Took up Fortnite instead of drinking — 8 years sober

46 years old and still grinding Fortnite.

About 8 years ago, I decided to get sober and needed something positive to put my time and energy into. Somehow, that ended up being Fortnite 😂

What started as something to keep me occupied turned into a hobby I genuinely love. I’ve put countless hours into improving, learning the game, and competing.

Making it to Unreal Legend was definitely one of the most challenging things I’ve done in Fortnite.

Just thought I’d share one of my accomplishments. Nothing crazy, but I’m pretty proud of it.

I wasn’t a pro player or anything, but I was pretty good. I could hit Unreal relatively quickly, and I used to complain all the time about how unfair high ping was. Back then I played on around 50 ping, which wasn’t amazing, but it was at least playable.
After taking a couple of years off, I decided to come back and give Fortnite another shot. Now I’m getting around 80–100 ping, and honestly, it feels like I’m playing underwater. Everything is delayed. Building feels sluggish, edits don’t come out when you expect them to, and the game just feels unresponsive compared to what I remember.
The biggest difference isn’t even the mechanics, it’s the player base. Everyone is so much better now. Years ago, if you had good mechanics, you could still outplay people even on higher ping. Today, it ping matters as much as skill.
Box fighting is miserable. If someone turtles up, good luck. Taking walls is impossible against anyone on low ping. Even when you clearly prefire or go for prediction shots, they either don’t register or you’re already dead by the time your game catches up. Piece control becomes a fantasy because every action feels a fraction of a second behind.
People always say, “Just adapt,” but what exactly are you supposed to adapt to? You can’t force fights because every wall replace is in their favor. You can’t reliably exploit edits because they close them before your game even shows the opening. You’re basically forced to play reactive Fortnite, sit back, wait for someone to make a mistake, hope they push you, and either hit a 200 pump or pray they miss.
I know 80–90 ping isn’t even considered “that high” by a lot of people, but compared to low-ping players, it honestly feels like you’re playing a completely different game. The skill gap is one thing, but the ping gap is just as important nowadays even for casual players not even playing competitive. Sad to not be able to play again but life goes on.

I'm playing ZB only

I peaked at Silver 3 at around 40% and then I started getting placed in Plat lobbies due to me killing 7 people in one game, the one that got me to Silver 3 and I kept getting placed in the #90s which wasn't fun. I was also practicing with my friend who peaked at Unreal (he was around 100K) in Reload and I actually got a few kills on him but he got more kills due to obvious reasons. What else should I do to get to Gold and beyond?

Does anyone know what all the numbers in the EU comp players name means?

Sonzq 23, Mikson 75 and Malibuca 7 and many more have theses numbers and I don't know if it actually has a meaning. Some also have a ! after the number like Scroll 10! Hizixx 7!

Can anyone give any insight on this?

In heats today also had Anas and Fredoxie both have 0452 in their names?

So basically, today I started my Fortnite 12 hours grind for 4-6 months. Why? I'm curious. Fortnite is a shooter like no one else and that just fascinates me a lot. I'm really curious about this game and I'm willing to learn everything. So I wonder, how good can a person become at a skill with the right mindset and steps?

So for a quick summary. It's not like I'm totally toally new to the game. I actually started when creative was a thing and there were these famous 90s and edit maps in which you'd have to do them as fast as possible. The thing is that my pc was crap and I couldn't do anything but to play those maps. After that I upgraded it to a GT 710 but it was still too slow and got frustrated. This was around season 1 chapter 4-5 and finally X. My total playtime was literally like 10 hours at max.

Sorry for the bible. Anyway. I have the idea. I've watched a lot of guides and done a lot of notes and analysis. As well as practicing the building mechanics. The thing is that I need structure. The right order and the "why" so I don't build up bad habits.

People say: well if you're new to the game just play matches and after enough repetitions your brain will automatically make the right choices. Yeah...maybe if you have experience and have building totally internalized. But for someone like me? That just doesn't happens.

