It’s been a rough year for Fortnite, but Epic took a big swing with its new One Piece-themed Treasure Hunters season and, thankfully, it’s paying off. Player counts are way up, with Fortnite’s main Battle Royale mode averaging four times as many players on Sunday for the season launch than it had been the past few months. The numbers then got even larger on Monday, somehow. Fortnite BR now looks on track to have its best month since the original Fortnite OG mini-season in 2023. With GTA VI on the horizon, that’s very good news for Epic.
There is one particularly obvious reason why the numbers are spiking so hard: The Treasure Hunt is giving players the chance to win two weeks of free item-shop cosmetics every time they open a treasure chest. But Epic has also made a few major changes to BR that make it more fun to play than it has been at any previous point during Chapter 7. The hunt for free cosmetics might be the thing that got everyone’s attention, but the other changes might actually get some of these new and returning folks to stick around into Chapter 8.
Let’s take a look at what Epic did right by ending Chapter 7 with this new mini-season.
Treasure Hunt
I’ve complained before about the sort of transparently coercive engagement mechanics that Epic has been using in Chapter 7, but I’d say they found a genuinely excellent one with the Treasure Hunt. Any time you or one of your squadmates opens a treasure chest, you have a chance of winning one of several free cosmetics, including an A$AP Rocky skin and a Mercedes SUV. But there’s also kind of a Willy Wonka golden ticket that a lucky few will find, which allows them to claim everything in the item shop for free for two weeks.
That’s an engagement technique I can get behind, because winning free cosmetics is the sort of thing that appeals broadly to the vast majority of Fortnite players, and the entry fee is just to play the game the same way you usually would. It’s not something you can grind out, so there’s nothing to stress about–you just play, and maybe get lucky.
Sprites are no longer gameplay critical
It was smart of Epic to introduce the Sprite-collecting mechanic in Season 3, but the problem was that they were essential to gameplay. If you didn’t engage with that mechanic, you would be at a disadvantage in fights. During Season 4, for example, if you didn’t have a Sonic or a Jackrabbit sprite late in a sweaty match, you were probably gonna end up getting cooked by somebody who did. Using the sprites never felt optional.
Sprites have returned once again during Treasure Hunters season, but their abilities are no longer the sort of thing that significantly changes the balance of a fight. This season, you aren’t going to lose a lot of matches because the other guy has a maxed-out Sonic sprite and can run twice as fast as you. It’s the perfect balance: The folks who like sprites can keep collecting them, and the rest of us can do whatever we want.
It feels like Fortnite again
I don’t think Chapter 7 has been particularly bad compared with previous chapters, but it introduced a lot of fundamental changes that have made it feel strange for Fortnite old timers, like the rearranged UI, buyable reboot cards, and a faster time-to-kill that has made BR much more unforgiving.
But Treasure Hunters season has rebalanced the gameplay to make BR feel more like it used to. The loot pool doesn’t include any weapons that that your average player is going to laser you with from a distance, making it easier to react to and survive ambushes. The removal of buyable reboot cards means squads are more likely to commit to a fight than run away at the first sign of trouble.
And it’s been quite a while since we had new anime Mythics that are as fun as the new One Piece abilities, particularly Ace’s fire powers, which come from the Flame-Flame Fruit. If you’re the type of Fortnite player who pines for the days of Deku’s Smash (all the way back in Chapter 4) like I am, you’ll have an absolute blast with the Flame-Flame Fruit. And don’t even get me started on Zoro’s Three Swords, which is Fortnite’s most interesting and amusing new melee weapon since the ODM Gear from Attack on Titan in Chapter 4.
Coming off Chapter 7 Season 4, which I found to be actively irritating up until Fortnitemares began in October, this Treasure Hunters mini-season already feels like a breath of fresh air. Even if we didn’t have this hunt for free cosmetics and Tim Sweeney’s golden ticket to the item shop, this would be a great season of Fortnite.
They’ve pulled a lot of folks back in with this Treasure Hunt, but it won’t be easy to retain them with the release of GTA VI in a few weeks. If Fortnite played the same way it did last season, with the faster TTK and obligatory sprite gameplay, I doubt this surge in players would last long. But I think Epic has given itself a real shot to hold onto at least some of our attention with the changes it’s made.
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