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Epic Games issues new Competitive Update – XXiF suspended, schedule changes

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Epic Games has been struggling to find their footing with Fortnite esports and it seems that will continue. They’ve released a new competitive update that will not please the competitive community.

What’s the penalty you would give to a player that cheats in a major esports tournament? A lifetime ban? A year suspension? Epic Games has other ideas on the matter.

In a new competitive update, Epic Games addresses the cheating that occurred during Week 3 of the Fortnite World Cup qualifiers. If you care about the integrity of Fortnite esports, get ready to rage.

Competitive Update – Bans, Schedule Changes

Epic Games released their weekly competitive update post on Friday May 2nd and started off by talking about the cheating that occurred during Week 3.

Rise XXiF was accused of cheating via getting fed kills by fellow players. Here’s the clip that proves the cheating took place, other evidence has also circulated around the community.

Epic Games’ blog post had this to say about Xxif’s cheating:

OFFICIAL COMPETITIVE RULING

‘Based on an internal investigation, we have concluded that a group of players attempted to undermine the Week 3 Fortnite World Cup Online Open competition on April 28 by colluding across several matches.

All players involved will receive a 14 day competitive ban and will be ineligible for any Week 3 prizes. This group also included a player whose score would have qualified them for the Fortnite World Cup finals in New York. Consequently, in addition to the competitive ban and loss of prizing, this player will also forfeit their Fortnite World Cup Finals qualification spot. As a result, the qualification spot will be granted to the next highest ranking player on the Week 3 Finals leaderboard for the NA-E region who has yet to qualify for Solos.’

Though the wording of the post is unclear, it seems that Epic Games has decided to give XXiF a 14 day timeout for cheating in a $30 million dollar tournament.

His World Cup qualification spot has been taken from him and given to the next person down the list, but he can try again in 2 weeks time. At which point, it is perfectly plausible that he will attempt to cheat again.

Our conclusion of the matter is that Epic Games simply does not understand the gravity of the situation. Cheating in gaming and especially esports needs to be taken seriously.

According to Epic, they’ve also banned close to 700 other players who cheated in one way or another.

‘Additionally, we took action against 698 other players for breaking the Official Rules. As a reminder, competing on alternate or new accounts to circumvent competitive bans in any way may result in users being banned from all future competitive play permanently.

We take Fortnite competitive integrity extremely seriously, and we expect all of our players to live up to the standards specified in the Official Rules. For more information, please see our most recent blog on the subject: 
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/competitive/news/competitive-game-integrity.’

Epic Games also gave some updates on what is happening with major glitches that were present during the Week 3 competitions.

WEEKEND ISSUES UPDATE

‘We’ve recently been able to identify, prioritize, and solve several issues thanks to your help. Clear video evidence, detailed descriptions of problems, and game logs go a long way in helping to accelerate fixes. Thank you!

  • Reboot Van spawning issues.
    • We discovered an error in which players could respawn if the rebooter did not completely finish the reboot channelled interaction. This bug also caused the game to eliminate the rebooted players after a few seconds. We temporarily disabled the Reboot Van in competitive modes to avoid any potential scoring issues while we worked on a solve. 
    • Thanks to your help, we’ve fixed and rebooted the Reboot Van in all competitive modes. The Reboot Van now functions as intended; if the rebooter is eliminated while attempting to reboot a teammate, the Reboot stops and is unsuccessful, and both players will be eliminated.
  • HLOD textures failing to fully load in Tilted Towers, Retail Row, and Polar Peak.
    • This was brought to our attention and hotfixed early Saturday morning.
    • We’re continuing to carefully monitor this, so please continue to call it out if you experience texture issues within Fortnite.
  • Players unable to build after gliding.
    • We discovered an issue where players are unable to build after landing from a glider.
    • We’ve managed to reproduce this bug internally and have slotted a fix in an upcoming release (targeting v9.00).
  • Turbo Building issues.
    • Thanks to your help, we discovered a bug with Turbo Build that appears to be tied to certain networking conditions that would cause players to be unable to build for a few frames.
    • We implemented a hotfix on 5/1 which we believe will help address this issue under most network conditions, but we’re still not 100% certain we’ve fixed all cases. We will be closely tracking the fix to make sure the issue is resolved, so please let us know if you run into any additional problems.

You can follow our progress with other bugs and issues with our Trello board here.’

