What's Next For Fortnite: Battle Royale, According To Epic

Epic has outlined a whole bunch of content coming to Fortnite: Battle Royale, offering specifics on updates that are both just around the corner and over the horizon. In short, if you've been enjoying their 100-player free-for-all, you can expect more of just about everything the mode has to offer.

Over on the Epic blog, the developer has provided details about a whole bunch of changes coming to the Battle Royale mode in Fortnite. While the base game has players building forts and working together to fight off waves of zombies, Battle Royale forges a very similar path to games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Up to 100 players get dropped into a big map, with just a pickaxe to defend themselves and forage crafting materials. Everything else you need can be found hidden across the map, including guns, grenades and even traps.

With the next update, Epic is addressing everything from quality of life modifications to some highly requested alterations to the game's map.

For folks who like to team up, Epic is trying to make it easier for players to form a squad and stick together, as well as improving their own efforts to track team killers and smack them with a warning or ban.

More importantly for shooter fans, the team is looking to roll out a new shooting model for Battle Royale. They don't want to mess with ranges and whatnot too much, but the plan is to at least get rid of the random bullet spread while aiming down sights. This is a shooter, after all, and you kind of want to feel like you're frequently hitting what you're aiming at.

Another big fix is improvements to the inventory system. I play Battle Royale on a console, and managing the inventory is a bit of a pain. The new system is supposedly quicker, smoother, and makes performing tasks like dropping and combining items easier.

And for you stat junkies out there, a new post-match stat report is also going to be introduced to the game. When your round is over, it'll give you details like your number of eliminations and assists, your accuracy, distance traveled and more.

Some other nifty improvements include a new collection of cosmetic items for your avatar, retooled audio so things like traps and teammate footsteps aren't so loud, and even footsteps that make more unique sounds on different surfaces.

The update I'm most excited for, though, is being applied to the Battle Royale map. New points of interest are being added, giving players additional places to land and scavenge for items. The map is already pretty big and decently populated, but there aren't enough key locations to draw players to different points of the map without feeling like you're landing on a dozen competitors. A new small city is an example of this, with a collection of multi-floored buildings serving as a draw for players in need of supplies.

All of that is expected in the not-too-distant future, but Epic also gave a hint as to what is coming next. More items and weapons will be added to the game, as well as the ability to set up custom matches and earn in-game medals or badges for your exploits.

Battle Royale hit the ground running and, with updates like these, it doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.