “If I had hit 12 headshots in a row”
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