The engineers at Epic Games have been hard at work trying to get the long-awaited Playground LTM in working condition over the past week, after matchmaking and stability issues caused the game mode to be removed from Fortnite just hours after its release. According to a recent update from Epic, the team has been steadily making progress on the Playground LTM despite needing to perform further stability tests.
Update (7/2/18): Epic has begun rolling out the Playground LTM in certain regions and platforms. “We’ve completed our testing process for the improvements to our matchmaking services and are deploying servers that will bring back the Playground LTM,” said Epic Games developer MrPopoTFS on Reddit.
“You may notice that some regions or platforms gain access to this LTM before others, this is intentional and allows us to gradually open this game mode up to ease stress on all relevant backend services. This process may take some time. But get those creative ideas ready, our aim is to have this fully available to all players later tonight. We’re going to closely monitor our stability over this time.”
Original story: Epic has been keeping Fortnite players in the loop on Reddit regarding the status of the Playground LTM. In a recent Reddit update, the studio said that their most recent load tests for the Playground LTM “look promising,” though they will need to perform more scale tests before the game mode can be reintroduced in Fortnite.
We still have some goals we need to reach before releasing the Playground LTM, but our recent tests look promising. The team is hard at work and we’ll update you once we have more information to provide.
More details: https://t.co/P2gHbiy28j
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) July 2, 2018
“It’s hard to know whether we’ll have to make any additional system changes in order to meet our test goals right now. We won’t know that for sure until after we complete our current testing phase, which will be done in a few hours,” said Epic in their Playground LTM update. “Once this phase has completed we will know more about where we stand and be able to provide a status update.”
According to the update, Epic still needs to test and investigate the following scenarios for the Playground LTM:
- Exhausting server capacity
- Matchmaking queue back-pressure specific to the LTM
- Recovering when new capacity is added, etc.
The Playground LTM was introduced in Fortnite last week as part of the v4.5 patch update. The Playground LTM is a limited time mode that offers a low-pressure map environment where players can practice building and trying out different weapons in hour-long sessions. Friendly fire is enabled, but players respawn instantly as long as they weren’t downed by a storm.
Epic’s current testing phase will be completed later today. We will provide an update on the status of the Playground LTM once new details become available, so be sure to check back here for updates.
