Skill-based Matchmaking is Good for You and Good for Fortnite Long Term
When everyone gets elims, everyone (kinda) wins
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First, some housekeeping: Today we’re going to try something different. The email will be split into two parts. Part one, The Inner Game of Fortnite talks about meta learning, strategy, and how to think about the game. Part two, Sub-skill Drills provides a small item or skill to practice for 10-15 minutes before you jump into regular play. This will usually be something in Creative, maybe a map, maybe a YouTube video. It’s meant to focus on drills and warmups that you can do to improve your game with the goal of using it at least once in your session right after. First we drill, then we apply.
The Inner Game of Fortnite: Skill-based Matchmaking is Good for You and Good for Fortnite Long Term
Starting with Chapter 2/Season 11, Epic introduced skill-based matchmaking and bots into the game. From my unscientific research of watching various YouTube videos on the subject and playing a bunch, the number of actual people and bots that show depends on your win rate, kill rate, and accuracy. I’m sure there are some other factors in there too but the number of bots that appear in your game, assuming you’re playing non-Arena matches, oscillates based on how you’re doing.
If you’ve played at all, you’ll notice the way bots react versus normal players is pretty different. Bots don’t jump across the map as they move, to avoid snipers that may be looking on. They run into buildings a lot and really only build a wall for cover and then quickly walk around its side as you line up and shoot them in the head. They’re also almost all named something like WalledGarden12 or RippleyPond99. Two names, camel-cased, a number on the end.
Whether the other player you see is a bot or not shouldn’t matter, we should play our same game regardless. I spent a few games early on trying to guess whether that opponent over there was a bot or not and it severely hurt my game. I’d underestimate opponents who turned out to be players on my same skill level, and since I wasn’t in a position to play well while I underestimated them, they’d quickly ramp over me, drop down and take me out. My fault.
Treat every player like they’re your equal (in Fortnite and you know, in life). We can choose to play our own game, but if we don’t, we inadvertently choose to fall to the level of our competition. Try not to do the latter. It happens to all of us but we should make it a practice to try to avoid that.
Ultimately, as Epic makes more of an effort to group us with players of a similar skill level, we’ll always be in games with people that challenge us because they’re kind of like us.
The way to get better at anything is to play peers and people who are better than us. That’s when your skills and our limits get stretched and challenged. So for the new player who’s learning the ropes, the bots are great for them to feel accomplished and not get bopped too hard. For the average player, playing people on their level and not pub-stompers is also good to help them get better by challenging with people at or above their level. And for competitive players, budding pros, and the wannabe-Tfues of the world, they can also play in matches with the best of the best and avoid noobs.
This is good for Fortnite long term. Let players can feel accomplished. Let us feel like we’re progressing along Fortnite’s insane skill gap*, getting better every day rather than randomly sorting whoever pressed “Ready” at the same time and hoping for the best.
*which is a big reason that Fortnite Fundamentals exists.
Sub-skill Drills - Covered Ramp Rushes
Inspired by a particularly tense game I won this weekend on the edge of Weeping Woods, let’s hop into Creative and practice our covered ramp rushes.
We want to build up as we run while also building the ramp above our heads so the person on height can’t land headshots as we ascend.
Build a wall to your left or right and a ceiling overtop. You want to do this at least with brick but ideally with metal.
Place your cursor looking down at a 45 degree angle and build the ramp you’ll run up.
Immediately look up and build a ramp that connects to the ceiling, so you have one ramp over head and one ramp under your feet.
Continue to run up, building the ramps above and below you.
When you’re ready to turn, build an extra ramp below you, rotate 180 degrees, building walls to give you cover as you spin, connecting a wall to the bottom of the ramp that was over your head, then place a ramp so you’re facing your opponent, build and run towards them to continue the fight.
Do the wall-ceiling-covered ramp rush-to 180 10 times in Creative before you start playing next time. It should take about 10 minutes. Feel free to practice more if you like.
Don’t forget to try to do a covered ramp rush to retake high ground in a game that you play.
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Happy playing. Talk to you Wednesday.