Update 2.10.0

2024.05.29

NEW COMMUNITY EVENT

As we near the end of Season 2, it’s time to boost XP to give a helping hand to those still working on that last page of the Battlepass! 

We have the final community event of Season 2, and the final event featuring the community-pink rewards! Here is your mission, if you choose to accept: work together to collectively deal 18 billion in damage to enemy contestants in the next week! For the first time ever, you’ll be able to track your progress both in-game and on embark ID. Let’s make sure to end the season with a bang!

Check out today’s store update right here: 

We’re also bringing some changes to the APS turret, making it less of a powerhouse, a sweet set of buffs to the Throwing Knives and a fix for the annoying Voice Chat bug on XBOX, and much more!

Let’s dive in:

Balance Changes

Gadgets 

APS

• New feature: The APS turret now consumes a set amount of health for each projectile it destroys

• The health cost per destroyed projectile is 40%

Weapons 

Throwing Knives

• Reduced the delay before the first projectile spawns from 0.22s to 0.11s to make the attacks more responsive

• Reduced the delay between the first and second projectile spawning from 0.15s to 0.11s to make it easier to land both knives on a moving target

• Increased the initial projectile speed from 138m/s to 166m/s, increasing the weapon’s precision

• Increased the primary attack damage from 60 to 63

Content and Bug Fixes

Animation 

• Fixed an issue where a camera shake would play at each orbital laser charge up event, the shake is now removed

Audio 

• Fixed voice chat not working in certain situations on Xbox

Characters

• Fixed the Darque Mood Hairstyle to prevent it from briefly obscuring the first-person camera during the intro screen

• Fixed the in-game appearance of the Pink Chunky Wedge Trainers 

Controller

• Fixed an issue where selecting contracts using a controller would break the selected focus 

Game Modes

• Fixed a bug where healbeam and defibrillators could be used in Terminal Attack

• Make it less likely that boxes and stations get stuck underneath the ground

Gameplay

• Reduced the size of the Zipline anchors’ ping hitbox

• Reduced the scale at which Ziplines become easier to ping from a distance, making it less likely that they absorb pings intended for other nearby targets

• Fixed unintentional freelook enabled when interacting with objectives and statues

• Fixed the Glitch Barrel being hard to pick up in certain situations

• Fixing issue where players could get stuck colliding with Goo when on moving platforms

Maps

Las Vegas

• Fixed lens flares incorrectly appearing around the edge of the screen at sunset 

• Fixed characters hovering slightly above the ground during the post-match winner celebration 

Progression

• Fixed issue where a win in Terminal Attack did not count towards the “First win of the Day” and “Win X Games”- contracts

• Community event progress is now displayed on the leaderboard screen

• Daily Contracts increase from 1000 XP to 10000 XP

• In-game performance and objective XP has been increased by 50% 

Settings

• Added support for Steam invites

Specializations

• Fixed a bug where players could quick melee while using the Charge 'n' Slam ability

• Fixed quick melee being available while using the Mesh Shield

UI

• Added more events to the in-game score log, such as revives 

• Fixed an issue where your own position wasn't shown on the leaderboard screen

• Fixed Quick action buttons disappearing after switching tabs in the Social menu

• Fixed an issue with the 'Enable Voice Chat' key bind remaining togglable while typing a player report

• Fixed an issue where players could accidentally open the party menu when in settings by pressing the shortcut button

• Animations will autoplay the current selection when browsing customization categories

• Updated the overview stats in the equipment screen for FAMAS and FCAR to better reflect their tuning

• Added a new system to the frontend that limits frame rate and resolution after receiving no user input for a while, or when the app is not in focus
  Dev note: This will help save energy and spare your PCs and consoles from working too hard when the game is idling. This only affects the main menu and can be toggled in the new Energy Saving section of the Video setting.

VFX

• Fixed some environment decals rendering on top of the first-person meshes

Security

• We have now increased our detection of devices that emulate a controller while playing with Mouse and Keyboard, which is not permitted

• Updates and improvements to current detection methods for increased accuracy

Update 2.9.0

2024.05.22

TA IS HERE TO STAY

Alongside this week’s store update, we want to congratulate the community on completing the Community Event by achieving 7 MILLION eliminations in Terminal Attack in just one week! If you contributed to the event, be on the lookout for your brand-new community-themed canvas shoes. Nice work, yolks!

