This is a continuation of the series of a 64 year old pops (that’s me) blogging my journey to see what level I can achieve in this season’s Fortnite Ranked Battle Royale Build (Chapter 5 Season 2). Each week, I share my progress, observations, and learnings.
This Week’s Progress
Almost completely gave up on my quest to rank up this week! At one point I had progressed 99% of the way through Diamond Level III and fell backwards to 56%. Thankfully I realized that I had abandoned the strategy that gotten me this far which was remaining undetected (camping) until reaching the top 10, then trying to eliminate one of the 9 opponents that remained. I lost my patience and experimented several games with trying to land at a location that typically had at least one other player. This did not end well most of the time and was destroying my rank.
I’m happy to report that I regained my footing and have since cleared Diamond III and now am 48% of the way through the Elite rank! According to FortniteTracker.com, this season only 5.1% of all ranked players are Elite level making this a big accomplishment in my ranking journey. Now I’m often up against some of the better players in the game.
Week 4 – Journey & Learnings
- Diamond turned out to be very difficult to graduate from. I experienced a slump over a dozen game span where I kept sliding backwards in my ranking. The slump was so rattling, that it left me wondering if my skills had completely slipped. Luckily, I did the best thing I could do to restore my confidence. I played 5 unranked games and won 2 of them. This convinced me that it wasn’t my skills that were lacking, it was my process. The truth is, at the Elite level, most everyone is a better builder, aimer, and shooter than me so the only way to consistently finish strong is to play smarter; strategically move and avoid detection, then try and surprise someone late in the game.
- It’s much harder to survive until late in the game at Fortnite Elite level. No longer is it just Campers (hiders) like me that are landing around the perimeter of the Fortnite map and working their way slowly inwards. Top players are now there too. Strategically moving and avoiding them has gotten a lot harder.
- I get very bored hiding all the time so I need to improve all my skills so I can be more aggressive when playing Ranked games. This was a good lesson for me. Improving is more than playing, it’s practicing.
- Ranking up keeps getting harder and requiring more patience. Since reaching Elite, I’ve had several games where I finished in the top 10 and my ranking only increased 1% those games. When I was Diamond or lower, a top 10 finish would generally be good for a reliable 3-4% increase in rank, sometimes twice that amount.
What’s Next
Continue to trust the process and advance my ranking slow and steadily. Also, a new commitment to practice. I’m going to try something new. On the days that I play ranked games, before I play a game I will practice. Practice will consist of watching video tips and practicing my building for at least 20 minutes to help build the muscle memory that allows players to build quickly in pressure situations. I still have about half of the Elite ranking that I still need to climb through, then comes the final ranked challenge which is Champion level. Upon finishing Champion level, players earn the coveted Unreal ranking and can not be demoted from Unreal for the rest of this Fortnite season.
