Epic Games will be kicking off the Alpha Tournament in one of its biggest regions later today.
Day Three of the new tournament mode will begin at around 4pm PST and will likely come with some of the growing pains seen earlier this week.
In-game Matchmaking issues have been causing issues, with players unable to join games after the event goes live.
This was down to the number of Fortnite players in North America trying to connect at the same time.
It’s similar to a DDos attack, with a large number of network requests at the same time bringing the servers offline.
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“Due to the influx of players trying to compete in our Alpha Tournament, we encountered a shortage of Battle Buses,” Epic Games revealed at the time.
The good news is that while some may still encounter Fortnite not working later today, Epic Games has brought in some updates.
Epic has confirmed that the game’s most recent update fixes in-game tournament issues.
“A patch is currently being deployed on all platforms (except iOS) to fix tournament issues and some Android crashes,” reads an Epic Games tweet.
“No downtime, but you will need to download the update!”
In-game tournaments were introduced alongside update 6.10. They can be found in the Events section of the Battle Royale menu.
And as you can see from the news above, they’re providing pretty popular.
Matchmaking is another area where Epic Games are trying to improve Alpha Tournaments, telling fans:
“The tournament system is intended to match you against players with the similar score during the session, becoming less strict in its search over time to ensure you find a match eventually,” Epic Games adds.
“Players who have higher scores should expect longer matchmaking times and tougher matches, while players with lower scores should expect an easier time as many of the higher scoring players filter out.
“Currently we’re finding that this isn’t working correctly and is resulting in matches that are more mixed in score than we intended, especially when it comes to players with high scores during the event.
“We’ll be continuing to iterate on this to provide a better-matched experience, so expect this to fluctuate regularly.”
Unlike the current Skirmish events being held by Epic Games, Tournaments aren’t so orientated toward eSports and prizes.
However, Epic Games has confirmed that players will be able to collect Shiny Pins, which provide bonuses.
All Tournaments will have a target score and reaching this will award Fortnite players with a shiny pin.
This new item can advance you to the next round of a tournament and also unlock prizes.
One of these events could be the upcoming 2019 Fortnite World Cup, with the ‘Showdown Royale’ event hosted using the in-game tournament system.
This could be when those shiny pins come in handy, although more prizes could be announced in the coming weeks.
Each tournament will have scheduled dates and times and will reset after every run, so no one goes into an event with better stats.
Here is the current schedule in place for the next tournaments being held in 2018 after Alpha:
Beta Tournament (Duo)
- Dates: October 23 – October 25
- Description: Grab a friend and take on the world – until you are the last two left.
Friday Night Fortnite (Squad)
- Dates: October 19 – November 30
- Description: Join your friends every Friday and kick off your weekend with some exciting Squad action.
Salty Springs Cup (Solo)
- Dates: October 27 – October 31
- Description: One week and three attempts to prove you’re the saltiest that Salty Springs has to offer.
Tomato Temple Cup (Duo)
- Dates: October 28 – November 1
- Description: Become legends of the Tomato Temple Cup.