Fortnite has taken the world by storm, in a gaming wave we haven’t seen since the likes of Minecraft, and even then it wasn’t as sudden as this has been. Epic have hit the jackpot with the Battle Royale mode, but while it’s undoubtedly a phenomenal game, there’s still some features missing that we believe would improve the title ten-fold. Here’s our top six features we think Epic Games should add to Fortnite Battle Royale.

6. Umbrella tiers

We all remember our first win, right? The tense finale as you somehow cheesed your way to that sweet Victory Royale, before thinking you’d never be able to achieve such a feat again, then seeing the beautiful umbrella glider in your locker. Then you do the seemingly impossible, and manage to come out on top again, and again, but the feeling of unlocking that umbrella for the first time is just a distant memory. If only you could experience such a magical moment again.

If Epic introduce umbrella tiers, then you can. There could be a bronze, silver and gold umbrella that could be unlocked at 25, 50 and 100 wins respectively. As some players have even broken the 100 win barrier, it could go much further, with platinum at 250 wins, diamond at 500, rainbow at 1000 and so on. Players will flee at the sight of you!

5. Squad inventories

One of the biggest downfalls to playing with random teammates in public games is how uncooperative they can be when it comes to sharing shields, healing items, and ammunition. You’ll come staggering away from a fight with just a sliver of health left, and they’ll offer you just a few bandages while you’re certain they’re hoarding a nutritious chug jug in their inventory.

Playing squads is all about teamwork, so if you’re in that situation, wouldn’t it be better if you could certify that your squad mate is being greedy, rather than just accusing them? That way, they’d feel far more guilty knowing that you KNOW they have the item, and not being able to deny it, and would be more inclined to give it to you. It would also save a whole lot of hassle being able to glance at their inventories under their name instead of the repeating of “what do you guys have? Is anyone carrying shield pots? How about medkits?”

4. In-game quests

The daily and weekly challenges are a great way for players to have something to work toward, visit locations they usually wouldn’t and use weapons they tend to avoid. But with up to three dailies and seven weeklies on the go at any one time, they can be a pain to keep track of. A very simple suggestion would be to make them viewable while you’re in a match, either via the pause/inventory screen, or press a button to make them pop-up at the side underneath the mini-map.

The only current solution is to write them down or take a photo outside of the game to refer to, but I think we can all agree this would be better. Especially if there was an in-game notification every time you completed a challenge.

3. Console button remapping

Introducing the ‘Combat Pro’ button layout for console players was a fantastic addition a few months back, but players are still at a huge disadvantage to their mouse and keyboard counterparts, and a portion of that is down to the inability to bind certain buttons on the controller to inventory slots or building pieces.

The most logical solution for this would be to utilise the d-pad. Up could correspond to the first inventory slot/building piece, left to the second, right to the third, and down to the fourth. The fifth inventory slot would then be accessed by hitting down followed by R1/RB, as the Combat Pro control scheme would still be in place for those who can’t get accustomed to the d-pad and prefer to use the shoulder buttons to scroll through.

A change like this would mean players can build much quicker between walls and stairs, rather than having to go through the floor pieces first and struggling to put the right pieces down. It would also be a nice quality of life improvement for instant access to inventory items rather than cycling through.

2. More stats

One thing that is glaringly absent from Fortnite is stats. Weapon stats, player stats, post-game stats, location stats, you name it; it’s all possible, but all we get is total kills, matches, and wins/placements. We want to see how many kills we’ve got with every single weapon, how many times we’ve had to be revived, our highest kill count in a game, our longest snipe, our most landed location - you get the gist.

Plenty of games have done this sort of thing before, such as Halo with their Halo Waypoint integration, and Call of Duty with COD Elite. Below is an image from COD Elite during Black Ops 1, showing individual weapon stats.

Something like this would be very neat for the regular players, to see which weapons they perform best with, what area of the map they tend to survive in the longest, etc. It could even become a companion app on smartphones to tie in to the recent mobile release.

1. Killcams

Fortnite is a game where you can be sauntering along perfectly happy, before instantly being dropped by a lethal sniper shot from over 200 metres away, leaving you effing and blinding about how unlucky you are and how their shot was a fluke. But was it really?

With killcams, you can rage even more at the lucky moments your enemies get, or appreciate their raw skill with the impressive kills. Of course, a killcam would give away the enemies location, so for duo and squad games, the killcam would have to be played once all your teammates are also down.

In conjunction with killcams, being able to hear the in-game chat for your victims right after you kill them to hear them raging and cursing at you for outplaying them would put the icing on the cake.

The game is still technically in early access after all, and with new modes like Blitz Mode and Replay Mode implemented or incoming, hopefully Epic will jump on some of these suggestions and implement them as well. We'll continue to play no matter what though, as it's the biggest gaming phenomena in a long time.