‘Fortnite’ Is Adding Bots For Lower-Skill Players To Fight

Fortnite

Epic

Fortnite has just detailed an update that is sure to be controversial over the course of the end of this season, and the beginning of the next one. First, Epic is making game “fairer” with skill-based matchmaking, or as they say "What does this mean? You will be more likely to match with players of similar skill, and as you get better, so should your opponents.”

That’s bound to be controversial enough as players find themselves in “sweatier” games than usual, which is a frequent complaint among many multiplayer communities across games, but that’s not all of it.

For those players hovering near the bottom of the skill tree, Epic has announced that Fortnite is getting bots for the first time:

“They will behave similarly to normal players and will help provide a better path for players to grow in skill. Bots will work in conjunction with the new matchmaking system, and as your skill improves, you’ll face fewer Bots.”

That’s a big change, and the community is already starting to freak out before even seeing the bots in action. It’s not clear just how skilled you have to be to avoid getting bots entirely under this new system, but that’s something that players are going to try to figure out soon enough, once season 11 starts.

Fortnite

Epic

The bots thing is interesting, because it reminds me of what Epic’s goal was for the mech in season 10, introducing something to get lower skill (casual) players more kills and wins. Now, introducing bots into the game (which may be disguised as actual players with paid skins and such, not just a bunch of defaults), we are bound to see more lower skill players getting kills than before, but not at the expense of anyone else because…they’re in these lower skill tiers killing a bunch of bots.

This could be a more elegant solution than we’ve seen with nerfs to building or the introduction of the mech which have annoyed higher skill and pro players, given that these other players will now be in these lower rungs of the ladder, and if you’re a good player, you’ll probably never see a bot at all in your tier.

But we won’t really know how this works until we see it in practice, and I would be curious to see just how skillful a bot can be in Fortnite, given the complexities of building and such, and we will see them unveiled when this update hits in 2-3 weeks at the end of season 10.

This is definitely going to be a pretty divisive move on Epic’s part, and I’m curious to see how it goes. It feels like Fortnite hasn’t been making the best decisions lately, but this does seem better than introducing just new items and weapons to try and give casuals a leg up. But we’ll see.

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