It can be easy to feel distant from celebrities. They earn millions, travel the world, and seem to exist with a sense of societal privilege we will never be subject to.
But deep down, there is a single thing that connects us – we’re all gamers. Fortnite gamers, to be exact.
Epic Games’ battle royale metaverse is one of the biggest games around and has been for years now with its myriad crossovers and seasonal updates
that add new characters, story, mechanics, and more to its constantly growing range of content. It is the live service game I’ve come to play several times a week,
determined to max out each new battle pass, so I’m in the loop for whatever comes next.
But this season introduced something new, and as the Avatar-themed event comes to an end and makes way for something Fallout flavoured, it turns out not everyone was a fan.
That includes popstar Doja Cat, who took to Twitter last week to complain about casuals who are using Fortnite’s bending powers instead of an assault rifle like a real gamer would. I can’t blame her, because the bending powers are a little bit busted.
Earthbending was briefly banned upon its debut because players were able to deal damage through solid structures and terrain. Evennow, it has a brutally generous lock-on that lets you deal huge amounts of damage across long distances without really aiming. Waiting for cooldowns to refresh doesn’t take long, reloads are fast, and sometimes it is more beneficial to carry around a bunch of elemental powers than search for high-level loot. At least right now.
Doja Cat doesn’t have beef with earthbending though – what she really hates is bending of the water variety. She expressed this frustration in all-caps tweets, labelling benders losers with no actual skills that were afraid to face her. I’ve done my fair share of waterbending, and it is pretty damn powerful if you know how to use it. Once again, the aim is generous and it can be used in both short and long-range encounters, essentially turning your lethal jets of water into either shotguns or snipers.
It can feel like an easy way to achieve victory and an unfair strategy to take when everyone else is busy grabbing increasing rarities of loot. But Epic introduced the crossover and made these bending powers so common for a reason, so maybe Doja Cat should just join in and use the powers herself?
Her other beef sits with the Chains of Hades, a seasonal melee weapon that deals amazing damage and can also be used as a hook to pull distant players towards you, at incredible speed. Get someone in a tight space and chances are they won’t make it out alive, with the chains dealing 80 damage to health or shields with just a swing or two. If you’ve got loads of rare loot but still get wasted by one of those, I can see why you’d be a little bit miffed.
Airbending basically acts as a get-out-of-jail free card when you’re in a scrape, allowing you to jet off across the map in seconds with no fall damage to boot. This is also perfect for getting the jump on unsuspecting squads, wiping them out, and running away before they’re even aware of what happened.
Doja Cat needn’t fear though, since the majority of these bending powers will be vaulted for the new season later this month, and likely replaced with limited-time abilities that are just as weird or annoying. Given the Fallout/Mad Max theming, perhaps we’ll be introduced to sweet power armour or customisable vehicles much more capable of combat.
Fortnite is so engaging because it is constantly changing things up with new abilities with each new season, unafraid if they end up slightly broken or unbalanced so long as the end result is players having fun. If that means annoying Doja Cat for a bit, then so be it.
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Source: USA Today
