How Epic Games Plans to Improve 'Fortnite' Summer Skirmish

Fortnite’s Summer Skirmish games are still moving right along with the sixth week starting soon, [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

Fortnite's Summer Skirmish games are still moving right along with the sixth week starting soon, but Epic Games is far from finished when it comes to improving the competitive experience for players and viewers.

The Summer Skirmish games is a way for Epic Games to bring the best Fortnite players directlyto viewers who want to see some high-level play. Those top-tier players who are competing also have a lot on the line with thousands in prize money being put up buy Epic Games to reward those who perform above all the others. You can see an example of these Summer Skirmish events in the Week 5 Day 2 video above that lasts just under five hours and pans back and forth to a cast of streamers as they compete for a Victory Royale, a video that's accumulated over 1.1 million views — a typical count for these streams.

With the summer game mode now at its midway mark, Epic Games offered a recap of how things have gone so far with some interesting stats for the past few weeks. Longest elimination, who's leading the pack in terms of wins, and more were covered in the post, but Epic Games also laid out its plans for improving the rest of the Summer Skirmish games.

"Continuing to improve server performance remains a top priority," Epic Games said. "We've integrated a number of improvements over the course of the Summer Skirmish series, however we still aren't quite where we'd like to be. We're continuing to look hard at server performance with multiple daily playtests where we capture server performance and identify areas for improvement. We'll keep taking the things we learn from playtests, Skirmish events, and live server data to push the envelope for high intensity Battle Royale.

Viewers who watched last weekend will also recall that an experimental version of the Live Spectating tool was available during the Pro-Am event. The plan is to bring this to the weekly broadcasts to allow for a more immersive experience. Live statistics are another area where Epic Games hopes to improve, something that the game's analytics team is working on to ensure stats are quickly delivered to players when they want them.

From a gameplay perspective, Epic Games is also continuing to explore new game modes that can be implemented during the Summer Skirmish events.

"We've had a lot of fun creating new formats each week. There are lots of new learnings that we walk away with after each Summer Skirmish weekend by creating new scoring schemes and incentivizing different win conditions. Some formats have been extremely weighted in one direction over the other in order to observe play behavior and collect statistics over a prolonged series of matches in an isolated, high-stakes environment."

Fortnite's Summer Skirmish games will continue with more improvements to be implemented in the coming weeks.

0comments
Start the Conversation

of