How does Black Ops 4’s Operation Heist match up against Fortnite’s Season 8 Battle Pass?

Epic Games started the “battle pass” content delivery system and Fortnite still succeeds in delivering top-notch content in its passes. Can Black Ops 4’s say the same?

Black Ops 4’s Contraband tier system has been criticized for containing too many “junk items.” These items are generally stickers, callings, and decals which barely show up in-game and provide very little reward.

While we agree that the tiers do contain much too many junk items, it’s good to keep things in perspective. So, let’s take a comparison between Black Ops 4’s Operation Grand Heist Contraband tiers and Fortnite’s new Season 8 Battle Pass.

Keep in my mind that Call of Duty’s Tiers are “free” while you have to buy the game and Fortnite requires a Battle Pass purchase to obtain most items. This did slightly change for Season 8 as the Battle Pass could be earned through challenges completed in Season 7.

We’ll give the direct comparison first for convience, but you can see stats specifically on Fortnite & Black Ops 4 below.

Direct Comparison

Alright, now it is time to compare the two in the best and most fair way possible.

In terms of total items, Black Ops 4 brings in 100 items and Fortnite has 115. Remember that Black Ops 4 has events during each Operation with additional tiers like the upcoming Shamrock & Awe event.

When we directly compare “junk items”, we must decide what counts as “junk items.” For Black Ops 4, we have selected Calling Cards and Stickers. For Fortnite, we will look at Sprays, Emoticons, Player Banners, and Loading Screens.

Black Ops 4 contains 69% junk items while Fortnite contains only 40%.

In addition, we want to point out that Fortnite offers 1500 V-Bucks (CoD Points) in total throughout their Battle Pass. This means you actually earn V-Bucks for completing the pass. Meanwhile, Black Ops 4’s Tiers cost nothing to start progressing, but they offer no CoD Points.

One more important comparison is Skins & Outfits. Black Ops 4 contains reskins of Specialists wearing slightly different color and animated GIFs. Fortnite also includes reskins, so we will compare them directly.

Black Ops 4 contains 12 Outfits/reskins to Fortnite’s massive 26 skins/reskins. These are generally the most sought after items and they are found lacking in Black Ops 4.

Grand Heist Contraband Tier Stats

Here’s a breakdown of item types in Grand Heist:

• Stickers – 45 (45 Common)
• Calling Cards – 24 (24 Rare)
• Outfits – 12 (2 Rare, 6 Legendary, 3 Epic, 1 Ultra/Character)
• Warpaints – 5 (5 Rare)
• Weapon Camos – 4 (1 Legendary, 2 Epic/Reactive, 1 Ultra/Mastercraft)
• Gestures – 4 (2 Rare, 2 Legendary)
• Weapons – 3 (3 Ultra)
• Specialists – 1 (1 Ultra)
• Jump Packs – 1 (1 Legendary)
• Reticles – 1 (1 Legendary)

Stickers and Calling Cards make up a massive 69% of the Tiers. Ultra quality items only make up 6%.

Common and Rare items sit at 78% in total with only single unique Blackout character skin. The Tiers only contain two unique Specialist skins with the other being simple re-skins.

Grand Heist’s Tiers include 100 items total.

As you can see, Black Ops 4 Grand Heist tiers do contain a massive amount of junk. It’s honestly a little unacceptable from a game that demands quite a lot of play-time or money for the Operation’s completion.

Fortnite’s Season 8 Battle Pass

We’ll break down the items according Fortnite’s own item descriptors, but we’ll equate certain item classes in our analysis to ensure the comparison is a fair one.

• Reskins/Recolors – 19
• x100 V-Bucks – 15 (Legendary)
• Sprays – 14 (13 Uncommon, 1 Rare)
• Player Banners/Icons – 11 (Uncommon)
• Emoticons – 11 (Uncommon)
• Loading Screens – 10 (9 Uncommon, 1 Rare)
• Back Bling – 8 (1 Rare, 7 Epic)
• 10% Personal XP Bonuses – 7 (Uncommon)
• Outfits/Skins – 7 (4 Epic, 3 Legendary)
• 5% Friend XP Bonuses – 6 (Uncommon)
• Camos/Wraps – 6 (Rare)
• Contrails – 5 (Rare)
• Emotes – 5 (1 Uncommon, 3 Rare, 1 Epic)
• Gliders – 4 (1 Uncommon, 2 Rare, 1 Epic)
• Music – 2 (Rare)
• Harvesting Tools – 2 (Rare)
• Toys – 1 (Rare)
• Styles – 1 (Epic)

Alright, Fortnite has a whole lot of categories, but what do the stats look like?

The Season 8 Battle Pass includes 115 items without reskins/recolors included. With these included, the total goes up to 134 items.

Out of the 115, there are 59 Uncommons, 24 Rares, 14 Epics, and 18 Legendaries.

Uncommon and Rare items make up 72% of the Battle Pass. Epic and Legendary items make up the remaining 28%.