Fortnite professionals unhappy about the FNCS Invitational

The $2 million prize pool Solo FNCS Invitational began in May and some pro players have aired their complaints about its format. Epic Games adopted a different scoring system that favors elimination points over placement points. This encourages competitive and aggressive gameplay focused on accumulating kills instead of looking for a victory. With this format, players get 4 points each for every kill they make.

Image credits to Rashidat Jimoh

To put that into perspective, a Victory Royale gives a player 33 points. Instead of just playing it safe for placement points, pro players are better off W-keying the opponent at the start of the game. With 9 kills in a single game, they can score more points than getting a Victory Royale and play for placements points later on. Most players just went for kills rather than wait for tenth place, which only awards 12 points.

FNCS Invitational Format

Solo FNCS Invitational Points System. Screenshot from Epic Games

Several Fortnite professionals and streamers have criticized this format as they are not used to it and the chaos it brings. Turner “Tfue” Tenney and Misfit’s Cody “Clix” Conrod, two of Fortnite’s biggest players, questioned this format. A lot of pros are not used to an elimination favored game and mostly play to win for more placement points. This format for the Solo FNCS Invitational favors aggressive players who like to rack up many kills as possible.

WTF is this format???

— Tfue (@TTfue) May 3, 2020

Killing over Winning

Clix expressed his discontent with the tournament’s scoring system on Twitter. To him, the fact that top players like Dominic “Unknown” Green and “Scoped” did not qualify says a lot about the whole format. Scoped tweeted that he started late due to internet issues.

this format gotta go, the fact that the top players didn’t qual says something like how tf did scoped and unknown not qual

— Clix (@ClixHimself) May 11, 2020

Fortnite’s Ryan “Chap” Chaplo also asked on  Twitter for kill points to be nerfed in all open formats. Although pro players are unhappy about this scoring system, it’s understandable why Epic made that decision. With 35 to 45 players, the servers can’t handle that a small circle that well. It’s also not a great experience for the fans watching.

With this new format, many players will die sooner and enhance server performance issues in late-game stages. For now, it seems Epic Games will stick to this format for the FNCS Invitational. This means that players just have to play for kills in the early game and look to win or get high placements much later.

Written by Rashidat Jimoh