Highlights
- Redeploy Flares, a controversial Field Upgrade in Call of Duty: Warzone, has been removed due to its lack of competitive counter strategies, especially in the final moments of Ranked Play Battle Royale matches.
- Many fans support the removal of Redeploy Flares, as it makes competitive Warzone feel fairer and addresses concerns of abuse during tournaments.
- However, some fans believe that Redeploy Flares added unpredictability to the game and were particularly useful in higher ranks to counter camping and griefing tactics.
The latest update for Call of Duty: Warzone removed Redeploy Flares from the game. The controversial Field Upgrade was originally introduced in Call of Duty: Warzone Season 4, which started in mid-June.
Although the fourth season of Warzone debuted many big changes, Redeploy Flares ended up being among its most influential additions. This Field Upgrade, which is the game's jargon for special equipment, allowed players to respawn a random teammate who was downed in battle at the expense of revealing their location to opponents. In spite of that limited drawback, it didn't take long for Redeploy Flares to fundamentally change competitive play, turning it into an economy meta wherein teams that managed to hoard more of these Field Upgrades were likely to win in the final circle by virtue of spamming respawns that were difficult to counter.
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Less than four months since its debut, this polarizing Call of Duty: Warzone Field Upgrade was removed with the October 4 update for the game. The patch notes detailing the latest version of the shooter saw the developers acknowledge that Redeploy Flares were often impossible to counter, growing exponentially more broken as the match went on. And though some players previously suggested limiting their use to the early game, Raven Software and its sister studios working on Warzone decided to eliminate the overpowered item completely instead of attempting balancing changes.
Looking at the social media reactions to this move, many fans appear to be supportive of the change, having opined that removing Redeploy Flares made competitive Warzone feel much fairer again. Some fans also expressed regret that this much-requested tweak wasn't implemented a few weeks earlier, arguing that it lowered the quality of the recently concluded World Series of Warzone 2023 due to how many teams were abusing the strategy over the course of the tournament. A similar sentiment was previously expressed about some Call of Duty: Warzone performance fixes that rolled out in late July, after the game's biggest LAN event of the year had already started.
A few fans still bemoaned the removal, positing that Redeploy Flares made Call of Duty: Warzone significantly less predictable. According to those opinions, the Field Upgrade was especially beneficial in higher ranks of competitive play, where teams are all too often happy to camp on high ground throughout the match. Several Redeploy Flares supporters also labeled the Field Upgrade as being extremely useful for dealing with teams that camp on Buy Stations, which some feel is borderline griefing.
Call of Duty: Warzone is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
