Fortnite Questions

The Game Room
1

I believe I know the gist of this game, but I am not fully informed. My son is 10 and I thought perhaps he might enjoy playing it with me sometimes.

I get that it is Battle Royale…start with a group and last one standing wins.

Questions I have:

  1. If my son is playing on Android or Apple, can he play me if I am on PC?

  2. Does he need his own Epic account, then? To get a fortnite account?

  3. How bad is the online crowd? We really don’t do online gaming due to the verbal abuse and so forth.

  4. Can he and I play around on a private island(so to speak) first so we can learn how to play? I legit have NO idea how to play this game.

  5. Duo mode is the one where he and I can partner up, right? That is the one I think would be good for bonding and spending time together.

I have an Android phone and a computer(PC). I also have an Ipad Air(1st generation of Airs). I think my Android phone can probably run it.

Oh, I have a 2012 Toshiba Satellite laptop that is pretty dated. Maybe that can run it if it has very low requirements?

2
  1. Fortnite supports crossplay so different platforms can play together.
  2. Yes, if the two of you are going to play together.
  3. How bad is relative and it only takes one jackass to ruin a session. You can turn off public Voice Chat though so you don’t have to listen to anyone.
  4. There’s a private Creative mode you can mess around in. Also, your first initial matches are primarily against bots with the intent of easing you in. Conversely, don’t get too cocky when you start playing and win :wink:
  5. Yes.

Since the game is free, you can try it on your old laptop but it might not work well. There is a newish “Performance Mode” which is basically a graphics preset that’s below “Low” and designed to maximize FPS at the expense of prettiness.

3

Thank you for your answers, @Jophiel.

I’m not totally sure I want to get on board the super-addicting Fortnite game. I really prefer offline single-player games, but I would also love sitting next to my son playing this.

My Ipad Air is model 1 from a few years ago.

  1. Can you download Fortnite for Apple(Ipad specifically) still? I did it on Android by manually installing the Epic app and allowing installs on my device.

  2. Would it still run on and Ipad Air generation 1?

4

Afraid I don’t use Apple stuff (that’s not a statement, I just never had reason to) so I’m not sure what’s up with the whole Apple/Epic kerfluffle or if it’ll prevent you from using the iPad to play.

5

Me and my son (almost 9yo) play on a PS4 and a Switch, and have a blast together. He also has a nice squad with Cousins and classmates, which he probably has a better time playing with because they are better than I am.

I’ve never been able to get the building down to compete at a high level.

6

This is the part I don’t get. I mean, I get landing on an island, collecting weapons and armor, and fighting to the death.

What the heck is the building/construction aspect of the game all about?

7

Well, in other battle royale games if you get caught out in the open, you are basically totally boned.

In Fortnite you can build cover immediately no matter where you are. So you have options other than just getting destroyed because you got unlucky on positioning.

There’s also “build battles” which is a whole other dynamic and quite complicated…

8

Interesting. You can just build like in creative mode of Minecraft? No supplies needed for crafting?

9

Well you do need to harvest a little (wood, brick, or metal) with your pickaxe but it’s pretty easy to pick up enough materials to throw down a basic triangle.

10

There still may be the mode where you build your own island, but it’s been a while so don’t know if it is still there.

The building meta has changed over the last year, where before it was throw-up a wall or ramp fight and move on. Now the building is about getting height and complexity to prevent aggressive attacking.

11

There’s still a private island/creative mode to mess around and build on as part of the free Fortnite game. At least there was as of a few weeks ago when I watched my nephew mess around there.

12

You mean people leave it on?

13

I believe Fortnite is still kicked off of Apple products. It works on Switch Playstation and Xbox, if you have that.

My son plays squad (4 player) mode both with online friends and random players. Hasn’t had a problem beyond the other players not doing what he wants.

Duo mode is fun, as long as you don’t get too hyped up about winning the battle royale. My son likes doing missions, so I can help with that, and not worry about my pathetic building skills.

I’m finding the most addictive part for my son is the collectables. He’s a magpie and wants to collect everything all the time. Costumes (skins), tools, gliders and back bling are all for sale.

14

The Building/construction aspect makes more sense if one realizes that the Battle Royale game is just one incarnation of Fortnite. The first game released was Fortnite: Save the World with the Battle Royale game released some months later.

