Fortnite: Summer Skirmish Week 2 Improves on Rough Initial Outing

This article is part of our Fortnite series.

Another week, another Summer Skirmish Series event is in the books and over $500,000 in prize money has been doled out by Epic. Given the bevy of struggles that plagued the first week, you would be warranted in being a bit weary of Week 2. I can assure that things were much better from a gameplay standpoint. It wouldn't be a Fortnite tournament without some drama, though, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

It's not a secret that Week 1 was a complete failure by just about every metric you can think of. Well, except for viewership numbers since people still turned out in droves to watch the action. But in-game, the tournament was riddle with problems, most of which Epic addressed this week.

In a post on their website, Epic detailed the many problems the tournament faced and how they would go about fixing them. By far the biggest issue was the lag, which was confirmed to have been (at least in part) due to the large number of players in the final circles. At the point where people usually win a duos match, there were still 30 people alive in the Skirmish. As such, the servers simply weren't used to such a load. Whatever improvements that needed to be made for Epic's servers, however, would take some time to implement, meaning that Week 2 would have a completely different format.

Dubbed the "Pub Stomp Romp" by Epic, this week was a solos tournament where kills reigned supreme. Players had 10 games to rack up as many points as possible during a five-hour timespan. One point was awarded per kill, five points were awarded per victory royale, and there was a 10-point bonus available for getting 20-plus kills in game. Oh yeah, and that last one also came with a $10,000 bonus to boot.

Epic clearly took the criticisms of last week -- namely that the format being all about wins and wins alone resulted in boring, passive gameplay -- and honed in on what makes watching Fortnite so fun: watching people slay out in game after game. And that's exactly what we got this weekend.

Throughout both days of the competition, we were treated to some incredible performances all across the board, which was a vast improvement on last week's action. With kills being a priority -- especially that $10,000 for getting a 20 bomb -- players were basically discouraged from playing passive. You couldn't sit in a 1x1 and just try and wait it out. You had to get out there and slay to win.

It's in that high-level slaying that the controversy arose.

The drama started when iDroPz_BoDiEs was leading the pack after three matches played with 97 points. Yes, 97. He was dropping 20 bombs like it was nothing and absolutely torched the competition by the day's end, finishing with 184 points to take home the top prize. As the day went on, there were many theories and rumors flying around to try and explain why he played so well. The only truth was that he played on Playstation 4. Everything else ended up being false.

Epic put out a report Saturday morning that shot down every single rumor that was being flung around. No, he was not using keyboard and mouse on console (although Epic said that this would not violate any rules, which continues to be a point of contention for the community). No, he did not have his friends drop with him to get easy kills. No, he did not leave matches if the bus path was unfavorable or the lobby wasn't full. No, matches weren't required to be streamed.

Basically, iDroPz_BoDiEs just dominated every single lobby he stepped into Friday afternoon and walked away with over $100,000 in winnings ($60,000 for the win, $50,000 for the highest kill game, and multiple 20 bombs that netted $10,000 each).

With his win corroborated, though, there is still a bit of strife that came from the tournament as a whole. Most of this strife centered on the players who were competing on console. The argument against such players is that the console player base is more casual, making it easier to get high-kill games and wins. The evidence in their favor is that three of the top six players across both Friday and Saturday (including the winners of both days) were playing on the PS4. The critics say that these players shouldn't be allowed to play on console because it creates an unfair playing field between those on PC and those on console.

Epic, ever the ones to be on top of things, had an answer for this, too. During Friday's tournament, there was a total of 11 performances that cross the 20-kill mark and only three of them were on console. They further added that "in previous Showdown LTM's which followed a similar scoring format on public servers, there has been no discernible difference in final score between top performers on PC and Console platforms." So according to Epic, there is no difference between the platforms and everyone should just sit down.

The controversies aside, this week's tournament was run much better than last week's. They gave players fancy overlays to keep track of their points from each game. They had much better casters this time around, which made things more bearable. My only real gripe centered around the fact that with 100 players taking part in the tournament, it was hard to keep track of everyone. Especially when you had guys like iDroPz_BoDiEs not streaming (he typically streams from console where you are unable to set a stream delay to prevent stream snipers unless you're a Twitch Affiliate or Partner) at all. Other than that, things went off without a hitch from a technical standpoint.

The real test will be next week when, if Epic can get the servers right, they shift back to the private servers where everything went to hell last week. Should they beef up the servers and keep the scoring focused more on kills than wins to provide exciting gameplay, the massive ship that is Fortnite esports should be right back on track.

• 1st. iDroPz_BoDiEs ($60,000)
• 2nd. FaZe cLoak ($48,000)
• 3rd. NICKMERCS ($40,000)
• 4th. NRG Zayt ($36,000)
• 5th. Reaverlol ($32,000)
• 6th. Typical Gamer ($28,000)
• 7th. NotVivid ($24,000)
• 8th. LiquidChap ($20,000)
• 9th. Twitch.BlooTea ($18,000)
• 10th. TSM_Daequan ($14,000)
• 11th. Im_Murksman ($10,000)
• 12th. Symfuhny ($10,000)
• 13th. Reverse2k_TTV ($10,000)
• 14th. Ninja ($10,000)
• 15th. Liquid POACH ($10,000)
• 16th. Not Tfue ($6,000)
• 17th. Twitch AydanC ($6,000)
• 18th. ItsDiggyTV ($6,000)
• 19th. Bartonologist.TV ($6,000)
• 20th. TTV DexelStar ($6,000)

Final placements: Friday

• 1st. KamoLRF ($60,000)
• 2nd. Supremacy Vato ($48,000)
• 3rd. Teekzie ($40,000)
• 4th. Gentside TheVic ($36,000)
• 5th. VP 7ssk7($32,000)
• 6th. NemsYT ($28,000)
• 7th. boyerxd ($24,000)
• 8th. NyXx ($20,000)
• 9th. FT_Fateu ($18,000)
• 10th.FiveSkilI ($14,000)
• 11th. Solary mzQQQn ($10,000)
• 12th. GAL YUKES ($10,000)
• 13th. Atlantis Mitr0 - ($10,000)
• 14th. RazZzero0oTwitch ($10,000)
• 15th. M11Z ($10,000)
• 16th.RB Script ($6,000)
• 17th. Martoz YT ($6,000)
• 18th. RB Riverboat ($6,000)
• 19th. Solary Kinstaar ($6,000)
• 20th. Fnatic_Ettnix ($6,000)