CoD pro Scump, claims that Warzone tournaments are “just” not competitive enough to ever be a big thing. He made these comments during Episode 6 of the OpTic Podcast. The other co-hosts were quick to agree that Warzone’s competitive scene had some serious problems, so let's take a look at what was said.
Warzone is rather popular but Seth 'Scump' Abner feels there is “so much left to chance” when trying to compete in the top end of competitive Warzone. Tournaments do in fact exist, but receive very little coverage from the CoD esports scene as its major focus is on league play in multiplayer, which has several big esports orgs with franchised teams. Like Scump himself who plays for OpTic Chicago.
Scump On Problems With Keeping Warzone Lobbies Fair
Competitive Warzone lobbies and tournaments have found some structure with the kill-race format being the widely accepted mode played in tournaments. However, Scump simply feels there are too many problems with the Warzone scene like reverse boosting. A process whereby you intentionally kill yourself in-game to lower your MMR and therefore play against weaker players, a problem that still plagues the competitive scene. Finally, Scump and the hosts of the podcast, discuss the problem of routers that enable players to pick the region they play in and this further allows them to better control how they reverse boost and the skill of their opponents.
"...it's literal RNG..."
Scump also complains that lobbies during tournaments are “literal RNG.” Player skill can range from “bots to sweaty” referring to how easy or tough the competition can be in a given lobby. Despite Warzone having a buyback mechanic that allows you to respawn with your loadout in a match, reducing RNG, Scump still feels that players have too much control over what lobbies they play in, “the game has too many loopholes to work the system.”
Scump Still Loves Warzone
Scump by no means is hating on Warzone or will stop playing it as he prefaces his comments with “I love Warzone... I want it to succeed” but then continues to complain about the array of problems the game’s competitive scene has. Scump does backtrack on his comments about player skill mentioning that "the tournaments are competitive because everyone in the tournament is really, really good.” So it seems his problems lie outside of direct play but how the tournaments are organized and still allow for geo-locating and reverse boosting.
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