In the past few weeks, we’ve been watching you play Terminal Attack! We are so grateful for your feedback and impressions, and we’ve had a blast watching you attack and defend! Input from the community has been incredibly valuable to us as we work to make this mode a significant and permanent part of THE FINALS. While the event has now ended, and the contracts have expired, we still see so many of you having fun in TA, so we’ve decided to keep it in the game a while longer. 

Don’t forget to keep the feedback coming over on Discord! 

Update 2.8.0

2024.05.15

Welcome to Update 2.8.0 and an all-new community event!

We are hosting a community event in honor of our last week of Terminal Attack! If everyone in the community can pull together to achieve a total of 7 MILLION eliminations in TA this week, everyone who contributed will earn a sweet prize: canvas shoes to add to your cute-mmunity look!

We’ll also host a leaderboard for the event so you can see the top contributors! As always, we’ll give out prizes on Discord during the event.

This update focused on many quality-of-life changes and improvements. Most notably, we have made changes to melee weapons, hoping to improve how they feel to play with in the game. We’ll need your feedback on these changes!

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty:

Content and Bug Fixes 

Animation

• Fixed an issue where hand gesture animations were overriding the  Mesh Shield animations, resulting in broken character poses

• Fixed an issue where throwing animations would not play while inspecting weapons

• Added an intro animation in terminal attack to improve the round countdown

Audio

• Player Voice lines will now only play for teammates and not opposing players 

Gadgets 

Anti-gravity Cube

• We made the cube heavier so that it doesn’t get pushed as easily when hit by other objects 

• Fixed a bug where objects would lift much faster than intended when they were attached together

• This also prevents an exploit in which the cube could be carried upwards together with the objects it’s lifting, causing entire structures to traverse upwards into the sky endlessly

Dome Shield 

• Fixed an issue where it was not able to be glitched when the center was occluded
  

Gameplay

• A new carriable object has been added to the Arena: Glitch Barrels

  Dev note: Glitch barrels are carriable objects. Pick them up and throw them to apply their effect in an area, or shoot them to detonate them from afar. The Glitch barrels apply the same effect as Glitch Grenades, removing the target's ability to use their Gadgets and Specializations.

• Fixed an issue where players were able to start opening a Vault during the beginning of an emote

• Fixed an issue where the Cashbox was incorrectly dropped far away from the player if it clipped through the map border

• Interactions such as using a zipline, pressing elevator buttons, and interacting with a revive statue should now be more responsive, especially on console/gamepad 

• Improved visibility of barrels in dark and monochrome areas

• Fixed a bug with sliding where auto-sprinting players could get stuck between the crouch and sprint state 

• Fixed a bug that allowed players to deal damage to their teammates

• Fixed an issue where players would get stuck in goo when running up to it 
  Dev note: This will only fix the issue outside of moving platforms. We know that goo sometimes behaves strangely on moving platforms and are looking into it for a later patch. 
  

Maps

All Maps 

• Rooftop reflections have been improved 

SYS$HORIZON 

• Tweaked the zipline at the Museum entrance so you exit earlier automatically instead of it taking you all the way to the ceiling

Monaco 

• Power Shift: Adjusted spawns to balance out the distances to the platform and to reduce how often you have to run after the platform when defending

Modes

Terminal Attack 

• Added a distinct sound change on the Terminal when there is only 15 seconds left to stop the decryption

• The icon for the terminal will no longer appear in the center of the screen when decryption starts

• Due to a known issue that could not be resolved in time, players can only swap weapons and gadgets between rounds and not in spectator mode after elimination

UI

• Ping wheel additions and changes

• Added new ping messages “Breach here” and “Hold this Position”

• To make room for the two new pings “Hype” and “Danger” have been moved/removed. Hype is added to the expression wheel, replacing “Need Help.” “Danger” is removed from the wheel but still accessible via double-tapping the ping button on any target

• Support/Social pings are now located at the bottom of the wheel, while tactical options are on the top half

• “Going here”, “Defending here” and “Attacking here” in the Ping wheel are now called “Go here”, “Defend here”, and “Attack here”  to make it clearer that they are requests to your team, and consistent with the character voice lines

• Updated several event log messages related to pinging game mode relevant objects to communicate the context more clearly
  Dev Note: There are still some events missing their proper messages. They will be added in the future!

