The Warzone Feature Ninja Wants Fortnite To Steal

Call of Duty: Warzone has been out for a month now and players are beginning to make up their opinions about the new battle royale game. One of those players is superstar streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins. In fact, Ninja thinks that his personal go-to game Fortnite could stand to learn a thing or two from Call of Duty: Warzone. 

YouTube channel Daily Clips Central has shared a clip in which Ninja explains why Epic Games should consider replacing Fortnite's Reboot Vans with something more akin to Warzone's Gulag. For those unfamiliar, the Gulag is where players go in Call of Duty: Warzone when they're killed in battle. They are then given an opportunity to fight one-on-one for the chance to return to the field of play and continue the fight. It's a pretty cool concept that has been embraced by most Warzone players.

In the clip, Ninja says, "I wonder if Epic is gonna really do anything about [trying to] compete with Warzone's Gulag ... Maybe not for competitive, but some sort of 1v1, some sort of, like, way to get back in the game would be pretty dope." 

He points out the fact that Warzone matches have far more players than Fortnite (150 vs 100). Not only that, but most players find themselves defeated before the circle even starts to close in a match. As Ninja says, "There's just got to be more ways to keep the, the numbers up."

Ninja says that he feels the problem with many battle royale games these days is that "People don't try to win as much as they used to." Instead, players seem to be far more interested in making kills than making any kind of lasting strategy.

Ninja has been pretty vocally opposed to some of Call of Duty: Warzone's other features in recent weeks. Warzone allows players to spend in-game currency on creating their own custom loadouts for gear and weaponry, which hasn't sat well with some gamers, Ninja included. 

Ninja criticized this particular Warzone feature, tweeting, "Unpopular opinion. Custom load outs in war zone = everyone has a thermal sniper and there is so much less variety. Annoying getting sniped by 30 people and being thirsted from 400M away cuz some player has an HDR thermal 16x scope and kills me knocked." 

In other words, the ability to make the game feel less random on any particular match has lessened Ninja's enjoyment of the overall experience. Ninja has also had a few awkward Warzone streams recently, including one where he became visibly frustrated with his teammates and began arguing with them.  It's kind of a big deal, then, that he enjoys a facet of Call of Duty: Warzone enough to recommend that his favorite game add a version of it. 

Of course, not every streamer is enjoying Warzone even that much. Dr Disrespect has had numerous complaints with the game, particularly in regards to its inconsistent hit detection. Last week, Dr Disrespect seemingly threatened to stop streaming Warzone when he watched a replay of his character being killed that seemingly didn't register any of the shots he'd fired. 

At the time, Dr Disrespect said, "I give it a week ... I give this game, like, another week, week and a half."

Then again, Dr Disrespect also hates Fortnite, referring to it as a "dying" game. In other words, it's highly unlikely that making Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone even more similar to each other would sway him in either direction.

Still, it might be a good addition to add something like the Gulag to Fortnite. Even though Fortnite was kind of called out for adding Reboot Vans similar to the Respawn Beacons in Apex Legends, the feature has gone on to be an important part of the battle royale experience. At the time, however, it just seemed like one of many ways in which Fortnite was trying to copy what worked in Apex Legends. Heck, even Respawn's Moy Parra has dissed Fortnite for copying Apex's ideas. 

Maybe adding a Gulag-style feature would be the way to differentiate itself from the competition, as long as there's enough of a Fortnite twist added to it. Perhaps a mode where you have to build a staircase to get back out into the field? Would that be too tedious? Either way, Ninja seems to be onto something here. There's got to be a way of lengthening matches for players, particularly those just starting out with Fortnite who are being targeted by veterans.