Epic Games is introducing a new way to team up in battle royal games. A new patch for Fortnite adds a new temporary mode that puts players into five teams of 20 to duke it out in slightly more organized, but still insanely chaotic, battles. The new mode adds some other tweaks to accommodate the new structure, such as adjusted ammo spawn rates and match time. Fortnite may still be very popular as it is, but that’s not stopping Epic Games from changing it up.
It’s not uncommon in Fortnite for players to form teams to survive the tense 100-person fragfests. Epic Games even already experimented with set teams in a 50v50 mode. So it seems only natural to mix up the formula by changing the numbers. But Epic Games wasn’t content to rest with just that, and made some other changes that will hopefully give 20v20v20v20v20 its own flair.
The changes are centered around making it easier for large groups to travel together, as Rock Paper Shotgun reports. There’s an increased chance of treasure chests and ammo boxes spawning (10% and 5% to be exact), so that there’s more loot to go around. Supply Drops also now arrive in batches of five and contain more things in general.
On the structural side of things, the new mode simultaneously creates more urgency while also giving the teams a bigger battlefield. The maximum match length is 23 minutes, cut down from 25. And the circle now shrinks six times rather than nine, so that the five teams aren’t being pushed into one another so quickly.
The trailer doesn’t make mention of how long this mode will last. Past events like it have only lasted a week, so 20v20v20v20v20 might even be gone by the time this article gets posted. Still, there will no doubt be some wild new type of battle to take its place. 20v20v20v20v20 certainly sounds like a lot of fun, but more than that it shows Epic Games’ willingness to keep trying new things. It could just continue to coast on the success that countless Fortnite Twitch streams have brought it, like certain other games. But instead, there are already more temporary Fortnite modes on the way. Now that’s the true spirit of game development.