Battle Royales have dominated the multiplayer gaming market for quite a few years now, but that doesn't mean there have been very many BR success stories. Despite being one of, if not the most popular multiplayer genre out there, only a handful of BR games have ever really become popular. More often than not, a new BR releases to a bit of fanfare, and over the next few weeks, drifts off into irrelevance.
Three games have been the exceptions to this rule: Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty: Warzone. Something about these three games has kept players interested and invested for long periods of time, and other BRs released since have not been able to pull them away.
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The first thing that these three games have in common is something that any good game has: a good foundation. While flashy mechanics and crazy ideas might make for a good trailer, the thing that keeps players coming back to a game is the bones that the game is built upon.
All three of these games have a solid foundation. None of the three of these play alike; each of them is distinctly their own game with good mechanics. The games all run pretty well with only minor hiccups from time to time, movement feels good, and weapons are fun to use. These games are some of the best shooters, and they have all of the fundamentals down.
Once things start getting a little deeper is where these games start to really differ from each other. Each of them has at least one unique mechanic that separates that game from the rest of the pack. For Fortnite, it's the building. While the gun game is important, the building is what separates the bottom from the top in Fortnite. In Apex Legends, it's the characters. Each character has unique mechanics, and a colorful personality to go along with them. For Warzone, it's a bit twofold: both the Gulag and the Buy Station. These both add a little bit of flavor into what is the most serious take of the three.
While each of these games has a unique mechanic, that mechanic is easy to describe and easy to understand. A player can pick up a controller and immediately understand how to play any of these three games without a lengthy tutorial or a ton of explanation, but mastering these mechanics can still prove to be a challenge. Mastering that challenge becomes the gameplay loop. For some of the other BRs that have released in recent years, they either lacked that hook mechanic to invest players, or that hook mechanic was a little too complex for players to get a quick grasp on.
In a market where these games are free-to-play and are already trying to beat out the existing competition, this doesn't generally end well. To use Hyper Scape as an example, the game has a lot of interesting ideas, but, these ideas all take a little bit of explanation, and there are more than a few of them, making for multiple new mechanics a player has to learn in order to have any success, right from the get-go.
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The setting is another hugely crucial thing for a Battle Royale; after all, it's where players are going to spend all of their time in the game. The setting has to be interesting, but also varied enough that different parts of the map feel distinct. A map that's more or less the same throughout, unless the game has a ton of maps available to it, probably isn't going to go over too well. Hyper Scape, for example, had a map that was similar throughout, with many areas looking mostly identical.
Likewise, a map that doesn't really flow together well isn't going to be fun to play on. The map can be diverse, but the battle needs to play out in a satisfying way as the circle, or ring, gets smaller and smaller. If certain areas of the map are prone to annoying fights where the circle collapses on it, players are going to be a bit upset.
These three games have some of the best Battle Royale maps; they're visually interesting, diverse, and have a really great battle-flow. Just about anywhere the circle ends in any of these games, the fight that ensues is going to be interesting. And, each location is going to create a different kind of fight, making for a ton of replay value.
Lastly, one thing that every single BR needs is regular developer support. This is especially true since the BR market is almost entirely free-to-play games, where it's expected that new content is added on a regular basis. A lot of BRs can get stale pretty quickly, and while that could be due to any of the factors listed above, it could happen to a very well-constructed BR, too.
No matter how good something is, most players are only going to play the same kind of content a certain amount of times before they move onto the next shiny thing. But, when a developer releases content on a regular schedule, players know what to expect from their favorite BR each year. They know that they're going to be playing the same thing for a certain amount of time, and most of the time they're cool with it because they know something new is coming in the near future. A lot of players see a BR as an investment, and regular content drops reward that feeling.
All three of these games are a masterclass in keeping a live game fresh with new content. While new content might not be quite as regular as some players would like, everyone does know that it's at least on the way. And, most of the time, that new content is going to change the game in a meaningful way. Apex Legends, for example, adds a new Legend each and every season. This new Legend may or may not shake up the meta, but they are going to be a fresh face in the lineup, and a lot of players are going to devote time towards trying to make that character work for them. On top of that, Apex has released multiple maps since the game's initial release back in 2019, keeping the setting on a rotating basis to ensure matches stay fresh.