15

It’s been a year, but I think I’m going to get my son Fortnite on our new Switch.

Does he need an Epic account or something? I have one to claim all those free games, but I figure once he is active on the game, I might use my own account to play him on PC. I believe you all said Switch can play vs. a PC player on the same server.

I have yet to download the game to Switch, but I am going to tell him we’re getting it. He’s in 5th grade; the kids at school play so he wants to.

16

I’m a parent who had to jump through a lot of hoops to set all my kids up with epic accounts, so heed my warning: Definitely set him up with a full epic account beforehand. Whatever he’s managed to buy or unlock on whatever apple/android device he uses will be tied to that device’s account. I don’t know how getting kicked off the app store affected it, but you should be able to sign in with the google/apple credentials associated with that device to get into their epic account, which you can then upgrade to a full epic account by giving it an email address and password. Now when you download fortnite for the switch you can put in that epic username and password and they should have access to the items they had on the mobile account.

If you don’t care about that account, or it’s not accessible because of the appstore kerfluffle, then this won’t matter so much. Still, if you don’t do this, Fortnite will automatically make a new account tied to the Nintendo account you use on the switch, and it’s a huge pain in the ass to remove that automatically generated account and attach the actual account you want if you don’t do it right away. I had this exact problem in several different permutations across PS4, Xbox, and Switch, and it took a lot of painstakingly logging in to Epic with the device’s credentials, upgrading the automatic account to a full epic account (which requires me making a new email address every time) and then detaching that device from the account and closing the account. This is the only way to get the “log in to epic” prompt to come up again on a mis-configured device and get another chance at attaching said device to the correct Epic account.

17

My son has been into Fortnite on the Switch for about a month or so, perhaps a bit more.

He got the new season/content downloaded and installed today and then had a 30-40 minute wait/queue to get in a game. Is this common when a new “season” debuts?

He’s has almost no wait to get in game before now. Just joins a lobby, it populates with people, game starts.

Are they always busy beyond capacity when a new season starts?

18

I’ve had somewhat longer wait times at the start of a season before, never 30-40 minutes though. If it was right as the new content was available it seems plausible. I haven’t played much this previous season though, so I can’t say for sure.

19

My kid is a diehard fanatic Fortnite player. He has had me playing alongside him a few times per week over the past year–I had to get my own Epic account for this–and we play cooperatively using two or three different game modes.

These are, as you probably already know,

(1) “Battle royale” where you can play with friends against everyone else (PvP). About 75-90% the “everyone else” is an actual human player or team of people, and the rest are “bots” which are A.I. players salted into the game by Epic. You can tell when you’re fighting a bot because they typically have bad aim and don’t jump continuously / flail around like real human players do when under enemy observation and fire.

(2) “Save the world” (STW) which is a story and scenario-driven, PvE experience. The story is presented via radio-teleplay type dialog, and is often hilarious. According to my son, this was the original incarnation of Fortnite, but has since turned mostly into “battle pass” battle royale play, in which PvP dominates, and don’t forget to spend all your battle pass credits on fancy skins and new sassy dance emotes to show off when your side wins. (Don’t get me started…)

(3) Creative mode, and “battle lab” in which you can build up an arena of your own, or check out the new battle royale map in private, respectively.

My kid takes me to all 3 modes, but we spend most of our time in Save the World mode, as it is his favorite (he tells me it’s actually Creative mode he likes best).

He’s gotten quite good, over the years, at actual combat against other players. And here’s where the recent changes to include “non building” battle royale mode counts: It divides PvP players into “sweats” who overuse building, spamming walls and castles to hide from incoming fire, and players who actually have good aim and would prefer a more “realistic” experience. My kid is in the latter category.

The building in Fortnite is extremely fast, so much so as to be comical. One can throw up walls, ramps and other rudiments of a fortress in seconds and hide on the other side, confusing one’s opponents by moving about behind your shield wall and continuously building new stuff to defend and offer places to pop up and get off return fire. So it’s what makes Fortnite different from the other games, I believe.

@Mahaloth As for new season busy-ness, it doesn’t last too long; we have no problem getting onto the servers within a day or so of the new season. And seasons last at least 10 weeks so plenty of time to check out the new changes to map, available skins, story updates, etc.

20

He is on normally now and was the next day. I saw on the Fortnite subreddit that it was pretty widespread and gone the next day and that it was abnormal.