Arena changes, New Fortnite Competitive Discord + Rifts removed

In a new update blog post, Epic Games provide competitive Fortnite fans with a bunch of useful information about the season ahead.

You can learn more about the C3:S3 tournament schedule here, but let’s look at the other key takeaways:

Arena Changes

The developers are making some adjustments to Arena matchmaking, though they weren’t particularly specific in their description.

“Our intention is to provide a better quality matchmaking experience for players of all Hype levels. Progressing to later Divisions in Arena may take longer for some, but the quality of games along the way should be improved from previous seasons” stated Epic.

It sounds like they will be implementing stricter matchmaking between different ranks. Up until now for example, many believe that everyone from Contender Division 7 and up was put into the same lobbies.

This led to a wide skill disparity, where top tier players rarely faced a tough opponent, while others struggled to progress because they keep fighting people of a higher rank.

These changes will mean longer queue times, especially for higher divisions. Hopefully they do produce higher-quality games overall and enhance the Arena experience for everyone.

Competitive Support Discord

Epic also revealed a new “Competitive Support” Discord server. The purpose of the server is to provide an upgrade level of support to players competing in in-game Fortnite tournaments.

You can submit a ticket detailing any issues you face during a tournament for admins to review and respond to. Additionally, you can create tickets to report a bug or identify a potential cheater.

As of right now, support is only available when tournaments are live. They are not able to help with other account issues or general queries, so be sure to direct anything else to their Player Support page.

Join the Competitive Support Discord here. Unsurprisingly a lot of people are joining at the moment, so verification may be a little slow.

Loot Pool Updates

All remaining cars have been disabled in competitive playlists and the Rift-To-Go has been removed. This leaves the new Grapple Gloves, added in Tuesday’s hotfix, as the main form of mobility going forward.

The @FortniteStatus Twitter account also confirmed that Epic is “exploring the return of Llamas into competitive playlists”.