In early 2025 I published a Review for Fortnite Ballistic (https://gamereviewnation.blogspot.com/2025/02/fortnite-ballistic-ps5-review.html), the FPS gamemode in Fortnite Battle Royale, which is supposed to be Fortnite’s take on Tactical Shooters, like Counter Strike or Valorant. Since than Ballistic has got a lot of different updates and today we are going to talk about the status of the mode, which improvements they made and where it is still lacking.
The previously often broken unranked version of Fortnite Ballistic had been replaced by Fortnite Ballistic Test Ground, which was a new unranked playlist to play all the additional new shell maps. The ranked version on the other hand only featured complete maps, which meant, it still only featured a single map. This split might have been good idea on paper, but it unfortunately failed in practice.
While the original unranked playlist failed due to massive technical issues, which prevented most players from even queuing on it, Ballistic Test Ground on the other hand failed from the lack of players. While it initially gathered some interest, Ballistic Test Ground lost 97% of players within the first 3 weeks. There were often only 200-300 players in Test Grounds and this version of Ballistic suffered from even worse disconnects issues than the Ranked version. It was a real plague and unfortunately not even due to technical issues. A lot of Fortnite players just don’t understand the concept of a tactical shooter and disconnect at the slightest inconvenience. I had multiple matches finishing as 1v2 or 1v3. Test Grounds also had much longer queue times due to the very low player count. In combination, it made Test Grounds practically unplayable.
It’s honestly a bit sad, that they had to remove the unranked playlist in late February 2025 due to technical issues and Test Grounds in early June 2025, only 2 months after its launch, due to lack of players and player behaviour. The focus after this point completely shifted to the Ranked Mode, which also inherited the additional maps from the Test Grounds playlist. Allegedly Epic Games wants to bring bank the unranked playlist at some point in the future, but it’s certainly a bad look, that it already failed twice.
But let’s now talk a bit more about the additional maps. As I already mentioned, Ballistic originally only launched with a single map in December 2024. Skyline 10 was admittedly a good map, not amazing, but a fun map nonetheless. Just having a single map to play for 5 months however was completely unacceptable.
During 2025 4 additional maps have been released. Unfortunately they all released as ‘Shell Maps’, which is a truly bizarre concept. Those are unfinished maps, which instead of actual textures consist completely of these incredibly hideous grey squares. It just looks awful and destroys any kind of atmosphere those maps could have had. The Maps also often had to be redesigned based on community feedback, since they usually had some fundamental design flaws in certain places. On the one hand, it’s nice that developers apparently also listen to their players. On the other hand, a pretty pathetic display, that professional developers seemingly require player feedback to competently design maps. Epic Games obviously tried to frame this under the “Testing” and “Early Access” labels, but those honestly just sounded like poor excuses to me.
It is obvious to me, that Ballistic only got a tiny budget and probably just a skeleton crew of developers, which could explain why they probably don’t have any kind of professional QA testing, but the shell map design can not be excused. They could literally take any kind of random graphics elements and later exchange them in the finished design. No matter how little effort is being put into a Fortnite Creative map, but they all have normal looking maps. There is absolutely no need to have these ugly grey square elements. “Early Access” is just a lazy and poor excuse.
The first two maps that got added were ‘Hammer Fall’ and ‘Storm Chaser Cove’ in April. Hammer Fall is based in a giant castle, while Storm Chaser is located in a facility right next to a beach. In May, they added the town map ‘Cinderwatch’ and in June the Korean city map ‘K-Zone Commons’.
I am currently working on a Map Ranking article, where I will be talking in more detail about the designs of the different maps and how I would grade them. Today I am just going to summarize my thoughts on them:
Hammer Fall and Cinderwatch are actually good additions to Ballistic. Hammer Fall is the only map besides Skyline 10 with an actual finished design and real visuals. It’s one of the larger maps and probably the best one for long range engagements. Despite the bigger size, the map has a clear structure and reminds me of classic 3 lane maps. The unique castle features, like open/closeable castle gates and a throne room, are the real highlights.
Cinderwatch has a pretty different, more winding, design. Thankfully the map is neither too large nor too small and got a really nice flow. Even the bomb sides are designed quite well. Not too huge, not too small, with just the right amount of cover. It is also the only shell map, where thankfully the ugly grey textures don’t dominate everything.
The other two maps are more problematic. Storm Chaser Cove is probably a bit too small. You will rarely get to detonate or even drop a bomb on this map, since the two teams often just rush into each other. The rotation time is probably too fast. Before the map redesign however, had Storm Chaser also a more confusing and convoluted design, like some kind of labyrinth. It improved, but I am still not a fan.
K-Zone Commons suffers from the opposite problem. The map is probably too big for its own good. Rotations take too long and new players can easily get lost here. I also think the B point is a bit too difficult to defend in comparison to the A point.
Ballistic additionally introduced 6 new weapons to the game during 2025. The Drum Gun, Burst AR, Sovereign Sniper, Machine Pistol and Veiled Precision SMG were permanent additions to the game, while the DL-44 only temporarily replaced the Ranger Pistol during the Star Wars Season of Chapter 6. There were also 4 new Flex Gadgets added to Ballistic with the Fire Grenade, the Nitro based Overdrive item, the Med-Mist Healing Grenade and the Wall item. Each player gets to choose one of the 9 Flex Gadgets before the beginning of the match.
