With the increasing amount of Fortnite tournaments, it’s important to know how to effectively play out your games to maximize your chances of qualifying or placing in the prizing. This article has tips and strategies for players of any skill level, whether you play in top tier cash cups, or more casual skin tournaments.
In Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 4, Epic Games implemented a new tournament system, putting FNCS on hiatus while introducing new divisional build tournaments with additional zero build tournaments. Alongside this competitive system, Epic continues to implement weekly Lightning Cups, and collaboration cups: casual tournaments which give players the opportunity to win free cosmetics before they get released in the store.
These tournaments are the best way for players to get skins, pickaxes and various other types of cosmetics for free. These skins later arrive to the Item Shop, being sold for $10-$20 of VBucks. By placing in these tournaments, not only do you get these skins for free, but you also get them ahead of time, before they are officially released! So far, Epic Games has released dozens of skins in tournaments: from Icon skins like SypherPK, TheGrefg, and LazarBeam, to big collaborations like Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, athletes like Chloe Kim and Naomi Osaka, and much more!
With the recent influx of tournaments, it’s a fantastic time for players to get into playing tournaments. However, it’s not exactly the most intuitive on how to play out these tournaments well. Believe it or not, simply playing all your games to the best of your ability isn’t the most optimal way to play a tournament. Before a tournament starts, there are some preparations you can do to give yourself a better idea of what you need to do to place in prizing, and how to alter your playstyle to cater to a specific format. In this article, we will discuss understandable methods to get you as ready as possible for a tournament.
The first step to most tournaments would be to examine the point format, and to see how points are connected to the placement and kills obtained in game. Typically, formats give points for placement, at several stages of the game. Depending on the tournament, these points could be spread out across the entire match, or they could reward higher placements. As for eliminations, most tournaments will reward a constant point value for each elimination.
Viewing the point format for a tournament in-game
Some point formats might be overwhelming to look at, but there are two main important things to consider: the ratio of points awarded for a victory and an elimination, and the distribution of placement points. We can categorize tournaments as placement-heavy or elimination-heavy. Essentially, if you took a leaderboard of players playing with one point format and replaced it with a different format, the leaderboard would likely change. Depending on your playstyle, you could be rewarded or punished based on how points are distributed. Generally, formats where 1 Victory = 25+ Eliminations are placement-heavy, while formats with 1 Victory = 10-14 Eliminations are elimination heavy.
The placement-heavy point format of the SypherPK cup (note that placements are cumulative)
Additionally, some specialized tournaments will have extremely specific point systems, usually for testing or entertainment purposes. This could be a tournament that rewards points for only Victory Royales, or a tournament that only rewards eliminations. For the most part, tournaments with these formats won’t have any cash or cosmetic rewards, but it’s worth noting if you want to place high on the leaderboards.
It’s worth noting that some tournaments have specialized “gimmick” leaderboards, usually related to a specific theme or an associated collaboration. Examples include a leaderboard for quantity of apples eaten (#FreeFortnite cup), and a leaderboard for number of eliminations with SypherPK’s mythic trap tower (SypherPK Icon Cup).
The next step to approaching a tournament is identifying your goal of the tournament, and the requirement to achieve that goal. Typically, the goal of any tournament would be to place within the prizing or qualify to the next round if it’s a multi-round cup. Otherwise, you might be looking to set a goal of a certain placement for personal growth if the tournament’s rewards are a bit too advanced for your skill level.
Different examples of in-game prizing (arena hype, cash prizing, in-game cosmetics)
Nonetheless, it’s important to define what you are playing for, so that you stay focused during the cup, and don’t give up when the tournament goes wrong. Furthermore, by defining what your goal is, you can find how many points you need to reach that goal. This is important; it gives you an idea of how many points you need per game, and thus, a general idea of placement and kills.
Naturally, the following step is to estimate how many points you actually need to reach your objective. A great way to do this is to examine past tournaments with similar formats, or to check out the same tournament taking place in an earlier region (if applicable).
This strategy involves finding tournaments with a similar format and prizing and examining the amount of points needed to achieve your goals. For example, if you want to see how many points it would take to qualify to the next round of a cash cup, you could check the amount of points needed in the previous weeks of the same tournament. For cosmetic tournaments, this could be slightly trickier, since most tournaments differ in points or prizing threshold. A useful resource is Fortnite Tracker (https://fortnitetracker.com/events/archived), which holds the data for the majority of previous tournament leaderboards. Let’s use NA East SypherPK’s Icon Cup as an example tournament, with the major prizing bundle awarded to the top 500 teams.
