Fortnite World Cup begins hours after major update

The ever-changing nature of Fortnite can often leave pro players reacting to updates during the practice period for major events. This has never been more evident than now, as Epic begins its biggest ever event for the game over the weekend competitive players have learnt the metagame will be completely reset at least three times over the course of the tournament. Epic has taken some steps to address nervousness about what build of the game will be used during the Fortnite World Cup. While they’ve clarified they will listen to the negative reactions to recent changes, major updates will happen mid-tournament rather than prior to the event. Just a few days before the launch of the tournament, a major update that brought in re-spawning was added to the game.

Epic has clarified that the Fortnite World Cup will run over the course of three seasons, culminating with the finales using Season 10 of Fortnite in July. Each season brings an entirely unique game to competitive players. On top of this, regularly smaller updates routinely disrupt the entire normal flow of games (like the new Baller Fortnite item). The current controversial build of the game will still be in place for at least the opening few weeks of the Fortnite World Cup qualifiers, despite the collective breakdown of competitive players that it has brought.

GG man i was the baller that won 50k https://t.co/TJpgcbDf6j — Chap (@LiquidChap) April 9, 2019

News has currently leaked that Epic plans to adjust and heavily change the dynamics of every vehicle in the game during the first few rounds of qualifying tournaments for the World Cup. An optimistic reading of this is that Epic is planning on finally addressing the ever-growing Baller controversy. A more explanation is that all vehicles are being adjusted rather the Baller being specifically addressed. This essentially comes down to the same theme that’s dominated the lead-up to the Fortnite World Cup, Epic is making it very hard for competitive players to actually practice and play on a level competitive level.

.@EpicGames You are not ready for world cup, face it — Bizzle (@Ghost_Bizzle) April 12, 2019

The v8.30 build of Fortnite was released just prior to the first qualifying round, which carries a prize pool of a million dollars. This update reduces the ballers health, which is nothing more than a plaster on that broken aspect of the game. It doesn’t address the problems caused by removing the health syphon, the other controversial change in v8.20. The frustration of competitive players has become repetitive in the weeks leading up to the tournament, but confidence in Epic to actually deliver a non-broken version of Fortnite for their $100,000,000 tournament had rapidly disintegrated.

Since Epic plans on running this event across three entirely different seasons of Fortnite, various stages will be completed before competitive players have had any chance to get to grips with the latest metagame. On one hand, this will mean responsive and dynamic strategies. On the other, competitive players need some time to practise their play in a version of the game that resembles what they will eventually be playing in. The continuously changing metagame makes competitive Fortnite fun to watch, but it also leaves the game open to being completely broken during its biggest ever event. If the metagame is brand new to all World Cup Final participants, it will be a different and more chaotic experience.