The Fortnite Champion Series begins!

The Fortnite Champion Series for Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 5 has officially begun, and the teams are set and ready to compete.

The FNCS OCE presented by AO (@AustralianOpen) runs until the 14 of March, with expert commentary from @AussieAntics @MonsterDface @CoachTimmy @Falloutt and @Vandie_Streamed every weekend at 4pm AEDT at:https://t.co/uT5r1byd23https://t.co/YKoKbJ6unm #FNCS #AO2021 pic.twitter.com/aOXb5tcXMG

— Fortnite Competitive (@FNCompetitive) February 12, 2021

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic effectively preventing in-person events from being run safely, the online Fortnite Champion Series has become the premier Fortnite tournament of the season. This season’s Fortnite Champion Series will be a trios tournament, with competitors sectioned off by region.

Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 5 Champion Series

As with previous Fortnite Champion Series, this one will be organized as a series of regional server-wide tournaments set in Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, Europe, Brazil, North America-East, and North America-West. New rules for this season’s Fortnite Champion Series have limited players to just a single entry, preventing the issue of players competing in multiple servers’ tournaments.

Also new to this season, the tournament will not be separated between PC and console players, meaning that all players will be competing together in one massive tournament. This adjustment may raise questions regarding the balancing between controller players and those on mouse and keyboard.

No more separate console and PC tournaments

In general, controller players are given a generous degree of aim assist that helps keep them competitive with mouse and keyboard players, though the amount of assistance changes from patch to patch. No matter what happens, however, there always seems to be some disagreement between the two communities about how much aim assistance is appropriate.

It’s true that playing on a controller can never really match the precision of playing on mouse and keyboard, but the previous degree of aim assist effectively made it so that controller players could land shots with incredible accuracy beyond what could even be expected with a mouse.

Nonetheless, by merging the two communities it’s likely that someone will eventually bring it up at some point during the month long tournament.

Regions to watch out for

For the Fortnite Champion Series for Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 3, compiled data was able to sort out each player’s weighted performance to compare the top 100 players from all seven servers in the PC tournament.

Fortnite: Chapter 2 Season 3 (2020 Colorized) pic.twitter.com/EiKw0yoqGJ

— Poofs 💌 (@Poofs311) February 11, 2021

While every player worked hard to earn their spot, it’s hard to say if the top player in one server had a better performance than those in other servers. By comparing the average performance of each server’s best players against the average of each player server, it was possible to see which servers were the most competitive, and weigh each player's score against the competitiveness of their environment.

Although not perfect, this showed that the European server in particular was a lot more competitive than the others. That said, competitors from both North American servers and the Oceania server were able to break into the top 10, with the top players from Brazil and the Middle East soon to follow.

Of course, that ranking came from a solos tournament, and the trios format could significantly alter how the top players from each server play. For now, the only thing to do is wait and see.