• When holding the ping wheel on your own ping now we only show the remove option to make it clear that you pinged an existing ping

• Fixed an issue that sometimes made it impossible to cancel the ping wheel 

• Fixed UI elements being drawn on top of the in-game menu in Terminal Attack 

• Flipped background opacity for dead/alive players in the scoreboard

• Updated contestant icons

• Fixed an issue in frontend where clicking buttons multiple times in short succession would cause them not to register

• Updated required round completion on a terminal attack contract from 10 to the intended 14

• Changed the key bind for “Hide UI” from F12 to F10 

• Changed the order of tiles for Quickplay

• Updated the lighting on Player Cards 

Specializations 

Charge'N'Slam

• Can now clear higher obstacles when activated on the ground to reduce instances where players get stuck on geometry

Weapons

Dagger

• Improved backstab validation
  Dev Note: We've received a lot of feedback about Backstabs not feeling as good. Hopefully, we've rectified that issue in this patch. The only way to tell is to let you try it and then gather your feedback! 

• Fixed so that the aim assist for backstabs now synchronizes with the swing, rather than triggering at the start of the charge-up.

All Melee Weapons 

• Improved hit validation for all melee weapons

• There is now a setting for turning melee aim assist on/off in the “Gameplay” section

• The aim assist and lunge range are slightly more generous for quick melee

• We have changed the way sprinting gets blocked when attacking with melee weapons and using quick melee, so that sprint is only blocked through parts of a swing, instead of the whole duration of the attack. This is tweaked on a weapon-to-weapon basis

• The sprint toggle no longer gets canceled by melee attacks, so players don’t have to re-toggle spam to efficiently chase their target while attacking

Riot Shield 

• The shield can now be raised more quickly after performing an attack

SR-84

• Is now correctly marked as a Marksman Rifle instead of a Melee Weapon in the menus

Security

• Updates and improvements 

Known Issues

Heads up! There is an issue with all gamepad presets (except for “Modifier Button Equipping”) which causes players to equip weapons when pressing the “Interact and Equip Weapon” button, which is not intended. This will be resolved in the next patch, but until then, please go into the controller settings and fix it by clearing the “Weapon” bind. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Update 2.7.0

2024.05.08

SHE’S FINALLY HERE!

This week, we welcome the long-awaited, community-anticipated Darque Mood outfit. Get your goth on!

This update has a few performance improvements, UI fixes, and a security update. 

Content and Bug Fixes

Performance

• Fixed an issue where launch options like -dx11 stopped working. However, we still recommend playing without any additional options

• Fixed a rare crash on the server 

UI 

• Polished the look of the incoming melee damage indicator

• Fixed an issue with single item bundle purchase where the wrong item was equipped

• Fixed the nametag sometimes intersecting the HUD in terminal attack when in the squad-up screen

Security 

This week, you’ll notice a difference in the number of cheaters in the game. Multiple new rules have been implemented, along with changes to how and when cheaters are detected. These changes mean that cheaters are being detected and removed faster. 

Remember: if you see cheating in the game, report it and add a good comment explaining what is happening. We also collect video reports on Discord, so if you capture suspicious behavior, send it in! 

Mid-Season Update 2.6.0

2024.05.02

NEW MODE: TERMINAL ATTACK

Terminal Attack is a new 5v5, single-life, attack-and-defend game mode in which contestants take turns delivering the decryption key to the terminal and the best of seven rounds wins. Attackers are tasked with completing the upload, while defenders must prevent it by any means necessary.

No healing. No revive. One life.

Players can regenerate health up to 100 hp, and gadgets do not regenerate at all, so engage with caution and go in with a plan. You can play Terminal Attack in the SYSHorizon, Monaco, and Las Vegas arenas, and be warned, the destruction you cause will carry over through all seven rounds.

