Upgrade Benches Were The Best Thing To Happen To Comp

I guess this is an opinion, but I truly believe that upgrade benches were the most balanced way of reducing RNG

The current system is not bad, by any means. We have ways to get better weapons, we have an incredibly balanced early game system, and we have the gold system, which in my opinion is totally unneeded, but I can't really say it's bad.

Many will disagree with me here, but I think the comp aspect of Fortnite is losing it's flair with the crafting, gold and all of the quest oriented stuff. Crafting isn't a bad change, I think it's just unnecessary. I play a BR (both competitively and casually) for the sake of playing it how a BR should be played. The core feature of a BR is drop into an island, kill people, get better loot. LOTS of RNG with this, and a problem that has since been addressed near the start of chapter 2. Right now, we have drop into an island, pray for a blue or green makeshift, find 4 parts (regardless of the rarity, which is idiotic), craft shotgun, then fight. It's almost like the current system is too easy and too hard at the same time. Yes, the INITIAL off spawn fights are great. Shit weapons for everyone, may the best aimer + fighter win. But as soon as you leave spawn, if you still have a makeshift, you are screwed. Everyone has a purple pump or a purple scar.

I think my take here is that the game's crafting+other features are too easily exploited after the beginning of the game. I believe Epic did this in hopes to change the pace of the game, but I don't think it worked.

My solution to all of this would be to bring back upgrade benches with some changes. The current lootpool is fine off spawn. However, get rid of the whole crafting in comp and add sidegrades that cost mats. It would be fantastic if someone had the risk of needing to lose mats in order to sidegrade for better loot. The mat sidegrade for makeshift to pump would be somewhere around 30-50 of each mat. I think that's balanced. Adding the original upgrade benches where it took 600 mats to upgrade blue to purple would be perfect then. You would be forced to use tons of mats, but high risk high reward. That way, a combination of what this season presents with previous seasons would combine to make a really balanced system. This also allows people to quickly sidegrade to a green pump and just wkey and have fun without making a core mechanic of the game so quest based. Find guns, go kill. That's what BR is, isn't it?

Again, I don't "dislike" the crafting stuff, but I just think it doesn't solve the root of the problem as well as a combination between the current off spawn lootpool and upgrade benches would.