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Fortnite Battle Royale Hits 10 Million Players, Adds Stats

The competitive survival mode alone has amassed more than what the full Fortnite experience pulled in earlier this month.

Charles Singletary Jr

October 12, 2017 12:50 PM

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Fortnite's free-to-play Battle Royale mode hit 525,000 concurrent players with 3.7 million players daily this past Sunday and the milestones just keep on rolling in. After introducing the mode as a surprise for Early Access users, 10 million players have now played Epic's Battle Royale.

On October 4th, the official Fortnite twitter shared that the game had welcomed over 7 million players. The tweet didn't explicitly say if the number was for any particular mode or the modes collectively so, when they announced the 10 million milestone, we reached out for clarification.  The 7 million player announcement officially included base-game and Battle Royale players collectively, but Battle Royale alone has now pulled in over 10 million players.

On top of this new milestone, the Fortnite developers released their latest patch and it takes a step toward implementing Leaderboards. Patch 1.7.1 also includes new anti-cheat features, balance updates for the Save The World mode, and updates to the progression in the new Horde mode. The progression takes into account your progress in Save The World as well so you don't have to start off at a lower difficulty. Full patch notes are below:

GENERAL

• BattlEye has been added to our existing anti-cheat detection

BATTLE ROYALE

GAMEPLAY

• We have increased the travel movement of the Battle Bus and increased skydiving velocity in order to offer an alternative strategy to jumping out of the Bus at the first possible moment.
  • Increased Battle Bus movement speed by 50% (from 4000 to 6000).
  • Increased skydiving terminal velocity by 50% (from 4000 to 6000).
• The final storm safe zone will now close completely instead of holding at a 10 cm radius.
• Players can now search supply drops without interruption from storm damage.
• Improved the pre-game warmup UI to indicate the server is “Waiting for players to connect” and “Battle Bus launching” when the lobby is full.
• Fixed the glider occasionally not auto-deploying at the correct height.
• Fixed an issue which caused Supply Drops to become stuck in the air after player-built structures beneath them were destroyed.

WEAPONS

• Changes from the Live Update on Oct. 6:
  • Increased Semi-Auto Sniper Rifle damage by 50%.
    • This weapon was often passed up because of its lower damage. This increase will put it closer in line with its intended effectiveness.
  • Decreased Scoped Assault Rifle damage by 33%.
    • This weapon was too effective at its current role and needed to be scaled back slightly.
  • Decreased Grenade, Grenade Launcher, and Rocket Launcher environmental damage to 375 (was 450).
    • Metal forts will now require two explosive blasts (instead of one). Late-game bases are too easily destroyed and we want to promote building diversity.
  • Increased Rocket Launcher reload time by 20%.
    • It's a little too easy to spam rockets. We want the Rocket Launcher to be a powerful weapon, but it's a little too good right now.
  • Increased Submachine Gun damage by 10%.
    • The Submachine Gun is underperforming at close to medium range combat. This damage increase will improve its effectiveness slightly. We'll continue to keep an eye on it.
• Renamed several weapons
  • Renamed 'Semi-Auto Rifle' to 'Assault Rifle (Burst).'
  • Renamed 'Semi-Auto Handgun' to 'Pistol.'
  • Renamed 'Semi-Auto Shotgun' to 'Tactical Shotgun.'
• Fixed an issue which prevented explosive weapons from damaging Supply Drops.
• Fixed a bug which caused the pump action shotgun to occasionally double-fire.
• Fixed a bug which caused grenades to occasionally deal no damage.
• Fixed an issue which caused bullet impact effects to only be being visible to players in the immediate vicinity.
• Fixed an issue which caused the weapon reticle to disappear.

DUOS/SQUADS

• Eliminations will now be awarded to the player who downs an enemy regardless of who finishes off that player in the DBNO (Down, But Not Out) state.
• Increased health after being revived from the DBNO state.
  • Health increased from 25 to 30.
• Shields will no longer protect you from damage while in the DBNO state.  
  • You will keep any remaining shield if a teammate revives you.
• Friendly fire damage will now display the appropriate visual hit effects.
• Fixed squad’s finishing placement displaying the incorrect number in some cases.
• Fixed an issue which caused tires to bounce DBNO players.
• Fixed an issue which allowed traps to bounce players in the DBNO state.

UI

• There is now a Report Player button on the end-of-match screen to report players.
• Critical hit damage on shielded players is now displayed in blue, like other displayed shielded damage numbers.
• The color of each player’s marker in a duo/squad are now consistent with everywhere they are displayed.
• Player indicators on the minimap will now match the color the player was assigned instead of all players showing as a cyan color.
• Changed the item drop icon on the Inventory screen from a trash can to a “drop arrow” to more clearly indicate its purpose.
• You can now hold down ‘Shift’ before dragging an item to only drop one of that item.
• Teammates will no longer show up as eliminated when they are loading into the map.
• Fixed an issue which prevented eliminated players from entering text in the Send Feedback interface when using a controller.

WORLD

• Added name labels to the map for existing locations.
  • Tomato Town
  • Dusty Depot
  • Salty Springs

• Added a few structures near Tomato Town.
• Added new potential chest & loot locations to the northernmost and southernmost wooden bridges over the river, as well as to Lonely Lodge and the container area to the west.
• Fixed certain basements being blocked, which prevented access to underground treasure chests and loot.
• Fixed issues which caused trees to float above the terrain.
• Fixed some trees that previously could not be destroyed.
• General bug fixes and improvements to the world.