Throughout the event, cash in contracts to earn event cosmetics to show your support for CNS, a rogue hacking collective, and VAIIYA, a cyber-security firm. Which side are you on?

Get in there, contestants!

This week, we have a special article from our Design Director, Matt Lowe, who explains League ranks, the journey THE FINALS has taken, changes in this update, and the potential future of ranked play. Please give it a read here.

This update has plenty more to offer, all outlined in the bullet points below. The highlights include a change to Private matches that allows matches to start with as few as 2 players and the addition of Power Shift! Let the 1:1 battles commence!

We’ve added two bonus Battlepass pages with rewards for the grinders out there. Make sure to check out the new drip!

Power Shift has a new arena in rotation! Now you can ride the platform through Seoul.  

Finally, for the first time ever, the new outfit added to the store will allow you to purchase individual items from the bundle as well as the entire bundle all at once. We’re testing this feature to see how it works. We also added a way to equip your new item to the contestant of choice at the time of purchase, but this feature has a bug that displays the wrong image and fails to equip. We have a fix already, but it will come in the next update.

Despite the annoying bug, here's what's in store:

A note on Anti-cheat:

We are acutely aware of and actively combating the current state of cheating. Our team includes skilled engineers, data analysts, security experts, and machine learning experts whose full-time jobs are centered around anti-cheat. Talking too much about anti-cheat can provide too much information to those who build, sell, or use cheats. And yet, if we say nothing, many will feel we aren’t doing enough.

Easy-Anti Cheat is our base software. It acts as the first line of defense and a catch-all for blatant, non-careful cheating.  After that, we have added additional layers of prevention methods and anti-cheat tools and software that obfuscate, check telemetry, hardware behavior and more. With each passing week, we add more rules based on our own data and adjust the old ones. This is because anti-cheat is a game of cat and mouse. With every change we make, the cheat makers respond, and we switch tactics and they follow suit. 

When we catch cheaters, depending on the level of offense, we may provide a 7-day ban or a permanent ban. If the offender is cheating for a second time, the ban will become permanent.  

We have also introduced a video report program on Discord, where you can capture cheating when you see it and provide the video as evidence. This is to catch cheaters who evade our current anti-cheat preventions and to provide our community of players with a place to report hard evidence. From these reports, we will be able to better understand the types of cheats that evade our current systems. 

Please know that we are developing several new technologies and techniques that we will test and deploy as soon as they are ready. We will never back down from this challenge. 

Now, let’s look at the mid-season update in detail: 

Balance Changes

Gadgets 

Barricade

• Increased the size of the Barricade by 20%

Glitch Grenade

• Update glitch effect so that it will now pass through Mesh Shields and Dome Shields 

Stun Gun

• Increased the Stun Gun projectile’s maximum travel distance from 12m to 16m

• Players who are stunned can now use their Specializations and Gadgets while stunned

• Players who are stunned can now aim down sights while stunned

• Players who are stunned can now crouch
  Dev note: We felt that the Stun Gun was a little too dominant as a Gadget and led to many slow, inevitable deaths. The stun effect now mostly lowers the target’s movement speed, blocks them from jumping, mantling, or vaulting over obstacles, and interrupts interactions. This makes stunned players vulnerable but gives them a fighting chance. 

Vanishing bomb

• Decreased the impact of the cloaking effect on the Vanishing Bomb, so affected players are slightly easier to see when moving

Maps

Monaco: Power Shift

• Tweaked the traversal options between Villas and Park for easier access to rooftops

• Minor adjustments to the spawn points around the Forest and Royal Plaza areas to provide a clearer frontline during the final stretch

• Slightly adjusted the path of the platform to fix some clipping issues and make it more accessible on the road between Shopping District and Forest

Specializations

Cloaking Device

• Decreased the impact of the cloaking effect so that cloaked players are slightly easier to see when they are moving

Weapons 

FCAR

• Decreased damage from 25 to 22

• Increased magazine size from 20 to 25

• Increased the fall-off damage multiplier at max range from 50% to 55%, meaning the weapon does slightly more damage at range
  Dev Note: Our data shows us that the FCAR is very strong in the hands of good players but harder to use for newer players. These changes hopefully rein in the weapon’s power at higher skill levels, while making it slightly more forgiving to use for newer players  

Content and Bug Fixes

Animation 

• New intro and idle animation added for Dagger and Sword 

• Swapping items when quick meleeing will now instantly cancel the quick melee animation

• Fixing an issue preventing hand gestures from playing for dual-wield items

Audio 

• Increased priority of enemy footsteps, and tweaked attenuation and occlusion to make them easier to hear.

