Mastering Fortnite: Strategies to Play Without Bots
Are you tired of playing Fortnite with bots and looking for ways to up your game?
We explore what bots are in Fortnite, why some players prefer to play without them, and how you can do so.
From custom matches to arena mode and tournaments, we discuss different strategies to avoid bots in your gameplay.
Learn about the benefits and drawbacks of playing without bots and how it can lead to a more competitive and enjoyable experience.
Contents
Key Takeaways:
What Are Bots in Fortnite?
Bots in Fortnite are computer controlled players added in Fortnite season 11 to make it easier for less skilled and new players to earn a Victory Royale. The intention of giving these bots easy and moderate difficulty levels was to help them grow and understand the game better. Epic Games didn’t initially reveal the existence of bots. But players easily saw, recorded, and made them apparent through behavior patterns with their names like ‘Bol’ or ‘Default’.
Why Do Some Players Want to Play Without Bots?
Some players want to play without Fortnite bots because they are too easy to kill. As discussed by Blevins himself when talking with Tok in their Fortnite preview, experienced players complain that Fortnite bots do not have the skill that human players do. They cite the lack of movement, complex tactics, and speed that bots have compared to human opponents. The inability to learn from bots, particularly in more complex scenarios, is also a factor that some players took issue with. As Forbes contributor Dave Thier puts it, Fortnite bots may help retain players, but they are not good enough to improve them much. Tom Wild’s video on Pros Positivity covers some advanced tactics players think are important for Fortnite.
How to Play Without Bots in Fortnite?
To play without bots in Fortnite:
- Land in low-tier locations
- Seek out marauders
- Emphasis on high skill game modes
- Play Arena mode
- Team up with a higher-skilled player
- Creates a new account
Fortnite uses bots in matchmaking for lower-skilled lobbies. By increasing the skill of your matches or hopping outside of the Battle Royale mode, you decrease your chances of encountering bots.
While intermediate and highly-skilled players may have to seek out marauders or play through team modes to encounter bots, lower-skilled players are likely to encounter bots in any game mode they play.
Fortnite’s use of bots in matchmaking has an important positive effect of reducing player churn.
Play in Custom Matches
Bots are never used in Fornite Custom Matches to standard players who are not professional participants. They are private matches that individuals or groups can try to get into by knowing the match password or from an invite from another party involved in the Custom Match. This is usually how pro players go against just each other or experienced players demonstrate strategies for lesser experienced fans to follow.
Play in Arena Mode
Fortnite’s game mode called Arena is different from all the others. In this mode, competitive play means tournaments that provide a chance for a share of at least $500,000 in prize money. This mode does not contain bots, meaning the best players are pitted against each other in skill-based matchmaking contests.
In-game currency called BattleStars are earned by playing Battle Royale mode. Arena Mode is every Fortnite Chapter’s fastest way to earn them as players earn usually with the skill level they are at. In their Arena division if they are on the low end of the spectrum, they are still met with roughly even competitors. This is a better option for playing without bots than Solo, DUO, and SQUAD modes where bots are added in later stages of their Arena Mode. The only requirement to take part in this tournament is a minimum of 125 points in the open qualifiers. Each Arena will last around half a month and consists of semi-finals, final, and the finals of each region, including NA West and NA East. The Fortnite World Cup established the idea of weekly tournaments in 2019 and they were a massive hit.
Play in Tournaments
Fortnite tournaments have been around since the early days of the game. Usually, they pit pros and the best pubstompers together against casual fans, creating an environment of competition where bot-free games become more likely. There are two types of tournament modes you can partake in to minimize the possibility of bots participating in the game.
The first is in-game tournaments. Players can register to compete in these tournaments solo or with a duo partner. Pros and other skilled players participate in them due to their popularity. Achieve 25 points in a single tournament to join Champion Division, where you can play without bots due to its higher skill level.
Custom games are the other type of tournament that can be started by an individual or an organization. During the event, selected players will then join the custom lobby and compete against one another.
Pros and other skilled players are the only ones allowed in custom lobbies, which should significantly decrease the chances of bots invading your match. Don’t forget that even if certain criteria are met, bots will occasionally appear. This is why community-run leagues and tournaments are available. For better community-building, these tournaments or leagues will be available on sites like playfuze.com.
Before you can access the tournaments, you must first play a few non-competitive rounds so that the community can observe your game style and confirm that you are not a bot yourself. Bots can enter tournaments only if humans do so, which is why this round is mandatory.
Play in Creative Mode
Creative Mode is a player-created environment and not a part of the Save the World or Battle Royale portion of the game. Creative Mode is a game mode that is available in Fortnite where players can express their creativity and design their own personalized islands and games. These islands can be shared with others or kept private and used only by the creator.
