Fortnite Devs Talk About Current Pay-To-Play Access, Future Plans, And That Darned UI
GameInformer's got a long interview-as-you-play session with Epic Games' Darren Sugg recently. The pair covered a number of topics regarding Fortnite's first few weeks of consumption by the public at large, tackling a few burning questions while also talking about the game's long-term plans.
One of the more salient points being brought up all over the internet is why people should pay for the game now if it's going to be free-to-play in a few months -- and especially why a beta is available at retail. According to Sugg, 2/3 of people in Europe still only buy physical games, so in order for Epic to get those people into the beta, "we had to produce some amount of physical disks."
Sugg also says that events, such as the unique loot being offered during the current "Founder's Month," are a big reason why prospective players might want to get into the game immediately. He expects new events to come in roughly three- to four-week increments, with new updates every five to seven weeks. The "Survive the Storm" update was just announced today, in fact.
The Survive The Storm update is coming in late Aug. / early Sept.
New mode. New weapons. New threats. Same scared llamas. pic.twitter.com/3RA9pg2qP7
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) August 10, 2017
For the future, more traps and weapons are in the works, but building components and ingredients are more in the conceptual phase than anything that's going to be implemented any time soon. When asked about radically different game modes, such as questing or raids, Sugg says they'll probably expand with more offensive game types, like the type where you seek out enemy encampments and take them out. Another concept is the ability to build tracks, so players can push bomb carts to an objective or mobile gun turrets.
Regarding the UI and menus, Sugg says that if 1.0 represents a finished product, they're at 0.25 right now and that more improvements and tutorials are to come. When told that one of the interviewers is still having trouble navigating the menus after 10 hours of gameplay, Sugg says that the difficulty players have depends on "how familiar you are with like-minded collection-based games."
There's lots more in the video, so make sure to check it out on the GameInformer site.
Related Articles
About the Author

Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.
More Stories by Jason WinterRead Next

World of Tanks in virtual reality?...
You May Enjoy

That’s when they’ll tell us the launch day for Patch 7.2 (that we’ve all probably guessed already).

The update is live and includes a bunch of bug fixes.

It got worse before it got better.

Closed Test 2 signups will open soon and the development between now and then will be combat-focused.
p2p is for subscription-based games