Hey competitors!
2021 is almost over and we’ve got huge plans for Competitive Fortnite in 2022. There’s a lot to cover, so we’ll briefly highlight the top changes before talking more in-depth about the entire year.
What to Expect for Fortnite Competitive in 2022
- FNCS Duos with a Match Point format in Finals
- Divisional tournaments
- 2-Round Cash Cups
- Proposals for in-person 3rd party events are being reviewed for approvals once again
- More Competitive features
A New Competitive Mode and FNCS Format
A full year of Trios achieved our goal of a consistent and stable yearly game mode for the best players. However, in 2022, we’ll be shaking it up and switching to Duos for the primary Competitive game mode in Fortnite. The next FNCS will begin in February, so make sure you’ve got your Duo partner lined up and ready to go by then.
With the new game mode, we’ll also be featuring an updated format for qualification in FNCS. We found that two qualifiers is the right number to narrow down Fortnite’s best in each region. This will allow us to provide additional competitions and events outside FNCS, while giving us even more scheduling flexibility. We’ll still have direct qualification to Finals from Qualifiers, and Series Points will be used for Semi-Finals advancement. Each Qualifier will also be narrowed down to three rounds from four rounds, and both Qualifiers will run during the same week.
This past season we’ve experimented with highly valuing the Victory Royale in Semi-Finals. Our intent is to continue to explore ways to provide extra value for obtaining a Victory Royale in set-lobbies where we can. We want to continue to lean into those big moments for all players and fans, regardless if you’ve watched 100 tournaments, or you’re just catching your very first one.
With this in mind, our FNCS Semi-Finals and Finals have some significant changes planned for next year, incorporating some new tournament technology to support our goals of highly valuing Victory Royales but also taking into account player and fan feedback.
Semi-Finals will now consist of only a single Heat (a single lobby) with matches on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Week 2.The winning Duo of each Semi-Finals match will continue to be rewarded with an instant advancement to Finals. New tournament technology in next season will also advance the top consistent teams who haven’t already grabbed a Victory Royale at the end of each of those daily Semi Finals sessions. After each daily session, those now vacant spots in the Heat will be back-filled with the next in-line Duos on the Series Leaderboard and the process will start again the following day. This will repeat until all 50 Duos spots have been filled in for Finals.
For Finals in Week 3, we’re introducing another new piece of tournament technology, called the “Match Point” format. This will mean that a team may end the Finals tournament window early and be crowned FNCS Champions if they accomplish both of the following:
- Reach the designated points threshold
- Earn two* Victory Royales
If no team accomplishes these two requirements, the tournament will end at its normally scheduled time and then we’ll crown our FNCS Champions.
Our main goal with implementing this new technology is to continue down the path where Victory Royales deliver a huge impact for any given match, while balancing single match wins carefully with consistent tournament placement and eliminations. We plan to make the points threshold significant enough so that the likelihood of the Finals ending early on Day 1 is low. We want closing out an FNCS tournament early to be an uncommon and exciting occurrence, with major clout rights.
We expect these changes to pair well with the natural tempo of a broadcast, and is a unique way to ensure the last game of FNCS ultimately decides the FNCS winner in each region.
*Our team is currently looking at a lot of historical data to make sure we get these threshold numbers right, and we should have more to share in the coming months.
More Changes to Cash Cups
Fortnite Competitive is for anyone who wants to compete and we’re excited to share our plans for divisional tournaments in 2022. While we’ll continue Cash Cups for Champion League players, we’ll also run simultaneous tournaments for Contender and Open League players to get more tournament and Hype-earning opportunities against other players in your division. As our tournament tools improve, we plan to incorporate the divisional aspect in more tournaments beyond Cash Cups.
We’re making Cash Cups themselves more competitive with each consisting of two rounds, where the second rounds will be held on a seperate day in the week. We think this will improve the quality and integrity of these tournaments while cash prizes are on the line.
3rd Party In-Person Fortnite Tournaments
We’re excited to announce that we are once again accepting proposals for third-party in-person events featuring Fortnite on a case-by-case basis. All approvals will be subject to applicable public health guidelines and restrictions that may be in place. We’ll keep you updated on those plans as they are finalized.
More Competitive Features
This past year we experimented with Creative Arena modes and Arena Fill, altered the Arena points format, added broadcast features, and added cumulative point totals for two-day events, among other improvements to the Competitive ecosystem. You can expect additional changes coming in 2022 to tournament features, the official broadcast, and the Arena system. We’re not quite ready to share all the details on everything we’ve got planned - we still want some things to be a surprise - but we are committed to making additional changes across the board this season.2022 is shaping up to be the best year of Fortnite competition yet!