You can tailor the settings of the island to not include any bots if you wish. There are no kill goals in the game mode, meaning there is no such thing as a kill goal to reach with the pinpoint number of 100 kills. All levels of players can participate in Creative Mode, with a primary advantage being the absence of Battle Royale bots. The island creator may choose to simply play solo in a creative environment as well, without interacting with creation.
Play in Private Matches
Private Matches have long been possible in Fortnite. They offer the setting for players to have fun and socialize with their family and friends. They are also widely used by schools and other organizations. Both Battle Royale and Creative modes are available for Private Matches.
Challenge matches can be set with looser rules than in matchmade public lobbies. This is a way for poor players to level the playing field against stronger and more experienced opponents. Typically there will be all-player consent on an honor-based system of what consumables can be used. There is no centralized way to play Private Matches in Fortnite. Those wishing to play Private Matches without bots will be instructed to coordinate among themselves on the main Fortnite site and make their own lobbies. While abuse is unlikely, keep in mind there is no policing against it.
Play in Duos or Squads with Friends
The simplest way to play without bots in Fortnite is by playing in Duos or Squads with friends. You can invite friends from your existing network, make friends with good teammates in the game, and party up with them. When you play Duos or Squads, you are quickly matched with human players and there is less of a chance of bots being present in the game.
What Are the Benefits of Playing Without Bots?
The benefits of playing Fortnite without bots include quicker games, more challenging matches, and a better overall gaming experience. Quicker games are naturally more entertaining and having more challenging matches improves a player’s gaming abilities. For new players, they enjoy no advantages making the game more balanced for everyone.
Fortnite bots are detrimental to the integrity of the game because they give new and inexperienced players an unfair advantage. Artificially reducing the skill gap lessens the meaning of winning, destroys the competitive aspect, and disrupts fair play. For more experienced players, bots can significantly decrease the difficulty of the game.
Players are divided as to whether removing bots will be good or bad for the Fortnite player base. The removal of bots will benefit long-term players as Epic confirms in its own blog that their survival mechanics and tactics have been disrupted negatively by the bots. On the other hand, Fortnite-branded bots that are fair and equally impactful for all team sizes could enhance certain modes such as party modes, and secondary game modes according to optimistic player assumptions.
More Competitive Gameplay
By playing Fortnite tournaments and leagues like the FNCS, Loot Battle, Champion Series such as the solo and trios FNCS weekends, players get matched with other non-bot players in their regional/competition bracket. These tournaments allow players to play against those with equivalent ability without the inclusion of bots in games to simulate Shotgun Wedding. These higher levels of competition are designed for players who welcome intense competition when they play Fortnite without bots.
Better Chance of Winning
The assumption is that you have a greater chance of winning if you are playing in a match without bots in Fortnite. This is due to the sheer number of 98 in 100 players you will compete against on the field of play, which means you must defeat more competent competitors rather than just farming bots. The win rate at lower skill levels is better for many players in matches with bots, but progression cannot continue without slowly working up the ranks towards harder matches.
Improved Skills and Strategies
You are not playing against AI in Fortnite Battle Royale, so by playing against only other humans, you can increase your own skill level and strategies. The best way to get just humans on the map is to simply play duo, trio, or squad mode instead of default solo mode. Default solo mode queues players with opponents in cross-play eligible platforms such as playstation, xBox, Android, and iOS.
Real humans are naturally better players than bots, so by going up against only humans, you can be challenged to improve upon and refine your own skills in fierce Player vs Player (PvP) combat. As the top Fortnite streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins advises, play the game a lot to better understand what works and what doesn’t with time. You will not get useful practice when you only go up against bots.
More Enjoyable Experience
There is a noticeable difference in the earlier stages of bot games in Fornite and prior to that, when you choose to play without bots. Overall gameplay in bot lobbies feels slower according to user perception, with easier kills and less stressful situations. This is great for newcomers who need a safe learning environment without the fear of constantly being attacked.
On the flip side, a bot-only lobby can be boring after the first few encounters. Real players are smarter and have an element of unpredictability that makes the fight more challenging. Regular matches have the exciting risk of sudden elimination by others which brings an adrenaline factor that is missing in a fully predictable bot lobby.
What Are the Drawbacks of Playing Without Bots?
The drawbacks of playing without bots in Fortnite are more severe matchmaking challenges and increased stress from frequent failures. This will ultimately be more intense for brand new and lower-skilled players, potentially deterring retention of these groups from the game. The elimination of bots from games which already have a mix of more experienced but still poorer players will lessen these negative impacts significantly. Particularly as there is already a very large range of skill levels within these groups as indicated by samples of Fortnite Battle Royale leaderboards provided independently by FortniteTracker.
