Apex Legend pros explain why they desperately need custom lobbies

Apex Legends professional players have pleaded with Respawn Entertainment to add custom lobbies, in order to help the game’s competitive scene grow.

The developer took their first step towards expanding their competitive scene on the release of Season 2 when the long-awaited ranked mode was added, allowing players to rank up divisions to play against people of a similar skill level.

However, unlike rival battle royale games PUBG and Fortnite, custom lobbies are still nowhere to be seen, six months after the game was initially launched; leaving pro players unable to practice against the very best in the world.

Ranked mode was finally added in Season 2.

In an interview with Forbes, Cloud9 player Greg ‘Grego’ McAllen revealed he and his fellow pros were desperate to compete against each other in order to reduce how much luck effects their performances.

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“We all really want to play against only each other, but unfortunately without custom servers we have to make do with what’s given to us,” he said. “Luck is just a much larger factor at the moment than everyone would like it to be.

“I know there are lots of doubters outside of the community because they don’t feel like it’s real competition at the moment.”

Pro players are still unable to practice on private servers.

McAllen’s Cloud9 teammate, Joseph ‘Frexs’ Sanchez had similar thoughts and highlighted the success of Apex’s rival games competitively after custom lobbies were added.

Sanchez said: “It is extremely important that we get custom lobbies. Most competitive games like CS:GO, League of Legends, Dota 2 and PUBG they all have private, custom lobbies and it works really well.”

Twitch Rivals tournaments took place in public matches.

Cloud9 pro Timothy ‘Overpowered’ Liang believes that the pub stomping format, used in most current  tournaments such as Twitch Rivals, shouldn’t be utilized due to the RNG (random number generator) that is involved in such events.

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“I personally think that custom lobbies is the best tournament format,” said the American. “There is a lot of RNG that comes into kill farming tournaments such as facing good players, where people land, and if players die really fast in the lobby.

“It is very important that Apex Legends esports grows so that the pros can play in custom lobbies. Pub stomping is not good for Apex Legends esports.”

It remains to be seen whether Respawn Entertainment will take the feedback on board, with so many pros desperate to see the feature implemented as soon as possible.