In Fortnite, your matches could become significantly more intense and action-packed in the future. However, a change hinted at by the CEO of Epic Games is not well received by the community.
How could the lobbies become more action-packed? Fortnite could potentially have up to 200 players per lobby in the future. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, suggested this in an interview with Matthew Ball (via matthewball.co). Currently, a maximum of 100 players can participate in a match in Fortnite.
Larger lobbies could lead to longer rounds and more encounters with other players. A match would become significantly more action-packed due to more gunfights.
What does Sweeney say in the interview? In his interview with Matthew Ball, Tim Sweeney also talked about the future of Fortnite and Unreal Engine. When asked how Fortnite could evolve, he stated: “When you look at what is present in Fortnite today, you must recognize some of that as artifacts of the limits of the current technology we work with.”
One of these artifacts, according to Sweeney, is the limitation to 100 players per lobby. Sweeney explains that Fortnite matches have 100 players because the team could not accommodate 200 players on a server at launch.
Subsequently, Sweeney hinted that matches might not start with a maximum of 100 players in the future, but could be expanded to up to 200 players. This is one of the major challenges that Epic Games aims to tackle with Unreal Engine 6.
If you have a passion for Fortnite, you can watch the latest trailer for Chapter 5 Season 3 here:
Community expresses skepticism
What do the fans say about the possible change? Many players are skeptical about these plans and are concerned about their lobbies. They fear that there could be too many bots in the matches and that rounds with so many players would take too long. Additionally, some believe that their hardware might be too weak for such large lobbies, especially the Nintendo Switch.
The fans say the following:
- “I don’t want this 200-player mode; the mode is ruined if it has 150-175 bots and 25-50 real players.”
- “I don’t think players will like that the rounds will last at least 35-40 minutes.”
- “My Switch can barely handle Team Rumble mode; it would catch fire.”
- “They need to drastically upgrade their servers before they can implement something like this. The current servers are not stable with 100 players.”
Should you expect 200-player lobbies soon? No, from the interview with Sweeney, it is clear that this is something that could be feasible earliest with Unreal Engine 6. However, it is currently likely that Unreal Engine 6 will take several more years to be released – after all, Unreal Engine 5 was only released in 2022.
On July 23, the servers for Fortnite went down for maintenance. During this time, some new content was also added to the battle royale shooter. On MeinMMO, you can find everything you need to know about Update 30.30: Fortnite: Patch Notes for Update 30.30 – Everything about the new features and leaks
