Fortnite: Battle Royale (PC, PS4, iOS, Android, Switch & Xbox One) had its first major eSports tournament Summer Skirmish with little success at first. But now it is getting better week by week!
The bumpy road of the Summer Skirmish: Beneath the title Summer Skirmish lies the first major official eSports tournament organized by Epic. For eight weeks, 50 duo teams are supposed to battle for victory each week. Epic has put up 8 million USD in prize money. A team can grab 75,000 dollars for a stage victory.
Catastrophic start: Since everyone wanted money, the first weeks of the tournament were a catastrophe. There was camping and fortifying. No one wanted to play offensively, and then there were lag issues. It wasn’t until week 4 that the developers managed to turn the tournament around with the “Hold the Throne” and demand a more dynamic game.
This success could now be continued with week 5.
The interim status after 5 weeks of the Summer Skirmish tournament
The tournament highlights so far: To show the ongoing progress of the tournament, the developers have published some statistics on the tournament’s progress so far:
- The longest elimination (267 m) was achieved by HighDistortion, who took out MoNsTcR with a sniper rifle
- The longest sniper elimination (247 m) was achieved by InTheLittleWood with a hunting rifle
- In week 3, three duos dominated the competition with 24 kills
- Week 4 saw the largest discrepancy between kills so far. In the end, VP Jamside secured victory with a total of 26 kills.
So there is something happening in the game pace and dynamics. Instead of camping, players are really going for it and racking up kills.
Amateurs as secret stars
Amateurs on the rise: In addition to invited top players like Ninja or DrLupo, there are also tons of amateurs who qualified via showdown game modes. Anyone who expected these players to be easily taken out by the pros has been surprised.
Because the amateurs have achieved extremely good performances. Notably, the player Domentos shone particularly in week 4. He has so far scored three epic victories as the only player in his team and had 19 kills, placing third behind the two professionals BlaxTV and Teekzy.
Tournament set to improve further
The developers are constantly learning: The Summer Skirmish tournament is a valuable experience for Epic. Because with each week, the team learns more and can continually improve the overall experience. The following aspects are to be adjusted:
- There should be live statistics to better enable casters to comment on the gameplay
- A live observation feature like in the Pro-AM tournament should come
- Server performance has already improved significantly, but should continue to increase
- Work is ongoing to come up with good ideas to make matches more exciting and provide new challenges each week
That Epic implements all this seems quite likely now. After all, the Summer Skirmish has turned from a complete embarrassment into a fun eSports event that is finding more and more fans. It is quite possible that Epic will pull even more out of the tournament in the remaining weeks and turn it into a full success.