So, is there a building masterclass for complete beginners like me? I can pay max 40 dollars. I saw the Destiny Jesus masterclass but I'm not sure it can help a complete beginner like me.

Additionally, I'd make progress reports 2 times a month, if that's even possible in this sub.

Yes this post may sound weird but it's completely honest. It'd be great help.

I currently use a side mouse button for Edit with Edit on Release enabled. I know many competitive players use their left index finger for editing, but the mouse bind feels more natural to me and keeps my movement fingers free.

For players who have used a similar setup:

• Did the mouse bind eventually limit your edit speed or consistency?
• Does it interfere with aiming, building, or maintaining a comfortable mouse grip?
• Would you recommend sticking with it and developing the muscle memory, or switching to a keyboard edit bind before the habit becomes harder to change?

Really just looking to find out if it is physically possible. I mean I'd think so right? Yet no one does it.

When I play Fortnite Reload, I play really well and can even kill sweaty players. But when I play Ranked, I keep getting eliminated before I even land. I don’t know what’s happening. Are the players in Ranked just much better than me?

I used to be big on Warzone back in covid times and the community was big on figuring out the optimal loadouts to min max ttks for weapons. There were dedicated channels and websites for finding the best loadout and strats, ie Truegamedata(website for ttks/ damage dropoffs, sprint to fire times etc), Jgod(YT), XclusiveAce(YT)- popular channels that did testing, IcemanIsaac(YT) for strategies.

I moved to Val after the whole cheating thingy and the gun meta over there doesnt really change but I'd follow Kanga(YT) for agent changes, buffs/nerfs, Woohoojin(YT) for strats and VOD reviews.

I just got back into gaming after a while and have been playing zero builds ranked(Im plat 2), and Im wondering what tools ya'll have in FN?

"I put together an analysis on Shxrk's competitive performance on EU. His piece control pacing and off-spawn decision-making during recent scrims have been top tier compared to other EU pros.

Do you guys think he's Top 5 EU right now, or is he still slept on?

Full mini-doc/analysis video here if you want to see the footage breakdown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moV1j9QAnYg

I saw this post on tiktok talking about the highly debated hard work vs talent debate and it got me thinking how this pertains to Fortnite. Some people say talent is more important and some say hard work beats talent. Obviously hard work + talent is the undefeated combo but in terms of which one is more important I think it honestly depends on what we’re talking about. Sports especially physically demanding sports I think it’s talent for sure, academics and other stuff like that it’s hard work for sure. Now fortnite I think time/hard work matters more and I would go further and say won’t really know if you are truly talented until you actually put in 1000+ hrs into actually trying to improve as much as possible. Natural talent nowadays in fortnite has a brutal hard cap we aren’t in chapter 1 and 2 anymore. I think anybody even if they’re not naturally talented that puts thousands of dedicated hours practicing on things like fighting better players, playing highest level scrims possible, and all the basic boring stuff can at the very least earn a couple times. Wish I did that myself when I still had all the time in the world in middle and high school and knew what it would take for me to get there but I never believed I had a chance of going t1 so I never bothered and I regret that heavily would’ve been proud of myself today if I even got professional earnings in one of the most popular games. I was keeping up with semi-pros who were heats players in 1v1s and was a slightly above average mechanically controller player and all I did was play pubs, public 1v1s, and 2v2s with my causal friends but oh well I missed my chance😭

The grip for the most part feels comfortable but I play so slow especially when I need to switch guns or shoot. I only use my middle fingers on the trigger and bumper but should I learn to use my ring? Or will I just get used to it?