• Tweaked loudness of dematerialize and rematerialize sounds

Battlepass

• Added two bonus pages of rewards to the end of the BattlePass – good luck contestants!

Characters

• Fixed an issue where the fur on the bunny outfit was flickering when viewed at close distances

• Fixed an issue where players did not get the default outfit when creating a new contestant
  
  

Controller Gyro Aiming

Important! There is currently a serialization issue with some of the new gyro settings in this patch, which causes players to initially get the wrong defaults. We recommend that you restore defaults in the Gyro tab before enabling and trying out the new settings.

• Moved gyro aiming options to a separate tab in the settings menu.

• Made general improvements to the responsiveness and precision of gyro aiming controls.

• The "gyro orientation" setting now has three modes:

• World (New) - Rotation is based on the controller's rotational movement in the world

• Local - Rotation is locally read from the controller's point of view

• Player (Previously World) - Rotation is based on the controller's rotational movement from a player perspective

• Vertical gyro sensitivity is now an absolute value, rather than based on a ratio of the horizontal sensitivity

• Added a new setting that enables focal length scaling for gyro aiming, which scales sensitivity based on changes in FOV, making scoped weapons more precise

• Added options for inverting each gyro axis individually

• Added new settings for gyro acceleration, which increases sensitivity the faster the controller rotates, allowing for sharp turns while maintaining precision for small and steady adjustments

• Add a new ‘flick stick’ mechanic that can be enabled with gyro, which changes the functionality of the look stick so that you can quickly snap to face any direction

• Added the following optional controller binds:

• Reset vertical rotation (necessary when playing with flick stick)

• Toggle gyro aiming (On/Off)

• Disable gyro aiming (Hold)

Gadgets

• Flashbang 

• Fixed an issue where weak flashes could overwrite strong flashes

• Fixed an issue where Grenades, Mines, and C4s with default customization sometimes got a random customization applied

• Fixed an issue where spectators could trigger mines

• Fixed several issues where it looked like the player could place an object but no object appeared

• Fixed an issue where the preview arc showed the in-air detonation effect on grenades that don't actually detonate on a timer

Game Modes

• Power Shift

• Added Seoul to the map pool

Graphics

• Reduced graphical Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) artifacts on consoles

Maps

• General

• Adjusted collision on some bushes to improve interactions with placeable jump-pads

• Fixed an issue where Zipline Cables did not break correctly when intersecting certain objects

• SYS$HORIZON

• Reduced the intensity of some of the interior colors
  Dev note: Monitor and graphic settings that boost saturation make the colors more intense. Adjusting these settings can help to further reduce the intensity.
  
  

Private Matches

• Lowered the requirement to start private matches to 2 players

• The private match lobby creator now has the option to opt out of participating in the match

• The private match lobby creator can now kick players from the lobby

• Minor UI improvements to the private matches screen

• Power Shift is now available in private matches

Ranked Tournaments

• Reduced Ranked Tournaments size from 48 to 24 players
  Dev Note: This change should make matchmaking faster, make tournaments available to more players in different regions, and help improve the quality of skill-based matchmaking leading to closer games.

• Reduced Ranked Tournament duration from four rounds to three, to account for the change in the number of players

• Increased the speed at which visible league rankings synchronize with SBMM ratings

• Improved matchmaking to closer matchmake player within their league rank

• Added an indicator in the league overview screen to show your change in rank progression from the last tournament you participated in
  Dev Note: This is the same arrow indicator that you get after a ranked tournament has been completed so that if you missed it, you can review it on the league overview page.

