Right now, Discover feels too dominated by heavyweight giant maps, massive banners, game collections, and community events. Those things take up a lot of space and mostly benefit already large creators. If Epic wants to keep game collections and community events, they should probably be moved into their own separate section instead of taking space from normal Discovery rows.
I think Fortnite Discover needs to bring back smaller categories so mid range maps (500–2,000 player range) have a chance against the same heavyweight islands. Even maps that have 10k players eventually will end up in the mid range. Maps used to stay there but right now they all quickly go to 100 players after entering the mid range.
Also, instead of the current right arrow system ( See image below ), Discover should use an infinite right direction scroll with half of the next thumbnail visible off the right side of the screen, so players naturally keep scrolling and see more islands rather than clicking on an arrow which is only visible when hovered and loading an entire page.
I agree with the change to remove unnecessary subcategories like Trending Prop Hunt or Most Engaging Horror. Just bring back broader categories that help players find more types of maps without overcomplicating the UI.
Some categories that should return:
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Trending prioritizing maps gaining traction that may be outside a player’s For You
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Most Engaging prioritizing maps players replay and spend time in that may not be in For You
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Top Rated prioritizing highly rated maps that may not be in For You
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Prop Hunt a legacy category lots of players like, but it gets buried inside Party & Mini Games
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Practice Maps for edit courses and other practice maps, since they are too small compared to bigger Shooter maps
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Other legacy categories that helped midsize maps get discovered that I may have forgot
When players scroll right to select a map the entire row should shift hiding left side and showing more island to the right. As seen on almost all streaming platforms. Currently the top 6 maps in a category and those that swap out for the top 6 have a much larger player count than all other maps because of this. Doesn’t matter if a map is top 10 or 100 people will not see them anyways.
P.S. Add back Titles under the thumbnail, many maps have to put their title in the thumbnail now. The more context the player has the better