Epic Games has stretched to the extreme in regards to changes to Fortnite, and players have… well, literally not been on cloud nine about it. Team Rumble, an anarchic chaos-mode with respawns and an important feature since Chapter 1, was finally changed out tomorrow. In its place? Training Grounds without builds, with infinite respawns, and everything locked within a single area.
That is right! Running around the map, last-second storm flips, just pure combat on one spot, all become an excuse for a farewell. Some have called this “Zero Build Reloaded,” while some are openly mourning.
The news got out after an almost credible informant for Epic Games, HYPEX, tweeted it about. The replies became a free-for-all punish. Some players were devastated; some just shrugged and said ‘Aye, whatever!’ And a few made jokes about Epic for making the decision.
“Team Rumble was my go-to for challenges,” one person said. Another replied, saying that “Epic doesn’t even care about the mode anyway.” Then there’s the classic bandwagon appeal that just says, “They ruined the mode anyways,” with which one can probably agree.
But let’s be honest here; when was that really the last evening time for Team Rumble? The loot pool was tweaked inconsistently in intervals; storm changes felt like the whole thing was a speedrun, and honestly? Kind of just became a place people would go off to farm quests versus having fun.
Still, for many of those players, the mode stood for a lot. Warm-up science, a place to mess around, a place to do agent 32571’s shotgun-make-people-mad-me-lame quests without even trying much in Battle Royale. Now, poof!
Either way, Training Grounds has been set up for the Zero Build crowd, which sounds fairly legit since Zero Build has been a massive success since its introduction. But to straight-up delete Team Rumble instead of, say… fixing it? That’s pretty damn ballsy.
Speculation has begun, as usual, with some saying that this is just the start. In a world where Epic is constantly rotating the modes in and out, does that mean more Classic modes are going to be put up for chopping? Or is this just a temporary diversion before Team Rumble gets some shiny improvements?
The split reaction has been as expected varied. Some see it as “absolute W” while others are heartbroken. One even took to Twitter to mourn the mode-five days after the announcement: “Team Rumble 11/27/18 – 6/18/25. Real one.”
Next? Well, players must learn to adapt. Training Grounds could be an epic win or a great flop. Nevertheless, it is a given that Fortnite is not afraid to roll out new changes despite alienating some part of the fanbase.
For now, all that remains to do is scour the world of Team Rumble and see what the new one is going to offer—day will tell if it stacks up against Team Rumble or goes the way of forgotten LTM.
And oh, well, we’ve still got Party Royale. Wait, scratch that; even the replies want Epic to get rid of that.