While some of the bugs have been fixed, failed texture loading and bugged building seem to still be an upcoming feature in Week 4.

These are decent updates for community to evaluate the current quality of the competitive landscape, but they failed to address the Shadow Bomb.

The new item has several game breaking bugs which allows players to remain invisible and/or permanent in Shadowform. We believe the item should be complete disabled for the weekend’s World Cup qualifier.

The rest of the blog post focused on highlighting the new Stream Replays feature and giving an update on a few schedule changes for Week 4. This only affects Brazel and EU regions.

STREAMING REPLAYS – CURRENTLY ONLY AVAILABLE ON PC & MAC

‘This past weekend, we launched streaming replays so you can quickly watch the matches you’ve just played or share them across social with friends. In an effort to balance the desire to have replays available ASAP while not creating competitive fairness issues, we’ll be reducing the delay on replay availability from 10 minutes down to 5 minutes before you can view the replay from a specific match. We will continue to evaluate the appropriate delay window, and look forward to your feedback.’

‘Note: Replays are only valid until the next major update (e.g. v9.00) and are currently only available on PC and Mac.’

WEEK 4 FORTNITE WORLD CUP ONLINE OPEN SCHEDULE ADJUSTMENTS

‘This upcoming weekend, there will be some slight schedule adjustments for the Semi-Finals of the Fortnite World Cup Online Opens.

Europe Semi-Finals

2:00 PM UTC – 5:00 PM UTC 

Brazil Semi-Finals

5:00 PM Brasilia – 8:00 PM Brasilia

All other regional times will remain unchanged from previous weekends, including the Finals on Sunday. When in doubt, please consult the times listed in game. Best of luck!’

You can find the full post on the Fortnite official website. All information from the post is included in the article above.

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Fortnite adds new movement mechanics to Save The World with v21.20 update

Finally Epic Games have added major updates to its PvE Save The World campaign with the latest v21.20 update. Here’s the latest on that.

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After a long time finally, Fortnite’s PvE campaign Save the World receives major updates with v21.20 and players cannot be happier. It has been almost a year since the game received an update with the latest game mechanics and things are looking good for the game mode more than ever.

Save The World campaign has been around in Fortnite ever since its initial days. Some OG players would say that the game mode itself was the actual Fortnite and still is due to its originality in the storyline and the classic graphics it boasts.

During Chapter 2 of the Battle Royale game mode, players slowly parted ways with Save The World, once it came out of Early Access and was accessible to anyone who bought a special cosmetic pack from the Item Shop. As a result, Epic also stopped updating the game mode with the latest mechanics and features and instead shifted its focus to Battle Royale.

But ever since the launch of Chapter 3, when Epic decided to add animals to the PvE campaign, players were hoping to finally get some latest Sprint, Mantle, and Crouch mechanics to the game mode soon enough. Looks like the day has finally arrived and Epic has indeed added some major updates to the game mode.

Epic adds new Movement Mechanics to Save The World in the latest update

Save The World game mode has just received a major update in the form of the latest movement mechanics as Sprinting, Sliding, Mantling, Crouching, and Shoulder Bashing Doors gets added to it. Now players can use the latest movement mechanics they have been using in Battle Royale game mode in Save The World and fight the Husk Monsters in their own unique way.

Fortnite also posted some clips on their official blog alongside the Homebase Status report v21.20 of how players can use the Ninja hero in their loadout and climb greater heights by combining the mantle feature with a double jump.

In addition to these features, Epic also added Fennix as the next hero to enter the PvE campaign and has given a dedicated questline called Flight of the Fennix to the character. Players can now jump in the game and complete quests linked to Fennix to acquire the hero in their loadout and use its ferocious powers to Save The World.

As Epic continues to improve the stability of its Battle Royale and Creative game modes, it is surely pleasing to see that finally Save The World is receiving a similar treatment with major changes being made to improve its gameplay experience. Nevertheless, the player base speculates in the coming days the PvE will also receive the popular Overshield feature as they experience in Zero Build as well as some new weapons added to their loadout.

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What are Social Tags in Fortnite Season 3 and how to use them?

Social Tags are finally here in Fortnite and players can connect with random players across the world based on their preferences. Here’s how you can use them.