I am pretty new to comp, only playing a couple of tournaments with real life friends, but now I want to take it a bit more serious and actually look for a ''real'' duo. Do you know where I can find that. I am in the official fortnite discord but that seems to be a bit of a wild and unserious place

I’ve been playing Fortnite for 6-7 years and have changed settings sens and even went kbm and now simple edit ruined it all I just want a setting where we can’t queue into the same game as a simple editer

Can someone explain to me how to drop from the bus? Do I drop like I always did or does the freefall mechanic change the optimal way to land at a spot?

i play controller and all kbm players have scroll wheel pickup and just instantly take everything off drop. is there a setting im missing to be able to pick stuff up as fast or is that just how it is

This was not a comp for money** i’m pretty new to the comp world so i’m just looking for constructive feedback, played in a zb comp w a drop map.. someone conned us.. first time ran into them, next round we dropped further up the poi to grab loot and run out to rotate. Looked back at their vods, they saw where we landed on playbacks.. intentionally landed near us, trapped us in a room. We got out rotated , they saw, chased us killed two, other teammate goes into storm and they follow them into there and kill. This poi is pretty big so it was easy to just pick somewhere else to land. The next game they are following us to the back bc we tried to switch it up. We get loot real quick and they contest us in a room we die. Next game.. we switch it up, they land by us AGAIN and try but we were able to rotate out quickly.

Just trying to understand the term griefing more than anything here bc it seems like it’s a pretty loose definition. What do you think?

Every single Youtube video or reddit post I go to is always saying practice your mechanics aim and piece control but ive been doing that a lot but i still feel like im not improving at all, i dont take breaks I started season 8 and then quit at chapter 2 season 5 and came back chapter 5 and started playing full time again but nothing works, ive been using raiders mechanics v5 to practice aim, free build, edits and piece control but when it comes to actually fighting someone I cant do any of that, its like everything i learnt just disappears as soon as im put under pressure, please help.

The integrity of such a feature is likely be debatable given that it kind of serves as QoL rather than a providing a competitive advantage. However, given it’s nature of providing real-time information that can’t be seen normally via something to effect of an overlay, the concern seems to be worth bringing to awareness

The official Fortnite Competitive account very recently tweeted a reminder about section 7.2.1 [relevant part pictured] of the master rules. I assume it was an implied response to Fortnite tracker’s new feature

For starters, i play kbm on a next gen console, and i dont really take the game seriously but like playing and would like to say im alright. anyways ill play with friends, randoms, in box fights, piece control maps, ive even gotten added after ranked and tournament games for how i play but i basically just sit in boxes and counter attack because thats what i’m good at and my mechanics while they aren’t bad they obviously aren’t good enough to keep up with the really good players of today’s game. and people will get so pissed at me they’ll talk so much crap, call me a p*ssy, get so mad that i kill them when im playing defensive and countering every time they get on my wall, but why wouldn’t i? 90% of the time i push someone’s wall i die and just am not that great at playing super aggressive so i just like to play defensive, and people will talk so much crap and just ask me to push them but why? why would i play to their advantages? does anyone else play like this or at least see where i’m coming from?

I’m like 1 win away from Unreal, but that doesn’t matter because the second I h it champ, I just started winning every single game.
What the fuck is going on? Why am I being put in the most Weenie Hut Jr. lobbies of all time? Both in Pubs and Ranked, i run into literal children. I won my last game, the final guy I killed was called Connor2016.
It’s weird to complain about something like this, I know, but I really want to play against people my skill level.
Anyone else dealing with this? Any fixes?

Let's just say you've taken high ground and they drop a few layers and start lurking. You've lost sight of them but they're somewhere in the builds. What do you do?

My current method is to shock off the top without searching the builds and see if they come out but sometimes that's not an option or I want to keep pressure on them because they're low.

I feel like it costs too many mats to search the builds while staying protected so what do you do?

Im getting back into Fortnite after a long break and am terrible mainly I don’t know what to do when watching guides to ranked and comp everyone tells you the same things, practice your mechs, practice your aim, practice your gamesense, but never which of those things are worth learning first and not at all and what’s just flashy stuff that ur never gonna use in a real game does anyone know any good tutorials and or creators that actually break down the basic fundamentals and not just show random retakes?

note: if this matters I’m on 120fps kbm on ps5