Fortnite: Battle Royale is getting a rotating set of alternate game modes

Late last week, developer Epic Games published another hefty blog post about the future of Fortnite: Battle Royale. The free-to-play mode within the studio’s larger early access title, Fortnite, is getting a lot of attention from fans. They recently helped boost the game to over 3.4 million concurrent players. Now Epic is promising more limited-time modes to mix things up.

Iteration on Fortnite: Battle Royale began in December, when Epic announced its first limited-time mode, 50-versus-50. Instead of the last-man-standing format of the basic mode, the mode divided players into teams to work together on a much larger scale. The mode launched on Dec. 8 and ran through Dec. 17, only to return for the holidays.

The community must have reacted well, because Epic is planning to create more modes like it and rotate them out on a regular basis. The studio refers to limited-time modes with the acronym LTM.

“We’ve been using multiple data points (including your feedback) to iterate our existing LTM’s and to build brand new LTM’s,” Epic said. “We are planning to quickly spin up a dozen or so LTMs, some of [which] may be more straightforward (e.g. along the lines of Sniper Shootout, Sneaky Silencer etc.).

“From there, we want to make internal improvements so we can introduce more involved LTMs (e.g. “floor is lava”).”

You read that right. Fortnite: Battle Royale differentiates itself from other games in the battle royale genre by allowing players to use the base game’s hybrid building mechanics alongside its third-person shooter gameplay. That’s led to all sorts of odd strategies, including the so-called “stairway to heaven.” Now, imagine for a moment a game where the only way to win was to never touch the ground at all.

That, honestly, sounds pretty awesome.

Other potential modes include a new version of 50-versus-50 gameplay, dubbed 50v50 v2, that’s closer to the original, in-engine trailer. It would separate the teams from each other, putting them into two different buses and dropping them in different parts of the map. You would also be able to see indicators for all of your squadmates on the map, and the battlefield would be seeded with even more supply drops.

You can read the entire post on the Epic Games website, which also includes information on matchmaking improvements, custom matches and new concept art.