In the latest bout of Warzone tournament drama, Jukeyz and Tommey’s teams had an unfortunate RPG situation arise. Following the rule-breaking incident, the pros have all rallied around a feature they want added to Customs.
Call of Duty: Warzone tournaments take two primary forms: public lobbies (either kill races or Duo Quads formats) or private lobbies. Both have dev error concerns, but the former is subjected to hacker issues while the latter is subjected to ruleset issues.
That was the case for some of Warzone’s very best players during a $5,000 Customs tournament on August 26. In the final game, Jukeyz’s teammate, Fifakill, killed Tommey’s teammate, Almond, with an RPG — not realizing that launchers were banned.
The incident disqualified Jukeyz and Co.’s points for the final match and costed Tom’s team dearly as well. While both teams still finished in the top five, they then channeled their frustration toward a feature they’d like added: the ability to modify items in Customs.
Don’t even get me started haha hopefully if customs are the future it’ll be implemented quickly. Then we can start experimenting with what the ideal rule set is and have some proper good competitions
— Fifakill (@Fifakill_) August 26, 2021
With a ton of different tournament organizers, there are many different rulesets for Customs. Some ban RPGs and shotguns, some don’t. What would make life easier for everyone is if Warzone actually let you remove those items from the game entirely.
Instead, players are expected to read up on the ruleset and know which items they are or are not allowed to pick up and use mid-game. For players jumping into random events and at random time zones, that can be a surprisingly tall task — as was the case here.
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Things eventually ended amicably, as the familiar pros recognized that mistakes can happen and forgave one another, but energy was different when the incident happened.
As you can tell from Almond’s shock and Tommey’s “f**king idiots” reaction, the moment was understandably a frustrating one. In the early game, it was an unfortunate way to force Tom’s team into a serious regain. With both teams so close to the top spot on the leaderboard, it was certainly unideal for the final match to be thrown into such disarray.
Other games have much more extensive customization options for private lobbies. And Warzone players, while happy avoiding hackers in Customs, still want improvements.
With Vanguard releasing in November along with a Warzone anti-cheat, one has to wonder if the developers will also add more customization to the fold. Things like lobby codes and bannable items could make the game’s esport a lot more interesting — and less dramatic.