What is Duo Expert in Fortnite?

What is Duo Expert in Fortnite? If you were jumping into OG, instead of Battle Royale or other modes lately, you might have spotted this new playlist. But unlike most new additions Epic hasn’t been sounding a big fanfare for the release of a brand-new mode. What exactly is it?

Duo Expert in Fortnite is a new playlist which is actually trying to solve one of the biggest problems the player base has with the game right now. It’s a mode which aims to let players have a more serious Battle Royale. Or, one without quite so many bots.

Although, it’s existence when there is already a Fortnite Ranked mode is definitely a bit more complicated than it could have been. Why have so many different modes for what should be a simple splitting up of team sizes?

What is Duo Expert in Fortnite?

Duo Expert in Fortnite is a new mode that was added with the last Fortnite update, but a bit more quietly than most new modes. It’s a new team size or playlist for our existing modes. So you can find Duo Expert in Fortnite for OG. Which is the mode where players have most wanted to play without bots lately.

It’s still a Duos sized mode, with two players to a team. However, it’s supposedly got fewer bots. The Expert part of the game is supposed to be indicating it’s for experienced players. Essentially, Battle Royale can have bots to make the experience a little lighter. However, for experienced players, you can use the playlist Duo expert in Fortnite to get a version with more real enemies. For “experts” at the game, lobbies similar to what we got for the first few years of Fortnite.

This mode is available across modes. But, when the game already has Ranked mode and skilled based matchmaking… what’s the point?

What’s the Difference Between Duos Expert in Fortnite and Ranked?

Fortnite has a lot of playlists. But for each major mode, we normally have to decide on the team sized. Then Ranked or Unranked. And Builds or Zero Builds. But with a different mode for each individual version, ranked builds and zero builds, etc. Different player bases for different permutations and combinations. However, now there’s so called Expert mode to think about too.

Next time you’ll playing, you have to decide if you want expert or normal, then ranked or unranked, etc. It’s a lot.

The game already tries to use skilled based matchmaking to put you in lobbies with players at your level. Along with Ranked being a skilled based mode. Now we have Expert too.

Essentially, as Epic’s matchmaking ruins each label that’s supposed to be for serious players, they add one more to fix the problem again. If Ranked were a proper competitive experience and not a carbon copy of Battle Royale, we wouldn’t need expert mode. It now takes too long to get games in most of Ranked anyway. So we have skilled-based matchmaking, so pubs can be a better match between players.

Except pubs games can’t get enough close players in the tiny matchmaking time allowed. So, it just chucks you in a game with a handful of random players and 80-90 bots. Duo expert in Fortnite only really seems like the latest in a long line of attempts to fix the same problem. They keep dividing up the player base more, but won’t allow queue times to increase outside of Ranked. Which means ever increasing bot numbers in normal modes. Duos Expert will supposedly fix it by offering a no skilled-based matchmaking mode, without bots.

Is There Fewer Bots?

Duos Expert in Fortnite is supposed to fix this issue. But it hasn’t. Dataminers figured out pretty quickly that it wasn’t quite working as advertised. When first added, the mode only required 10 real players. That was it.

It is now rising back up. But clearly Duos Expert in Fortnite isn’t really any indication that you’re getting less bots. It’s just another way of dividing the player base up. Which means a lot fewer players in each mode. While it should have SBMM removed to make games easier to find, Fortnite OG might not have the player base to sustain so many different versions.

A lot of Fortnite players want to play with ewer bots. Even if means sometimes getting destroyed by great Fortnite teams above your level. But it’s hard to please everyone. The increasing fragmentation of the player base isn’t helping to matchmake without bots either. As we get more playlists, players get more fragmented.

That means that it’s trickier to find a set of 100 players of a similar skill level for the modes with SBMM. Which leads to either bigger gaps in the player base’s skill or a lot more bots. As long as additional modes slice the base into fewer and fewer players, matchmaking doesn’t seem likely to improve.