Fortnite Trios Cup gets off to a bad start

Competitive Fortnite is currently sat in a bit of a waiting period, or at least it should be if it were any other game. In the brief period of downtime between the Qualifiers closing of the Fortnite World Cup and the tournament itself starting, Epic is testing out some new formats. As well as an Xbox-only tournament leaking last week, a brand new mode has come to the game with an in-game tournament to go with it. Fortnite’s Trios mode has launched and it had a tournament to christen it almost immediately.

© Epic Games

This new mode has been highly anticipated. Pretty much since Apex Legends stole Fortnite’s thunder upon release, fans have been waiting for the game to bring in a mode for groups of three. It was a poorly kept secret that this mode was being worked on. With Apex Legends finally making moves towards a competitive scene, this was overdue.

Normally, a quick tournament would be pretty good news. A brand new form of competitive play and a $1,000,000 prize pools for those who master it quickly. However, it didn’t exactly go to plan. The game mode had a pretty glaring bug that threatened to derail everything. As the first region’s tournament got underway a game-ruining problem was discovered and the proceedings had to be suspended for an hour.

The bug was messing up the amounts of materials players could use and collect. In an Arena mode game or in any tournaments, players receive fifty health and materials for every elimination they make. This siphon mechanic helps maintain a more competitive metagame.

Epic quickly rushed out a bug fix for this problem by moving the tournament games into the Arena mode. However, this didn’t entirely solve the problem and caused a separate worse bug. To try and mitigate all the bugs that have begun to pop up in-game, Epic changed the rules of the tournament entirely. The default harvesting rate was turned on for the game and material drops were eliminated entirely. This made Fortnite play very differently, especially for pro players who rely on heavy amounts of materials to build their way out of encounters.

What does Trios mean for competitive?

Despite this fiasco, Epic is pressing ahead with the finals and semi-finals of the trios cup. They also plan on re-running the tournament with an equal prize pool on July 21^st. This second cup should see the normal competitive mechanics restored to the game.

In a broader way, the introduction of this trios tournament is good news for the diversity of Fortnite’s competitive community. Only allowing teams of two has lead to streamers and other big personalities dominating the competitive scene. The trios mode allows a greater variety of team dynamics at play. While this version of the game is still relatively new, if it becomes as regular of a feature as duos and solos it will mark a change for Fortnite. Giving a space for organised teams to flourish in the Battle Royale is sure to shake things up a bit, it may even dislodge some of the bigger players’ domination of most cups.