When playing with other mid and low-skilled players of similar or higher ability, the presence of poorly-skilled bots is one of the key reasons one’s team may still earn a victory. It is also one of the surest ways for brand new players to earn their first kills and feel they are successfully learning the game as it gives them a target which poses little to no threat. Even if they as players can benefit from learning to play with better players, the desire to have some level of success in their engagement means they require equally poor opponents for the first group of games. This is particularly important if they are playing on a console system which tracks player stats and has publicizing ranking boards.
Longer Wait Times
One possible technique to have real humans instead of bots is to increase the time all players wait till the lobby is full before starting the game. Bots have been added to simply have full games quicker and without much waiting. Decreased waiting times can have a few different impacts. When more players are waiting for a game to begin, there is less of a need for bots to be added to the game. This does mean that higher-skilled humans in Fortnite will be paired with other higher-skilled humans and lower-skilled humans with other lower-skilled humans. During the evening hours with their larger player bases, Fortnite’s competitive games and challenges will likely be more difficult.
Tougher Competition
One downside of playing without bots in Fortnite is that the competition becomes much tougher. Fortnite players are separated into different lobbies based on the averages of players skill levels, and bots are used to fill out the lower-skilled lobbies. This means that if you decide to jump into a public game (as opposed to an arena or tournament game), you will have to compete against players who exhibit a similar level of skill as you. Since public matches’ average skill levels will be higher when bots are introduced for lower-skilled players, choosing to play without bots will increase the overall skill level of your opponent. Ahadyar and Basiri’s study of in-game bot AI proves that as bots increase, the chance of a public match in Fortnite being won decreases. Of the 110 solo matches during the study, 30% showed the closest Death Distance and were considered an equal match Defense(dE) outcome issues. This problem worsens with more bots in the lower matches.
More Pressure to Perform
In Fortnite, since the average Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) score is placed at around 5-10, the bot-using players sit on the far left of this bell curve. Meaning, while bot-using players are not considered pro by any means, they nevertheless perform somewhat above the average unskilled player. But when protected under the safety net of Computer Bots, bot-using players have little to no pressures applied, no challenge to overcome, and no skill curve to develop. Unopposed weaker players become lazy and skill levels reduce over time.
To distinguish themselves as real players, all these players need to do is sit down and under Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) criteria, start playing. Whether you are a bored adult, a lazy teenager, or a curious child, playing botless will force you to develop and utilize new gaming skills.
One thing playing without bots in Fortnite does is it increases the pressure to perform. In games with bots, players can survive almost entirely by staying hidden and jumping occasionally. When you move into Matchmaker mode and play alone against other human players, your building, fighting, awareness, aim, and quick reaction survival skills are put to the ultimate test. Players may struggle at first and may see their kills and wins drop, but fairly quickly they adjust to the demands of these real matches. Bots don’t place the same pressures that true matches do, and players don’t learn and develop certain high-level game skills unless they are battling other to speculate and construct opponents with the same in-game capabilities.
Possible Server Issues
Network connections are often the reason Bot opponents appear. Remember that Fortnite may not have as many servers around the world as a game like League of Legends, Valorant, or Call of Duty. So, lag compensation may mean that even with a very good ping, your relayed server connections force you to appear on servers that are mostly full of bots. Sadly this may only be rectified by Fortnite adding new servers to your region in the future.
Conclusion
There were three primary methods to play Fortnite without bots prior to Chapter 3, Season 1. Players could win lots of matches (with an ever-increasing number of wins required in the late seasons). One could create a new account and play through levels 1-5 of the game before bots were introduced in level 6. By playing Creative Mode, it was possible to avoid bots. With identical changes to halving the XP and halving the required wins starting in Chapter 3, Season 1, it is unknown what the non-bot methodologies for gameplay without bots will be.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to Play Without Bots in Fortnite?
What are bots in Fortnite?
Bots are computer-controlled players designed to make the game more challenging for new or less skilled players.
How to Play Without Bots in Fortnite?
Can I play Fortnite without bots?
Yes, you can play without bots by playing in the Arena mode or in private matches with friends.
How to Play Without Bots in Fortnite?
How do I turn off bots in Fortnite?
Currently, there is no option to turn off bots completely in public matches. However, you can reduce the number of bots you encounter by playing in higher skill-based matchmaking lobbies.
How to Play Without Bots in Fortnite?
Is there a way to play with only real players in Fortnite?
Yes, you can play in Arena mode or in private matches with only real players. These modes do not have bots in them.
How to Play Without Bots in Fortnite?
Why should I play without bots?
Playing without bots can provide a more challenging and competitive gameplay experience. It also allows players to improve their skills by playing against real players.
How to Play Without Bots in Fortnite?
Can I customize the difficulty of bots?
No, the difficulty of bots is set by the game and cannot be adjusted. However, as you improve and progress in the game, you may encounter less bots in your matches.