Settings

• Add a link to the Embark Portal in the system menu

Specializations

• Fixed an issue where turrets lost targeting on players with riot shield

• Fixed an issue where turrets would fall through buildings and not rotate when landing

Stability

• Fixed three of the most common crashes

• Fix for being able to close the "Compiling shaders" screen resulting in a softlock

Store

• Players can now purchase single items within a Bundle (in one bundle to start, as a test)

• There’s now an equip button in the store rewards screen

UI

• We have added a score log to display more scoring events in all different game-modes

• Various playertag marker changes

• Playertags now show distance to you

• Playertags in-game are now uppercase

• There’s now an effect on in-game healthbars to indicate healing

• Fixed an issue in Game Summary where you could see duplicate stats for the same player

• Fixed an issue where the 'Contracts' tab could faultily be accessed from the Battle Pass screen

• Fixed an issue where the camera could be misplaced after inspecting rewards in the circuit screen

• Polished and refined how pings are visualized in-game

• Ping-icons are now smaller and will scale depending on their screen-centeredness

• Pings, team health bars and objective icons now fade out when they come closer to the center of the screen

• Off-screen enemy pings now behave like other off-screen icons and hug the screen edge closest to the pinged location. (Was previously not visible when off-screen)

• Fixing bug where spectating players wouldn’t fade icons when the spectated player enters aim-down-sights

• Voice lines for the default ping (when you ping a random location with no object attached to it) have been updated to be more consistent. Previously it would use “I will…” and “We should…” intermittently

• In general, pinging something will now ask your allies to engage with that object, while pinging the ground will announce your own intention to move there

• Updated options in the Contextual Ping menu

• “Huddle here” changed to “Group up,” with all new voice lines

• “Moving here” changed to “Go here,” using more consistent voice lines

• Fixed an issue where you didn’t go to the correct page in the Battlepass from the outfit screen

• Fix rare instances where first-person animations such as, reloads, inspects, and deploys could not be changed through customization

• Added the ability to track contracts with a right click on the circuits screen

• Fix for showing a single item rarity in the UI when previewing out of a bundle instead of the bundle rarity

• Hit-indicator now differentiates damage from these types of attack

• Long range damage

• Short range damage

• Melee damage

VFX 

• Polished the grappling hook wire animation.

Weapons

• Improved melee aim assistance so that it not only looks for targets when the attack is initiated by the player, but also validates that they are still correct at the time aim correction is applied. This should reduce the number of occasions where melee attacks could pull the player away from a target

Security and Anti-Cheat

• Added a requirement to have Secure Boot enabled for certain players

• Several new suspension rules based on anomaly detection

• Added suspension rule for using Aimbot

• General improvements and fixes

Ranked Leagues in THE FINALS

2024.05.02

By Matt Lowe

I’m Matt, the Design Director for THE FINALS. I’ve been working in the games industry for over 17 years now, predominantly on multiplayer and FPS games. To this day, these types of games are still my go-to experience when I want to have fun. The quality of the multiplayer experience really matters to me and that’s a large part of why I’m here today to explain our approach to ranked play in THE FINALS, both now and into the future.

The goal of ranked matches in any multiplayer PvP game is to let players test their skill against other players, show off their abilities, and have fun improving over time.

The ‘fun’ part is critical here. Ranked players don’t really want to get free wins all the time, as that doesn’t test their skills. They also don’t want to get crushed by their opponents all the time because repeatedly losing isn’t much fun either.

As a result, the ideal scenario is creating fair ranked matches, where players on all teams have similar skill levels, which leads to a good challenge but also gives you a reasonable chance to win. For ranked modes to create these ideal matches, we need some way to measure skill.

“For ranked modes to create these ideal matches, we need some way to measure skill.”

That’s why most ranked modes use Skill-based Matchmaking (SBMM), which assigns players a skill rating based on past performances and uses that rating to find them similarly skilled opponents.

Measuring skill, however, is really tough. In an FPS game, when measuring skill it’s easy to just look at what you do in the game: eliminate opponents. This often results in players looking at kill/death ratios as the only measure of skill.

