Summary
Fortnite’snewest season introduces a bunch ofMarvelmythics likeWar Machine’s jetpack and Doctor Doom’s magical gloves, but the one that’s driving a wedge down the community right now is Captain America’s shield.
How The Shield Works
This overpowered disc of sheer pain is a game changer. It can ricochet between enemies, automatically hits its target so long as you throw it in their general vicinity, and blocks all incoming damage. Fly above your opponent and spam this thing and you’re almost guaranteed a win, until you face the final opponent and find… they’re doing the exact same thing.
I’ve won a couple games with the shield already, and I can attest to how powerful it is, but Fortnite fans are a bit fed up of competitive players sucking out all of the fun of each new chapter. So, even if the shield is a completely broken weapon, there are swaths of the community who want it to stay.
What The Fans Are Saying
A tweet went viral over the weekend from YouTuber Muselk after they shared a clip in which they fight an opponent using Captain America’s defensive homing missile, screaming in the caption that they “love shields in Fortnite”. But most of the replies are making fun of him.
For one, in the clip, he never changes up his strategy—he just shoots at the shield over and over, which will never work no matter how much you try. As many point out, putting some distance between the two and waiting for an opening might’ve upped his odds, or just using splash damage to get around the shield altogether.
Doja Cat recently went viral after raging over the Waterbending mythic—I wonder what she thinks of the shield.
“Legit skill issue, tbh” reads one quote retweet. “Fortnite players when a shield acts like a shield,” says another. “The head and legs are entirely visible just aim better unironically”.
While many are pushing back against the competitive players this season, others aren’t as fussed about the shield being “OP” or “broken”. Instead, they just find it boring.
In the clip above, you can see two people lobbing a shield back and forth at each other at the very end of the game, which supposedly went on for about two minutes. The best way to get around this is to use War Machine’s autoturret, but that in itself is hardly engaging. It’s a bit of a dull finale to a 100 player brawl.
Fortnite has been flirting with different loot pools for Ranked,removing cars and Nitro Fists during All Sweat Summer, so perhaps we’ll see something similar happen here. The competitive players can enjoy a Ranked mode without shields, while the rest of us get to play out our Marvel fantasies.
We’ll just have to wait and see; for the time being, the community is arguing all over again.
Fortnite
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Starting life as a tower defense game, Fortnite has become one of the biggest video games out there. Its battle royale mode dominates popular culture, featuring concerts by megastar musicians and crossovers with just about every brand imaginable, from Marvel to the NFL.