PERFORMANCE

We’re continuously working on optimizing performance, and are actively investigating recent reports of lower frame rates in areas with dense foliage.

• Fixed multiple issues which could cause a brief freeze in game.
• Fixed a significant hitch that occurred when the last player was eliminated from the game.
• Fixed a hitch which occurred after the Battle Bus skydiving phase completed.
• Reduced hitching on PlayStation 4.

AUDIO

• Addressed multiple issues which caused sound to only come out of the left or right speaker.
• Moved Battle Bus ignition audio into pre-game warmup phase.
• General mix adjustments.

SPECTATING

• Fixed player directional hit indicators not visible while spectating

SAVE THE WORLD

GAMEPLAY

• Challenge the Horde
  • Progression is now determined by the players progress in the Save the World campaign
    • If the player has finished Plankerton Outpost 3 in the Save the World campaign, then all of Stonewood and the first three Plankerton zones will be unlocked in Challenge the Horde mode.
  • Quests now have a minimum difficulty rather than a required one.
    • If a quests states: Complete “Challenge 3 in a rating 9 zone,” the challenge can now be completed in any zone 9 or higher rather than in a zone with 9 difficulty specifically.
  • When entering a Tier 1, 2 or 3 zone, all challenges within that zone are now unlocked by default.
    • This will make progressing through the mode quicker.
  • All Outlander fragments now respawn between horde waves.
    • All of the remaining existing fragments are removed and new fragments are spawned at potentially new locations.
  • Outlander Fragments were spawning too far away in Horde mode.
    • Now Outlanders should have more than enough time to gather fragments before each wave.
• Fixed an issue that caused the evolution choice between Shadowshard and Obsidian to always default to the Obsidian evolution.
• Fixed an issue which prevented players from storing multiple stacks of building resources and ammunition in their Storm Shield storage.
  • Players can now store multiple stacks of resources and ammunition in their storage again.
• Fixed an issue that caused players with certain video cards to experience extreme saturation during night sections.
• Fixed an issue which caused the Smasher to continue to charge for too long if it has broken a piece of the environment or a building and there is nothing to attack within a reasonable distance.
• Fixed a bug which caused the amount of Fortitude, Offense, Resistance, and Tech shared between party members to be capped to a lower value than intended.
• Updated Teleporter placement range by increasing starting Teleporter range to 15 tiles, and reducing each Teleporter range upgrade increase to 5 tiles.

HEROES

• Fixed a bug which caused ‘TEDDY’ and Shock Towers to one-shot monsters at high level, and allowed them to be damaged by effects like bees and poison clouds.
  • ‘TEDDY’ and Shock Tower now use the environmental object damage model rather than character damage model.
    • Increased the health of ‘TEDDY’, Shock Tower, and ‘BASE’.
• Increased ability damage, health, and shield values on all heroes.
  • All of these values increase depending on the on rarity of hero
    • Increased by 10% every 5 levels, to a maximum of 30% for Uncommon up to 60% for Legendary
  • These values were previously scaling relative to weapons without alterations and were falling well behind the curve at high levels as a result.
  • No change at low levels, gradually scaling up with difficulty.
  • Hero abilities and gadgets will have greater impact on monsters at higher levels.
• Weapons will deal more damage to monsters quicker at high level.
• Adjusted enemy health and damage values as a result of the Hero scaling changes
  • No change at low levels.
  • Increases gradually with difficulty.
  • Monsters will damage players slighter slower at high level.
• When using Bull Rush to charge at a charging Smasher, the ability will no longer be interrupted prematurely.

MISSIONS

• Fixed an issue which caused the Launcher to appear early in the "Deliver the Bomb" mission when a player joined an ‘in-progress’ zone.
• Fixed an issue that caused some players to be unable to activate the bomb in the "Deliver the Bomb" missions.

GENERAL

• Fixed a crash that occasionally occurred when canceling a game rejoin.
• Re-enabled support for DirectX 10.
• Fixed several client crashes.

ONLINE

• Matchmaking Region is now available under the GAME tab in the options menu.
  • This tool shows all available regions and a representative ping value at the time of login.
    • We are working to improve this tool further to refresh ping values.

UI

• Fixed an issue that caused Homebase Storm Shield power levels to always incorrectly show as 0 out of 10.
• Corrected a typo in the Challenge the Horde loading screen.
• Corrected a few typos found in perk names for Scavenger Heroes.
• Updated names, descriptions, and bonus descriptors for all of the trap and weapon ingredient nodes on the Horde skill tree.
• Nodes now refer to the Star level of the traps and weapons.
  • Ingredients that you receive from each node are fully listed out.
• Reworded Teleporter skill tree node description to include placement range.

Charles Singletary Jr

News Editor

Charles Singletary Jr keeps the updates flowing as the News Editor, breaking stories while investigating the biggest topics in gaming and technology. He's pretty active on Twitter, so feel free to reach out to him @The_CSJR. Got a hot tip? Email him at Charles.Singletary@Shacknews.com.