The challenge is that most FPS games, especially objective-based FPS games like THE FINALS, aren’t just about eliminating opposing players. There are objectives to capture or steal, revives that can save teams from being eliminated, well-timed Goo Grenades that seal off an objective, or a clutch Dome Shield deployment that saves a key player from death. Is it possible to determine which of these actions has the most impact on a win? Which is the most impactful skill? And is that always the most impactful skill?

“Is it possible to determine which of these actions has the most impact on a win? Which is the most impactful skill? And is that always the most impactful skill?”

These questions make skill ratings in any PvP game hard to define. Some people dedicate their entire careers to determining where skill comes from in particular games and sports. I recommend you watch the film (or read the book) Moneyball to get an idea about just how difficult this can be.

As a result of this complexity, the most common approach to measure skill in games is one that ignores all the individual actions players take in a match that might lead to a win and instead measures the player’s win/loss ratio and the skill level of the opposing teams. This way, you remove the difficult questions about which actions contributed most to the win from the equation. Players who win more often are likelier to have the important skills needed to win, and can therefore be considered more skilled.

This is what rating systems like the commonly known Elo System do. When a new player comes along, the system matches them against a range of players, each of whom has a rating based on how often they win or lose and who they have won or lost against. If the new player wins several matches against Gold Tier players, it moves the new player’s rating towards Gold Tier. When that new player starts losing lots of matches at Platinum Tier, the system adjusts and lowers their rating, as it can see they don’t win as often against that tier of players.

Rating skill for a game like THE FINALS has a lot of additional complexity, but this covers the fundamentals.

THE FINALS | Season 1

There are downsides to Elo-style league systems though, one of the biggest being that they’re quite good at finding a player’s skill level pretty quickly. Let me explain why that can be an issue.

You may have seen placement matches in the ranked modes of other multiplayer PvP games. Quite often, by the time the player finishes their placement matches the SBMM in these games has already mapped out the player’s skill level pretty well. This is good as the game can now give those players close matches to compete in, but it can be bad because once a player’s skill level is established it’s actually very hard to improve it without really hard work and meaningful training or practice. This means for most players, in most ranked seasons, their skill rating will barely move for the rest of the season and this lack of progress and progression for a lot of players can seem quite boring. Some players want to progress as they play, they want to feel like they’re learning, but a skill rating that rarely moves doesn’t often give this feeling.

“once a player’s skill level is established it’s actually very hard to improve it without really hard work and meaningful training or practice.”

Ahead of Season 1 of THE FINALS, we felt most of our players would prefer going on a journey through the ranks each season, to get this sense of progression through the leagues, as this was an approach that was becoming more common in PvP games.

In our Season 1 league, the goal was slightly different to Elo-style systems: to take players on a journey through the different leagues before reaching their actual skill rating. This journey feels fun! It’s nice to progress, to have goals to strive for, and to be rewarded for spending time playing the game by moving up through the ranks. For many players, this is more fun than having a skill rating that doesn’t move a lot once reached (like in the Elo-type system).

“In Season 1, the goal was slightly different to Elo-style systems: to take players on a journey through the different leagues before reaching their actual skill rating.”

To reach the close, competitive matches that players want, we still used an underlying skill system, like Elo, that measured the player’s real skill. That rating was converted into a different kind of rating, Fame points, to place the player in the ranking system. Doing this involved a lot of math, but essentially, the system tried to keep the skill rating and the fame ratings somewhat linked.

The system we used for this in Season 1 wasn’t great though. The underlying rating we used to matchmake during the season was okay, but it wasn’t effectively linked to the visible fame or ranks. As a result, any player could theoretically make it to Diamond Tier by the end of Season 1 simply by playing the game enough.

This meant players would often be matched into games where their skill levels were fairly close, but their progress through the leagues was far apart. This made matches seem less balanced than they were, as players would see many different league icons. Understandably, this frustrated our ranked players.

It was clear that Season 2 would need a different plan

THE FINALS | Season 2

In Season 2, we dropped our old fame system in favor of a skill-points system for tracking seasonal progress, a system that was more closely linked to the player’s skill rating than in Season 1. We still tried to preserve some of the seasonal journey by allowing the progress on earning skill points to move slower than the real skill rating.

