Fortnite Champion Series and competitive update

Epic has just released a comprehensive update regarding the state and future of competitive Fortnite for 2021.

Competitive Fortnite in 2020 has been somewhat of an oddity, as both Fortnite tournament organizers and players have had to rapidly adapt to a world without travel or large gatherings.

With the benefit of experience, Epic has announced their intention to continue running competitive Fortnite as a purely online affair, with no in-person tournaments scheduled for 2021.

We're making some changes to competitive play in 2021. We touch on FNCS, in-person events, and more in our latest update: https://t.co/tYyRQQOdD2

— Fortnite Competitive (@FNCompetitive) December 4, 2020

What will competitive Fortnite look like in 2021?

Competitive Fortnite events run by Epic themselves will be exclusively online throughout 2021. Epic has already announced their intention to standardize the Fortnite Champion Series, making them into a Trios event for the foreseeable future.

However, Epic did admit that they may still adjust the Fortnite Champion Series’ scoring and point distribution, which may ultimately affect the optimal play styles and strategies on a tournament by tournament basis.

The Fortnite Champion Series for Chapter 2 Season 5 is currently scheduled to begin on February 4th, which Epic says will give players enough time to adjust to the new season.

In addition to this, they have also announced plans to organize other high-level competitive Fortnite events to help fill in the gap of having yet another year with no in-person tournaments.

😔

— singl3 is everywhere (@singl3xo) December 4, 2020

Plans for competitive adjustments for the new season of Fortnite

While Epic plans to run more online Fortnite tournaments in 2021, they have also stated that they are going to closely monitor the competitive health of Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 5. One specific adjustment which currently only affects competitive Fortnite is how the new Bars System works.

At the moment, players can collect gold bars which can be spent at a variety of vendors in the game. These carry over across games, but for competitive games, players will start each game at zero bars, requiring them to gather the new resource for each game.

Epic stated that they have other adjustments to consider as well, and will be discussing and implementing further ideas after gathering information and feedback about the current health of competitive Fortnite.

Overall, Fortnite Season 5 seems to be somewhat more naturally supportive of competitive events than the previous season, as the new features do not significantly hinder common strategies. They also providing players with new tactics to apply when needed.

Hopefully this season will be fun for the competitive Fortnite community.