Here’s Why Fortnite Sucks This Season

There's way too much going on in Fortnite's core Battle Royale mode in Chapter 7 Season 4. With sprites giving everybody a bonus ability, and Overrides fundamentally changing the way the game works in the middle of matches, we've got kind of a large pile of gimmicks that show up in matches at random, if they show up at all. It's made for a disorienting and inconsistent experience that's difficult to strategize for, because there's no real status quo to get used to. It's a big mess, and it seems to be affecting player numbers in a big way, both for the core Battle Royale mode and Fortnite as a whole. The thing about battle royale as a genre is that it's already, by its nature, varied enough from match to match. Loot is random, and the other players are random, and so there's always plenty of variety even if you drop in the same spot every single time. This has been one of the key selling points of the battle royale genre since before Fortnite existed. But at a certain point, adding more randomness doesn't make the game more engaging; it makes it more annoying, because some of these gimmicks change the rules mid-match. Take the Speed Shooter Override, for example, which makes everyo…