Finding tournament data using Fortnite Tracker
This tournament has a team size of duos, with various cosmetic rewards. By examining previous tournaments, we can find the NA East Tournament Of Power, another duo tournament rewarding cosmetic prizing. By checking Fortnite Tracker, we can see the number of points obtained by the 500th place team.
Sure enough, this matches the threshold needed to win the SypherPK cosmetics, conveniently outlined by Fortnite Tracker:
If you are unable to find a tournament with the exact same properties as your target tournament, you can use some techniques to modify your estimate. For example, if the tournament has identical prizing, but a different format, you could use a player’s match history to convert their points to the target format. If the tournament has an identical format, but different prizing, a rule of thumb is that the point value will be approximately the same, as players tend to stop playing if they have no chance of placing. If the prizing is more generous, keep your estimate the same. If the prizing is less generous, increase your estimate by a couple points to be on the safe side.
If you are playing in a region that takes place after existing tournaments, you have a relatively accurate way to estimate the number of points you need. Simply check the minimum points to place in a different region and use that as your estimate. Since a region’s prizing is mostly proportional to its playerbase, this method tends to succeed. To account for any variation, you can check any previous tournament, and see how the number of points needed to place in different regions varies. A general rule is that regions with more players will typically have a higher point threshold to place.
Again, we can use the SypherPK tournament as an example. If we take the tournament results of Europe, NA East, and NA West, we can see there is a correlation between the number of points each region required to place, and the size of each region. If you were to play the NA East or NA West region, you could use the 150-point threshold from Europe to set a point goal.
The amount of points for each region is similar, with a decrease in points with a decrease in player count
Admittedly, this method of estimation is not 100% accurate; this would require the usage of data science and analytics, which has been done in the community before. However, if you are part of the vast majority who don’t have these skills, simply aiming a couple points above your estimate should do the job.
To end off the planning process, you should consider the playstyle you want to use, based on your defined goals and personal strengths. If the format matches your skills (playing placement or playing aggressive), great! It’s the objectively optimal way to play out the tournament.
Two teams who both amassed 174 points with drastically different match histories
On the other hand, if the format doesn’t match your playstyle, you will be fighting an uphill battle. A good idea would be to take sample match histories from your research to see what type of consistency you need to place.
If you’re playing through the tournament, and you aren’t reaching the desired number of points, there’s always strategies you can employ during the games.
Now that you’ve done the pre-tournament preparation, it’s time to hop in the tournament and get it done! However, the strategies don’t end here, and there are different ways to play through tournaments, and that comes down to how the matchmaking system works.
In Fortnite tournaments, there is point-based matchmaking, meaning the game will try to match you with players at similar points. Intuitively, the better you are doing, the harder the matches will be. You can however use this to your advantage, by purposely starting late, or delaying following matches.
Consider this: if you queue immediately, you will be matched up with players of all skill levels. However, if you queue approximately 30 minutes after the tournament begins, you will be matched up with players who obtained little to no points within 30 minutes. This will set you up with an easy lobby, and you can arguably obtain more points in this one game than you would have if you played the tournament on time against better players. Of course, this is not always the best strategy. It is reliant on getting a high number of eliminations, meaning it is more optimal under elimination-heavy formats. On the other hand, a benefit to this strategy means that you can cut your total tournament time down, which is useful for those who are unable to play the full length of a tournament.
The same example above, noting the start times of both teams
Because you only get a certain number of games in a set time period, you may find yourself at a point where the amount of games left wouldn’t fill up the remaining tournament time, even if you played all of them out. This would be a good time to use this mechanic, since you would be able to play the same number of games, but against weaker opponents. Knowing when to pace your games out is not only an objective benefit but can help you assess your game plan and stay calm if things aren’t going well.
Although simply “trying your best” in a tournament can potentially yield results, a bit of preparation before a tournament can go a long way. By setting a goal and examining your conditions to win, it gives a sense of direction and motivation in the game. Additionally, understanding the format and tweaking your playstyle can also give you that edge you need. Whether you are a competitor playing in cash cups, or a casual player wanting to grab a free skin in cosmetic tournaments, take these tips and get those placements!