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social tags fortnite

Fortnite Season 3 has introduced players to several new features, a new UI and a more colorful island to drop in. One of these most awaited and heavily rumored features was Social Tags. Now that it’s finally here, players are loving how it adds their in-game personality to their profile.

Loopers are enjoying every bit about the latest Chapter 3 Season 3. From ballers, exciting new POIs, the brand new Reality Sapling loot system, all the new additions accompany one another in a perfect manner.

However, the user interface options in Fortnite have stayed stagnant for a long period of time and required a major overhaul with the evolution of the gameplay. With the addition of Explore and game playlists options earlier this year, Epic showed its player base about the potential of what Fortnite can be.

In addition to all these features, something felt missing that allowed players to connect with other active players who have similar interests and the way they play Fortnite. Enter Social Tags which were added in the most recent v21.10 update. Here’s what they are and how you can use them.

Use Social Tags to define your choices and find similar players in Fortnite

Social Tags in Fortnite are basically name tags you can add to your Fortnite profile on the sidebar section. These tags signify how you play Fortnite and you can get recommendations on the Explore Menu of similar experiences.

If you enjoy a certain Battle Royale or Creative mode, you can add a tag for it. One player at max, can add 3 tags to their profile. It could be a mix of Creative, Battle Royale which bbasically have gameplay modes and Miscellaneous which has more options like Chill, Quests, Mic On etc.

To apply Social Tags to your profile, do the following steps:

  1. Click on your profile icon in the left sidebar.
  2. Select +Add Tag option on your profile.
  3. Add social tags from the list available there.
  4. Save and confirm the selected tags. (Max 3)

Once assigned, they will show up on your profile and would tell others how you choose to play Fortnite. Furthermore, you can head to Looking For A Party option on the left sidebar, right above settings to search for random players who play Fortnite the way you do.

It will then show a list of players who are active currently in-game and are in the lobby with how many players. Moreover, you can send them a party invite or a request to join your party. You can also choose to turn off this option.

This feature promotes healthy connectivity between players who play Fortnite in a similar way and helps prevent toxicity between Casuals and Sweats in the game. Additionally, it creates a healthy divide between the two communities if one enjoys grinding Arenas while others purely enjoy Public matches.

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How to get the Skate Park Royalty STW pack in Fortnite Season 3

New Season, New Save The World pack hits the Item Shop. Here’s how you can get it.

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skate park royalty pack fortnite

Fortnite’s seasonal Save The World packs always offer a great cosmetic item, a bunch of V-Bucks and access to the exclusive PVE campaign that OG players still love. This season brings a fresh cosmetic Skate Park Royalty pack to the shop and loopers are digging it’s vibe.

Ever since Save The World came out of Early Access, it has been fairly accessible to all players alike as it comes along with a separate item shop pack which not only offers the game, but rewards that loopers can use in Battle Royale modes as well. Gone are the days when upon purchasing a STW pack used to give daily V-Bucks to players and Bonus Quests where they could farm V-Bucks.

As some would say the game mode is nearly dead, Fortnite keeps updating its world every once in a while and keeps on fixing its issues so it stays intact with its niche community of players. From adding animals to the game to introducing new Loot Llamas, Epic has been putting in the work to keep the game alive while they can.

However, the only thing about the mode that attracts the player base is the bonus cosmetics and V-Bucks a player gets upon purchasing the game mode. With the launch of Season 3, where the island is colorful and loopers are vibing, a skater appears in the latest STW pack.

Fortnite releases Skate Park Royalty Pack to Season 3

Fortnite announced the latest Save The World pack this season named Skate Park Royalty Pack. The pack includes cosmetics like the Toni outfit, Ollie Oop Backbling, Inline Impacter Pickaxe which are all skate themed.

Moreover, the pack rewards the players with an exclusive access to Save the World PVE Campaign as well as a whopping 1500 V-Bucks to use across all game modes. However, the price of the pack is $15.99 USD (US) | £12.99 Pound Sterling (UK) .

Loopers can purchase this pack from Epic Games Store or the Fortnite Item Shop. The pack received positive reviews from the player base and pros who are regular buyers of STW packs and stands its reputation alongside Metal Team Leader and more OG STW skins.

However, the future seems bright for Save the World players as features like Gyro and Flick Stick and Vault/Sprint are yet to be added to the game, which might be a possibility soon. Although more will be revealed later this season as the first update v21.10 drops today.

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