Hi everyone, this post is about the only project I made in UEFN and how it got doomed from the start but I didn’t know it, it also contains some of my feedback.
Hope you can learn something from this, it is my last post before going on holiday, it might not reach anyone but I need to write it in order to move on from all of this.
First of all, let me introduce myself, I’m a new creator who started UEFN 3 month ago, I’ve been a dev for 10 years and I’ve been trying to make videogames as side projects for years now. (UE4/UE5/Unity)
Those are the two reasons why I found UEFN pretty enjoyable despite the many bugs it contains and the questionable way of communicating with the staff when you have an issue. 
Anyway, I’ve been working on this island called Activator VS Runners, this is basically the original deathrun gamemode that I used to play a lot when I was a kid
I’m no mapper nor gamedev but I’ve put my soul into this project for more than 2 month (550 hours, 10hours a day including weekends).
I actually think I’ve never worked so much (to be so little considered)
I was really motivated by this project (UEFN), started to join Discords, tried to be active and help the community grow as you can see on my profile.
Made some creator friends who already made a good spot in the industry and no one told me that I was doing it wrong, on the contrary, they said that I was doing really good, that my map could really work, that it could get picked as an Epic's Pick easily, and that I was already one of the best mappers… Which I wanted to believe since I played the other Fortnite maps (no offense intended) and that I really worked hard on this.
(just so you know) The map contains roughly 3000 custom lines of Verse code, most of it being commented properly and as much generic as I could for future uses. I made some custom VFXs, got someone to do custom SFXs too, got someone to make the thumbnail, someone to make ad videos, someone to get a campaign going, and I’ve playtested the map with friends multiple times so I know it is enjoyable and easy enough for kids.
But all of this was for nothing
I released the map 10 days ago and it didn’t get any single REAL play. I say real because the map actually got 700 unique players but coming one at a time and the map isn’t made to be played alone, so people just tend to stay 5min, to finish the solo part of the map once, and to leave the map.
I’ve tweaked the gamemode so it’s still playable when you’re below 6 players (an alternate gamemode starts where there is no activator and unlimited lives, the first player to finish the map gets picked as activator), but I think it’s too late now, servers don’t get more than 2 players at a time. My best success was to have 7 players on a single server once the first day of the release, but it was close to the game end and since the game doesn’t seem to restart really fast, people just left.
What I’m complaining about
I’m not saying that my map is good, I’m just saying that nobody could play it because of how the algorithm works. I’ve worked so hard and it couldn’t be played once, If you’re gonna send me 700 unique players, then send them in different batches so you can test what the average best player count is and adapt the discover pages accordingly. You could also just add a desired player count setting so the algorithm can adapt and we can have less 1v1 boxfight maps. (the same setting they have on community websites that reference maps like FCHQ)
Also, I’ve noticed that ping is a priority for the matchmaking algorithm and we don’t have any way to change this setting as I stated in Define matchmaking algorithm, my map isn’t an aim based map so a ping of 200 is still okay in order to fill server (I tested it). So sometimes I had 20+ concurrent players worldwide but upon trying to join in Europe (by that I mean Auto which equals to Europe for me), I was sent alone on a new server.
You could still say that it’s my bad for not making a gamemode that’s enjoyable at a low player count, and you’re right, but I didn’t know that back then… And it shouldn’t be a thing.
As I said, maybe my map is just pure s*** but we’ll never know, those 550hours are gone now and my faith in this project (UEFN) has gotten down a lot…
Thanks for reading this, hope this can help some people and if it can reach staff members, I’ll be glad too
TL;DR;
Started UEFN 3 month ago, worked really hard on an 1V20 island that’s not really enjoyable at a low player count. (less than 6-7)
Got 700 unique players in 10 days, but always coming 1 by 1, thus leaving fast because the gamemode is not fun at a low player count, thus making the algorithm think it’s bad, thus not giving it more players, thus making then come 1 by 1, etc, you get it… My gamemode never got really played once.
EDIT:
I’m not sure the team did something but I got a peak of 2000 players over a day, one day after posting this, before sending my island code to Flak (see more under this)
My map has been played for a day now, I’m happy. (the playtime is still low on this particular day, so I guess I know now that the map is not that good)
That’s nice.