A blog post was made by Epic Games to inform the Fortnite Community of changes in the game. New matchmaking, bots, controls, and their new game mode The Combine. In this post, they approached the topic of fair matchmaking that has been circulating in the Fortnite community.
In select regions for Solo Mode and Duos, a new matchmaking system will be in operation. The system attempts to take into account skill levels, platforms, and control inputs with the goal of trying to group similarly skilled players. This is to create a more competitive and fair gaming experience.
Each platform will receive special consideration, but if a similar skill exists, there is a high chance you will be paired against people from every platform. This means that touch input players, mouse and keyboard, and controller users can all end up in the same game. The developers promise to watch match analytics and fan feedback to try and ensure that everyone is playing a fair match.
This is a difficult problem to approach with online games considering that skill levels can vary so rapidly. It is hard to measure a player’s skill-based simply on analytics. There are many in the community that have concerns regarding this change, saying that it naturally unbalances any chance fo competitive play. If a player gets accustomed to playing against similarly skilled opponents, there is a lack of effort to improve.
To make it even more difficult, there is the common practice of smurfing. Smurfing is when a higher level player uses a lower level account to play against weaker opponents. It is usually used to power level new accounts but often can be taken advantage of simply to try and harass lower skill players.
To combat this, Epic Games plans to make smurfing a bannable offense. “We see a bunch of negative behavior that occurs with smurfing and issues with gameplay integrity. If we see consistent reports and perceive that you are negatively impacting other players’ experiences, we will take appropriate action,” reads the blog post.
To try and skill up some lower-level players, Epic Games has implemented bots that you can train against. This has only raised more concerns as a bot can only get so good while going against more difficult opponents creates a goal to aspire to. Simply training against bots does not offer the same challenge that original open lobbies had.
Fornite is reaching the end of Season 10, and with that comes new changes and new modes. It will take time to see the full effect of the new matchmaking system, and fans are sure to continue going for the gold no matter who they are paired against.
