Maximizing Points

Strategy for Qualification (maximizing points) within Tournaments

In most tournaments, placement is king. Sure, you’ll likely have to engage in battles to maximize placement, and almost certainly to get a win, but generally eliminations are worth far fewer points than placement, so entering a fight early in game can be incredibly risky. Engaging in a fight (especially early in game) that could instead be avoided may come with very little to gain but a whole lot to lose. Avoiding the fight until late in game is generally a better strategy to maximize points unless you are already a pro or have some other advantage going for you, like an insane PC build combined with proximity to the game server.

Entering your first game a little bit later than the start time of the tournament may result in you getting a lobby of slightly lesser skill. The most skilled players often queue in right at the start of the tournament. The players who are very quickly eliminated in that first round of games may be queuing into their second game around the time you are entering your first, so you may get a lobby of folks who just died early - opponents who may also have lesser skill / strategy than you and who might be flustered having come from an early elimination in their prior game.

Waiting until close to the end of the tournament time to start your final game may come with potential for smaller lobbies or opponents who are less skilled…built on an assumption that many players will have completed their max number of games before the tournament window expires. However, note that there can be issues or delays loading into games as well, which could risk you getting to play your final game at all. This is something to balance on your side depending on which tournament you are playing in, where your party (if playing duo, trio, or squad) members are geographically relative to the tournament location, or how you are doing on points so far.
If you’re playing a “local” tournament, load-in may not be as difficult as if you are playing a tournament in a different part of the world. We have experienced issues with game load-in time taking over 5 minutes and then the tournament expiring, resulting in not getting to play the final game. So if you’re for sure needing your final game to qualify, we would recommend trying to get into your final game with more than 5 minutes remaining in the tournament window. Once you get into your game, it will continue as long as you’re alive, even beyond the tournament end-time.