Fortnite Battle Royale is one of the most popular games in the world. Epic Games originally released Fortnite as a single-player third-person PvP game in 2011 but after a surge in the player base shifting towards battle royale games, Epic Games introduced a new game mode in the form of Fortnite Battle Royale on September 26, 2017. Fortnite’s building mechanics make it the most unique battle royale game. Large numbers of popular streamers and content creators started switching to Fortnite from games like PUBG and H1Z1. There was a rapid rise in the player base and the game was breaking all barriers in terms of player count and Twitch and YouTube viewerships. Fortnite’s first steps towards getting into the ESPORTS and competitive platform came when they organized the first-ever Summer Skirmish series in July 2018. It was a $250,000 duos competition featuring big streamers, content creators, and top performers in the Showdown limited-time mode. The event was a complete disaster due to server issues and game-breaking glitches but since then the competitive scene of Fortnite has made giant strides. After heavily investing in the Competitive platform with lucrative prize pools, highly efficient servers, etc, Epic Games decided to organize the first-ever Fortnite World Cup in 2019. The event was a massive success and is considered as the Biggest Esports event to date. The Fortnite Competitive scene took another giant stride after the introduction of the Fortnite Champion Series, an annual tournament played in every region consisting of the top players from each and every region. The last season of Fortnite was its 13th official season and it was the 4th ever FNCS or Fortnite Champion Series. The Prize Pool was an impressive 4 Million US dollars to be divided among every region and platform.

FORMAT OF FNCS CHAPTER 2 SEASON 3

Following the huge success of the Fortnite Invitational Series of Chapter 2 Season2, Epic Games decided to implement the same Solo mode to the 4th edition of the FNCS. The choice of mode was much debated among the pro community due to the difficulty of the solo format but ultimately the decision to keep the Solo mode was upheld.FNCS allowed each and every player who had participated in the Fortnite’s Arena mode and reached the Champions Division or Division 8 in Arena a chance to take part in the first round of Qualifying also known as Qualifiers. There are 4 qualifier rounds in total allowing the players a chance to qualify on to the FNCS heats.

QUALIFIERS

ROUND 1-​​This​ round is equivalent to the Preliminary round and has thousands of players from across the server participating in it. In order to advance from the preliminary round 1 to round 2, one must be among the top 3000 players for NA EAST and EUROPE servers, in order to qualify from BRAZIL AND NA WEST servers, one must be amongst the top 2000 players. Lastly, in order to qualify from the MIDDLE EAST, OCEANIA, and ASIA servers one must be amongst the top 1000 players to advance to the next round.

ROUND 2- The​ second round is the follow up to the preliminary round. The top players from each server get a chance to take part in this round. After the completion of the rounds, based on the point system the top 100 players from the region qualify on to Round 3.

ROUND 3 – After​ the completion of the third round, the top 25 players from all the regions qualify for the following stage the FNCS heats. In the case of Europe and NA EAST, 50 players qualify from round 3 onto the heats.

FNCS HEATS

After qualifying from the qualifiers, the players are required to participate in another qualifying round the FNCS heats from here the top 100 players out of the 2 separate heats qualify on to the FNCS season Finals for a chance to win a share of the 4 million dollars worth of prize pool. For EU AND NAE there are 4 different heats across 4 different days but for other regions, there are only 2 heats with the top 50 players from each day making it through. However, for NAE and Europe the top 25 players from each heat make it through to the finals.

Going into the finals, there were certainly many favorites to win the FNCS from each region. In the Europe region, NRG Benjyfishy and 100T MrSavage have dominated each and every Fortnite tournament. The duo also won several accolades as a team. The solo match format allows the best to go up against the best. This makes the mode even harder as all the best players have to show their worth against players who are at a similar level. In NAE, going into the tournament, solo Fortnite world cup champion Bugha was the favorite. However, the newly recruited NRG Clix was a strong candidate to win the crown. NA east is by far the most competitive region as there are a lot of players who can end up winning the entire tournament. Players like TSM Saf, NRG Zayt, Faze Dubs all have similar chances of winning the elusive first place cash prize and the in-game FNCS winners pickaxe. As of NA West, 100T Arkhram and NRG Epikwhale were strong favorites going into the finals. There was little to know about Asia and Middle Eastern players as the two regions were having their second ever FNCS finals. However, for the Oceania region, there were a lot of competitors RNG Jynx, Mrfreshasian, and Squeakz were the favorites to win but other players were equally talented and had the ability to pull off a surprise and win the FNCS.

FNCS SEASON FINALS

After 2 weeks of qualifiers and heats, finally on 16th August, the players finally had a chance to shine on the big stage. The competitive scene of Fortnite keeps getting more competitive with stacked end games and entertaining 1 on 1 fights. There were quite a few surprises but ATL Lxtshe’s failure to qualify for the finals was by far the biggest surprise going into the FNCS finals. The final was covered on the Twitch platform by the official Fortnite Channel. The event had a record 625,000 live viewers on twitch and they were all entertained by some top tier competitive Fortnite. All the matches across all regions were very competitive and required patience due to the stacked matches. The meta for the season was crash pads as they were used by a lot of players to exploit into opposition player’s boxes. The nerf of the scar and tactical shotgun also played a huge role in changing the meta.

FNCS WINNERS AND RESULTS

The FNCS winners were finally revealed after 14 days of intense Fortnite competition. From the Brazil region, there was no surprise as the favorite K1NG ended up winning the tournament. The 15-year-old dominated the tournament and ended up winning it all. Such was his domination that the youngster ended up winning 4 out of the 6 matches in the finals. There were no surprises in the Oceania region as RNG Jynx ended up taking home the first prize after a convincing display in the finals. Jynx won his second FNCS crown after winning the Chapter 2 Season 2 duo FNCS with Kquid fn. Souriano (Cash cup warrior) was the second ever FNCS champion in the Middle Eastern region while FRAM NO.1 was the second ever FNCS winner from the Asian region. However, the real surprises when it comes to FNCS winners came in the major server regions in the form of Europe, NA EAST, and NA WEST. From Europe, E 11 Tayson ended up winning his first ever FNCS. After falling just short in the DreamHack event , he managed to pull off an amazing performance in the FNCS finals winning the competition comfortably by a 16 point gap from second. OA Coop and XTRA Vert won their first ever FNCS finals from the NA EAST and NA WEST region respectively.

The FNCS CHAPTER 2 SEASON 3 has once again proved how unpredictable and competitive the solo format in Fortnite is. In Spite of being the tough nature of the solo format, it is one of the most exciting and entertaining modes of fortnite competition to not only watch as a viewer but also for the players to play and experience. As the FNCS season came to a close the players bid adieu to the solo format and hello to the trio FNCS for the 5 th edition of the Fortnite Champion Series in Chapter 2 Season 4.