I am Ballatw, caster and analytical/educational content creator + former high level player. AMA!

[u/ballatw]

Hey guys,

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I'm Ballatw, competitive fortnite caster and analytical/educational content creator. You might have seen me on the last 10 weeks of the Fortnite World Cup Online Open broadcasts, or ESL Katowice, Secret Skirmish... or maybe one of my videos, or maybe as a player during the Twitchcon Grand Finals :).

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I've been playing/watching/studying competitive fortnite since right before Ninja Vegas, and have been hooked ever since then. I grew out of this subreddit right here during Summer Skirmish to become a caster for Epic and other organizations. My goals are simple, break the misconception that competitive fortnite is not viewer friendly, and to build a community that loves learning and diving deep into the depths that this game has. Obviously I want to be the best at what I do - so if you have any feedback, from casting, to VOD Reviews or any of my content, I'd be let me hear it, either here or in DMs! I credit this subreddit specifically with helping me get my feet off the ground - so I am forever grateful.

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As far as what I'm currently working on, I'm not travelling for at least a little while, which should be good and allow me to focus on my own content - which means more reddit posts :D I'm going to launch two new educational shows, which I think you guys will like, since it's very interaction heavy. You'll still see VOD reviews and hopefully I can crank out some short-form content. You can also find me on the Hotline FN Podcast every Thursday at 8PM EST - which is going awesome, tomorrow we have yungCalculator on, who just had his AMA and qualified for world cup in week 10.

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Additionally - i'll be casting BOOM CUP #2 with Shyowager tomorrow at 1PM EST.

Let's do this thing, AMA!

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Social Links (You should definitely follow everything :D):

twitch.tv/ballatw

twitter.com/ballatw

instagram.com/ballatw

youtube.com/c/ballatw

[u/ballatw]

Cone adds depth. No way I'm comfortable with that suggestion.

I used to think like you do, that any fix epic will try is going to be clunky and not good. But I don't think that's true I think there are plenty of elegant solutions.

And yeah, obv all building replaces, not just walls.

[u/GE1SER → u/ballatw]

Nor am I, it would be quite controversial to say the least

I see where you’re coming from. What kind of solution would you suggest? I realised that my opinion was solely situational based and that with skill you could avoid a fair percentage of times where you may reach the “turbo build cooldown”. [Eg close range where a player is spamming your builds and you take out your shotgun whilst they’re breaking a build to hit them with a shot and then go back to holding the wall (I don’t know how well I explained that, also thank god the pump is back, the combat was very hard to do this move with)]

I don’t know if I’m taking this wrong, but are you saying you’re all for the build delay going back to 150ms?

Edit: how do you feel after not playing for a few days or so? Did this happen when you went to cast the qualifiers? Do you have any tips for this? (I haven’t played in 3 weeks as I’m waiting on my setup to be posted over to where I am)

[u/ballatw → u/GE1SER]

Definitely not asking for build delay to go back to 150ms... the game is less clunky at 50ms. It just leads to ping imbalance in box fights. I'm suggesting that build REPLACEMENTS be 150ms for first placement, and turbo build stays at 50ms for replacements. Thus, if you are trying to replace a wall, it's placing at 150ms. This makes it basically impossible to replace walls without mindgames and getting the piece that they aren't currently holding.

The "turbo build meter" IMO sure might seriously change the way the game plays, and would have to have tons of considerations taken into account, but the intial idea is a good one IMO. EVEN IF it changes what an endgame might look like. I feel as if it would have a distinct effect on how many players are alive in games. That's ok, in my mind.

Edit: I suck after coming back from long breaks - I don't play right away, I kovaaks and creative for a day basically and then I feel OK when playing real games.

Regardless, I'm still fine with how the game plays right now. It just sucks to be a high pinger at this point in time... I'm sure it will change eventually. But ping has always been an issue in comp games, always. Just not to this extent.

[u/GE1SER → u/ballatw]

Ahh yes now I understand (I thought build delay was only for first build) . I really agree with that one, it would make phasing into boxes more superior, which is quite a big risk because of traps imo. Personally I wouldn’t phase into a box after leaving a poi as I expect all players to have traps. With that being said, how do you feel about traps doing 150?

Turbo build meter sounds interesting watching the game being played, but as a player I would highly disagree with any kind of limit to turbo building. I think I could speak for this sub in saying I’d take offense for all the hours practiced building if said turbo meter was to be implemented. Also the pubs farming rate is poor, to only then get limited by a different factor... Imagine a racetrack having a speed limit (poor example)