The state of discovery has been a hot topic the past few weeks/months. I would agree with many that it seems to be harder and harder to get traction on new maps, despite many people releasing very high quality maps with months of work on them. But it seems deeper than that aswell.
When speaking with creator relations, looking over the discover tips & tricks, checking tweet replies from epic regarding discoverability, what you should try, think about, and everything It still seems that the system seems random.
My main map that I released november 2023, got traction almost instantly, it averaged 9000 , got over 2 million favorites and over a billion minutes played the first 3-4 months of its release, after that the downfall started.
The map was very good for being released in 2023, before verse and all, but issues without my own doing started to occur.
Having the best tabs is never guaranteed and after 2-3 months with very good tabs, the map lost the best tabs, but still had some very good positions on lesser priorized maps, going down to 5000-4000 average players, which was still very good
After that, a global-wide serverside issue occured on many maps (mine included) which made the map have 150-300+ ping for all players, a issue that effected the playtime, retention and everything hard, which after 1-2 weeks made the map lose the good tabs it still had left.
The map went down to 1000-2000 average, but during this time (spring of 2024) browse tabs was still very good for niched maps like mine (practice, edit course, aim course etc).
The map was still getting good amounts of plays with the browse tabs and the traction it generated. Keep in mind that this was still before the addition of “favorites”.
The map was doing good during a year after this, until epic games reworked the whole “browse tabs”, which was extremely bad for nisched maps, especially in my genre.
The tabs like “edit course and aim course” which I had top #1-3 positions in during that year as the leading practice map, vanished over night, when they decided to add all maps where you do any form of “edit” and “shooting” in, to the edit course & aim course tabs, which at the time was basically every single big map.
After that, the map went from 800-2000 average, to 200-300 over night.
This is after I’ve spent months reworking the entire map, building new areas, adding more QoL updates.
After this, the map kept on losing players, 0 discover basically, 0 browse tabs, 0 traction anywhere. So I decided to atleast give the map my very all before it was time to call it quits.
I spent the majority of 2025, rebuilding the map was “v2”. Overhauling the design of the entire map, rebuilding every single practice session, adding mutiple verse features with everything I could think off to improve the player experience. Since the map is mine, im biased, but when I released the update in oktober 2025, it was the most practice packed map out of any map in the eco system, the most varity of practice that any and all skilllevels could need. A dedicated 1v1 section with 17 different 1v1s, high score system, automated free build system everything.
The update went live, it took 2 days, then a verse update and a miss from the uefn devs, made the map not being able to update at all, it got persistance issues when trying to push an update.
I got the help I needed from epic creator relations, but it took 2-3 weeks before I could update the game and it was right after i’ve spent several months trying to build the best map out there.
After that was fixed, still no discover placement, still no traction, tried social marketing, tried creating my own content for the map, everything you can think of, nothing would trigger any discover placement what so ever.
I’ve been building maps since the 1.0 release back in 2018, I know its a competitive space and its many factors that goes in to getting players. But I just think that it should not be possible for any game anywhere to go from 9000 average players, 2 million likes, 1 billion minutes playtime and then lose -99% players during the span of 2 years, despite constantly updating the map, making it better in every way.
I dont know if its the system that is just random, some issues with the map being a 1.0 converted map (I used and old map to release the map first, but decided to rebuild everything when I started) or somethig else.
What I’ve come to realise the past years, the fortnite players, play what they see, but if they cant find the map (especially in discover) its very hard to get players, unless you do some sketchy tiktok marketing and tricking in people with scummy vbucks tactics which i will never do.
The map got 70 million plays, 2+ million likes during its first version, which people most definitly liked. But despite keeping the same style and feeling of the map and just making it 1000x better, it resulted in a -99% player decrease.
I dont want to give up on the map, I know that the majority of the players that plays the map loves it, but if they cant find it, they cant play it.
What would you do im my situation? I dont want to spend another 1.5-2 years for nothing.
