I used to be quite the big Fortnite nerd back in the day. I played quite extensively from the end of Season 2 until the end of Season 6 which was pretty much a full year. I bought all of the battle passes for the whole og 2018 and grinded out all of them to the max. The game was in a really good state back then and Epic did a great job of dripping small updates every two weeks to keep the game fresh.
I don't really know why I quit. I probably just got sick of being destroyed by all the Bob the Builders. The building was pretty much my only gripe with the game while playing it. I never managed to evolve past building simple shelters. Whenever I met someone who buildt a castle in 10 seconds I knew it was just over. It did do me good though that time I hid underneath the last guys insanely tall tower only to destroy the base so he fell to his death and I got the win.
A lot of the dudes here in the community have been playing Fortnite lately and I didn't quite understand the whole craze. Turns out they removed the building from it which seems to have invigorated the game quite a bit. They didn't fully remove it but instead made it an optional game mode. I ended up downloading the game thinking I could at least give it a try.
I played a few games with 
Caving in for the Battle Pass...
I've been quite the opponent to battle passes and I've made that pretty clear in comment sections here on chain on several occasions. Therefore it's a hard pill to swallow and come to terms with my hypocritical action of buying the current battle pass they got going. It does help a little bit that I only spent V-Bucks I had lying around from the olden days and didn't have to spend any money on it. Fortnite aren't the worst offenders when it comes to battle passes seeing as you can earn enough V-Bucks from the battle pass to buy the next one as well.
There's a lot of cool rewards this season and I'm mostly interested in the Erisa outfit. I guess they're calling them outfits now and not skins. She looks really cool and once you unlock her you can unlock more colors and variations of her. This is also true for the other outfits in the battle pass but they're not as cool as her in my opinion.
Luckily there's a ton of ways to gain exp now so you don't have to dedicate your life to it like you did before. There's daily quests, storyline quests, seasonal quests and milestones that all cash you a ton of exp. I've played for about 1-2 hours for 4 days now and I'm past lvl 30 already. This is so much better than in 2018 when you either had to play every day to do the daily missions or play for like 10 hours a day the whole season to max out the battle passes.
A lot of changes.
All in all I quite like all of the changes they've added to the game. There's a stamina bar now so you can't sprint eternally. You can slide down hills like you could in Apex. You can revive teammates like you could in Apex. There's a lot of inspiration taken from Apex.
They've also redone all of the guns and this is what took me the most time to get used to. I died a lot of silly deaths from using guns that wasn't made for the situation I was in early on. Now that I've gotten to try out most of them a few times I've found an arsenal that I like. The thermal scoped ARs are really good and I really like the revolver as well. It shoots just like the old revolver that I always used but it looks different. That seems to be true for a lot of guns.
The map is also completely different and you even have to discover all of the places to see them on the map now. That's also something that gives EXP. Some of the old locations have persevered while some are gone and replaced. There's also NPCs and AI-soldiers walking around that you can fight and interact with. Again something that gives you exp.
I'm gonna keep on grinding and playing to max out that battle pass. It really helps on my motivation that you don't need to grind 24/7. If anyone else is playing feel free to come by the Hive Gaming Discord where there's a bunch of us playing. Chances are high you'll be able to get in a party.
In the meantime I'm gonna keep cashing in those wins.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.