In Fortnite there is a problem: Currently, there is an 8 million dollar tournament that players can participate in online. But apparently the game is not yet ready to host tournaments with such prize money online.
Epic is rushing with Fortnite: The special thing about Fortnite is the speed with which everything happens:
- It only took two months for “Fortnite: Battle Royale” to be completed. The mode inspired by PUBG was developed by the “Unreal Tournament” team.
- Within months, ports to iOS and Switch were also launched – only the port of Fortnite on Android phones is taking longer
- In-game issues are fixed within weeks
- Many requests from the community are responded to just hours later
- And constantly new skins and emotes are coming in, making the money roll
Epic is greedy for success
Epic wants success: All this is because Epic perfectly masters its own Unreal Engine. It is tailored to the needs of Fortnite. But it is also due to Epic’s greed to take advantage of the moment. Fortnite is the largest game in the world – but for how long?
eSports under pressure to succeed
Players want eSports: The existing eSports organizations like TSM or FaZe started recruiting the best Fortnite players in the world for their teams months before Fortnite moved towards “eSports”. They knew: Epic would create an eSports scene for Fortnite. They simply have to.
Now it should be happening: And Epic has done it. On Saturday the first big official Fortnite tournament started: An eight-week series of online tournaments with a prize pool of 8 million dollars. For the 2018/2019 season, even 100 million are in the pot. The focus should be on solo and duo players.
LAN events went great
LAN works, online does not: So far, there have been two major tournaments of Fortnite:
Both tournaments were huge successes, with hardly any difficulties. Both tournaments were also held as “LAN” events on-site.
Online but disastrous
Lag kills the fun: The tournament on Saturday on the North American server turned out to be a disaster. Players had huge lag issues. After only 4 out of 10 planned matches, the tournament was prematurely canceled.
Here you can see one of the best players in the world, TSM_Myth, failing and dying due to lag:
Now, while the 8 million dollar tournament is already ongoing, it becomes evident that Fortnite cannot yet handle online tournaments at all.
Hardly any fights – 40 people in the final zone and lots of fortresses…
Also the format is difficult: There are also problems with the format. Who should receive the prize money for which performance? On Saturday, the highly lucrative victory was too important to the players. Therefore, the players avoided fights for as long as possible and built fortresses. This led to up to 40 people arriving in the last zones – that is not a nice experience for viewers when they have to wait so long for fights.
No pleasure for viewers: The “spectator tool” that made the LAN tournaments so attractive for Twitch viewers apparently did not work in the online version at all.
Nearly 8 million dollars prize money in the ongoing tournament and Fortnite is looking for a format
Tournament is running and no idea how it will go: Fortnite is now in the strange situation of distributing another 7,750,000$ in prize money over the next seven weeks. However, Epic still has no functioning or proven concept for how to run top-tier eSports.
There is no reason to panic – Epic enjoys great credit. Many believe that they will find a solution. The situation is still absurd.
Fortnite considers the 1st eSports tournament as an 8 million dollar test balloon
eSports players give tips: The participants in the tournament have already made suggestions on how Epic can solve the problems. They propose a points system where “kills” are really rewarded and the victory is not so important.
Fortnite experiments: Fortnite has already announced that they will change the mode next week and continue to experiment with it. They will also address the lag issues. It may seem a bit odd that Epic is launching an 8 million dollar test balloon. But that’s how the tournament series should be understood. Hopefully, Epic can operate as quickly and find a solution as in the past.
