Fortnite: Ghost Rider Cup expected to be resolved by tiebreaker

The newly announced Fortnite Ghost Rider Tournament will bring players back into the unique 3v3 Marvel Knockout game mode. However, when looking at the tournament structure, it appears the Ghost Rider tournament will repeat the same structure as the Daredevil Cup, which led to 25 teams vying for the top spot.

Why will the Ghost Rider Cup almost certainly end in a tie?

The general tournament structure in Fortnite is to rely on matchmaking to pair up players, and assign points based on their performance. This is useful for the Fortnite Champion Series, and other Battle Royale tournaments, because it allows them to rank players that have to play in high-variance 100 player games.

It can be hard to judge how two players who never encounter each other compare, and this scoring mechanism is meant to pick up the slack. However, the Fortnite LTM Marvel Knockout pits two teams of three against each other. In these games, only one team can win, while the other must lose, and their performance is directly affected by one another.

As a result, the typical Fortnite structure can allow for a high number of randomly matched players to all achieve perfect scores, as it was with the Daredevil Cup.

Sometimes the legends are true...🔥→ Ghost Rider Cup feat. Marvel Knockout LTM→ Trios→ Nov 4🏆 Ghost Rider Outfit→ Mark your calendars, the next two in the series are on Nov 11 & Nov 18th!🔗: https://t.co/EVn30UDQbX pic.twitter.com/lNT3xaBfGI

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) November 2, 2020

Play the Fortnite Ghost Rider Cup with tiebreakers in mind

While no one likes the prospect of their performance being decided by an arbitrary tiebreaker, knowing that ties are likely can help players adjust their playstyles with tiebreakers in mind. The full ruling on tiebreakers for the Fortnite Ghost Rider Cup is as follows:

2.4.3 Tiebreakers - Tiebreakers will be determined in the order presented here: (1) total points scored; (2) total Victory Royales in the session; (3) number of eliminations in the session; (4) average placement per match in the session; and finally (5) a coin flip.

In this cup, points scored are equal to victory royales, as each victory results in the same number of points. Therefore, it is highly likely that for those who achieve a perfect score their team’s average eliminations will be the deciding factor in their ultimate placement.

Play for eliminations in this Fortnite tournament

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— PC Gamer (@pcgamer) November 2, 2020

With eliminations the most important deciding tiebreaker in this Fortnite cup, players should adapt their playstyles to focus on scoring as many eliminations as possible, even if it means getting eliminated in the process. It won’t matter how much a team gets eliminated, only that they score as many as possible in return.

Of course, if you expect your team will lose, you can consider adopting a more defensive playstyle out of spite, although as soon as your own perfect score has been shattered, there won’t be much more to fight for.

One thing to note is that any teams which have a perfect score and the same average eliminations, will have their placement decided by coin flip.

While this would be the most unfortunate outcome for any Fortnite player, as no one would want to say they lost (or won) a tournament entirely due to the flip of a coin, it isn’t that unlikely. In the Fortnite Daredevil Cup, first place for both the NA East and NA West servers was separated by just 0.5 average eliminations.

Anyone who plans to compete in the Fortnite Ghost Rider Cup and hopes to aim for the top spot, should keep this in mind as they play.