Fortnite 50v50 mode returns with some tweaks, and Final Fight's going to the vault for now

News
By published

Fortnite cancels Final Fight Teams of 12 mode early to bring back the original big team battle

Ramirez takes aim in her new Trailblazer outfit from the Fortnite Twitch Prime Pack #2.

Fortnite has ditched the Final Fight rules variant for larger team battles and gone back to 50v50. In a situation mirroring the ongoing difficulties in resurrecting Fortnite Playground mode and its promise of nigh-unlimited building, Epic Games announced earlier today that it would disable Final Fight ("the mode isn't quite where we want it to be") and re-enable trusty old 50v50 in its place… until it encountered some unexpected problems, resulting in a delay. Thankfully, that's all been worked out and 50v50 is live now. 

Why the sudden change? Unfortunately, Final Fight has attracted significant criticism in both of its variants: Teams of 20 and Teams of 12, the latter of which just went live on Wednesday. It was a good idea in theory, tweaking the usual battle royale formula by limiting the shrinking map; a countdown begins after the final circle closes on the Fortnite map  and whichever team had the most surviving members at the end was the winner (yes, that did mean you could tie for first place). 

Ideally, that would make for matches with more combat-heavy finales, as teams try to reduce their opponents' numbers rather than just stake out the ideal high ground. In practice, it's pretty difficult to manage while playing with a bunch of random teammates. If most of your team just drops wherever and gets slaughtered at the start of the match, the chances of you winning are minimal. Even more so than if they did that in the regular modes, I mean, since your teammates' lives are literally the points you use to win.

You may notice a few tweaks to the usual 50v50 formula when you jump in - here's what Epic outlined ahead of time

  • Double spawn rates for Dual Pistols (a new weapon added in update 4.5)
  • Double spawn rates for Bounce Pads
  • 50 percent higher resource gain
  • Same storm circles circles as 50v50 v2 (meaning standard sizes and only three circles, not four)

Check out our guide to the upcoming Fortnite double XP weekend to see how to maximize your experience gain. 

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan
Former GamesRadar+ News Writer

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar+.