I am overall quite happy with the weapon and item additions to Ballistic. While the Gamemode released with a total lack of maps, the weapon-/itempool was at least decent already. These additions however noticeably improve the variety and I particularly like the Fire and Med-Mist Grenades, as well as the Precision SMG and the Drum Gun. I would subjectively prefer if Ballistic had more weapons from the earlier (in my opinion much better) chapters, but I can understand why using Chapter 5 weapons in Ballistic was at least a lot less work to implement for them and most players will probably not mind this. As I said, overall those were clearly a step in the right direction.
Another really great addition, I had asked for, was the implementation of a separate sensitivity setting for the First-Person Perspective. This was desperately needed, since having one sensitivity for Third- and First-Person Perspective was not a good solution at all and lead to compromised setups. This thankfully got fixed.
This also helps with the balancing of the game. Aim Assist in first person mode is lower than in third person and with forced Crossplay in Fortnite and lack of proper FPS sensitivity options it was a noticeable disadvantage for Console players. I don’t think there will ever be a perfect solution with forced Crossplay, but this at least gives people options to fine-tune their aiming.
The Disconnect Problem I already mentioned in regard to the Test Grounds playlist is unfortunately still present even in Ranked. It is admittedly thankfully less common in Ranked than it was in unranked. I practically never have to finish matches in 1v2s or the like in Ranked, but 1-2 disconnects per Team can still regularly appear. Finishing a match with 5v5 is still not the most common case. This might change if you get into the highest ranks, but more casual players still have to suffer from their impatient teammates.
I also have to admit that fixing the disconnect problem is much harder to implement since it is mostly based on player behaviour. The implementation of a surrender option after a couple of lost rounds was certainly a good step in that direction, but it’s more of a band-aid on an open wound than a permanent fix.
A big part of the Ballistic playerbase are just very casual player who browse between gamemodes and try everything out. They don’t see a difference between disconnecting in Ranked Ballistic or quitting a Team Rumble or Solo BR match. If they get a disconnect penalty, but were switching gamemodes anyway, than the penalty doesn’t affect them in the slightest. I would therefore recommend extending the leaver penalty to all gamemodes of Fortnite. This would probably help to discourage players from leaving mid-match. I unfortunately don’t think Epic is brave enough to implement his. Ballistic is, based on the player count, probably not important enough to implement a gamewide penalty and they still want the leavers to buy skins in the shop. I unfortunately think this has a higher priority to them, than to keep the game clean.
Let’s talk about the player numbers. I already mentioned the very underwhelming Unranked/Test Ground numbers before the shutdown of that playlist. Ranked Ballistic started of with an around 170.000 player peak in December 2024, which they obviously couldn’t hold. In early February it dropped to around 20.000 and during April to around 10.000. Since September the daily player peak is varying between 5000 and 7000 players. Ballistic hasn’t reached Rocket Racing like numbers yet, but the trajectory so far seems clear.
We can also see this if we take a look at the update schedule. Except for some minor stat changes, Ballistic received no updates between December 2024 and April 2025. They just released it and wished people good luck, while losing all kind of momentum the gamemode had. In the next four months, there were actually a couple of content updates bringing in the new maps and weapons, but since August there have been 0 new Updates in the last 3 months. There are rumours of a new update arriving with the start of Chapter 7, but those are only rumours so far.
I think these long gaps of updates support my hypothesis, that Ballistic only has a very small budget and very few developers. Unless Epic drastically changes this, I wouldn’t expect to see much different in 2026.
Before I forget to mention it, but there are plenty of Bugs and Glitches still present in Ballistic. Sometimes its only minor things, like incorrect weapon holding animations, but other times you won’t be able to walk or shoot anymore. The first time this happened to me, I switched my controller 2 times, but nothing worked, till it magically fixed itself in round 5. I think game-breaking Glitches like these are another direct consequence of the very small dev team assigned to Ballistic.
Result:
Nearly a year has passed since the launch of Fortnite Ballistic. I originally criticised the gamemode for not having strong enough Gunplay, the broken matchmaking, the lack of maps and sensitivity settings. In some of these areas Ballistic clearly improved.
The first person sensitivity setting is greatly appreciated and the number of maps has significantly increased. A single Map was disgraceful. 5 is at least better, but it’s also unacceptable, that, at the point of writing, 3 are still shell maps. The experience in the unranked playlist got so bad, it had to be removed all together. At least the ranked playlist works mostly fine from a technical perspective, but there are still more than enough Bugs and the Disconnect problem present. Especially the later one negatively impacts the experience of most Ballistic players. The weapon and item additions are a clear improvement, however.
Despite these somewhat mixed results, I am still ready to increase my score for Ballistic from 5.5/10 last year to a 6/10 today. I do think Ballistic would have the potential to one day become a 7/10 or 8/10, but they would need to introduce even more maps in the future, with none of them being shell maps and radically redesign the First-Person gunplay. Fortnite is great at being a Third-Person Shooter, but the First-Person gunplay still lacks behind. This is not surprising. The Third-Person modes in Call of Duty or Apex Legends for example are also far worse than their FPS gameplay. The FPS gameplay in Fortnite is probably stronger than that, but it would require a lot of effort, time and money from Epic Games to get Ballistic competitive with dedicated FPS Tactical Shooters, like Counter Strike, Siege or Valorant. I sadly don’t think Epic is ready to do this and that we will only see minor Improvements in 2026, but obviously only time will tell.
6/10
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