In Season 2, players were placed below their actual skill rating at the start of the season, in most cases. As they played they would progress through the ranks, but would plateau once they hit their actual skill rating, causing their skill and league ratings to be in sync at that point.

The approach we tried has actually worked more effectively than season 1 in that the league ranking and skill rating remain more in sync and become closer the more the player plays, but it is still confusing, and the lack of information at the beginning of the season didn’t help. Ultimately we still started Season 2 with a similar issue to Season 1, matchmaking based on real skill ratings but displaying league ratings that can be out of sync means players see Silver ranks in matches with Platinum players, even though their skill ratings might be much closer than their current league rating, due to the seasonal journey.

We also found that the time it takes a player to go from the league they were placed in, to the league that matches their skill rating was a little too long, adding to frustration.

The overwhelming feedback from our competitive players is that they would prefer to play a more traditional FPS ranked mode with an Elo-style rating system, where their visible skill/league rating is an accurate measure of their skill level, but where they may not experience much skill growth or rank progress during a season.

“The overwhelming feedback from our competitive players is that they would prefer to play a more traditional FPS ranked mode with an Elo-style rating system”

So what can we do to fix this?

Skill ratings and league systems are nearly impossible to change in the middle of a season. Drastic changes now would mean sudden and massive changes in match quality, sudden rating changes, and so on. This would end up feeling broken, confusing, and unfair. Instead, each new season allows the ranking systems to be freshly reset without causing ill will.

Our plan now is to rework the ranked league system again at the start of Season 3 to give a fresh experience that should feel better, be more informative, and be more closely linked to actual skill. We plan to include an end-of-match summary that informs you about your performance and rank and also shares the rank and level of your opponents—something we aren’t showing right now.

One change we’re going to make in Update 2.6 is to reduce the duration of the seasonal ranked journey, which will allow players to reach their actual skill tier in the league system sooner than before.

To help the quality of matches, we’re going to reduce the size of ranked tournaments from 48 players to 24. Trying to find 48 players of the same skill level within a short matchmaking time is difficult and has often resulted in tournaments where the range of skill levels is too broad for close, fun matches. By cutting the number of players needed to start a tournament in half, it will be easier to find enough players of the same skill level quickly.

We’re hopeful that these changes will improve the experience for the rest of Season 2 and create a much easier-to-understand ranked system in Season 3.

Update 2.5.1

2024.04.24

STORE UPDATE!

This week, we have no update, just a small patch to live the new Store content and provide a fix for the server crashes that have been happening lately.

Check out the store video here:

We also added improvements and adjustments to security and anti-cheat.

Next week, we’ll be back with a more substantial update!

Update 2.5.0

2024.04.17

COMMUNITY CHALLENGE COMPLETE!

Today, we’re bringing you an update with some balance changes and dev comments on future changes to both the Stun Gun and the Cloaking Device! 

The second Community Challenge has come to an end. Congratulations on reaching the goal! We were never worried (maybe a little worried), enjoy your brand new Boombox — and special shout out to contestant “Goo and Sledge” for pushing the platform an astounding 185km!

Also, you may have noticed that we have switched to using Embark ID as our main Display name in-game. You can change your Embark ID display name by visiting the Embark Portal. 

Now! Let’s get into the changes included in Update 2.5.0:

Balance Changes 

Gadgets

• Data Reshaper

  • Range increased from 5m to 15m

  • Target FOV decreased from 25 degrees to 12 degrees
    Dev note: to account for the increased range.

• Stun Gun

Dev Note: We’re aware of player frustrations around being stunned by the Stun Gun and are planning some changes to get it to a better place. However, these changes require more testing before we deploy them so it will be update 2.6 before these arrive. 

Specializations

• Cloaking Device

  • Increased the activation cost from 14.2% to 33%.
    Dev Note: This does not change the maximum sustain time, but makes it drain faster when toggling it on and off too frequently. In addition to this change, we’re also investigating changes to the visibility of cloaked players, but these will not be deployed until the 2.6 update as they require more testing.

• Mesh Shield

  • Decreased health from 1000 to 750

Weapons

• KS-23

  • Bullet dispersion reduced when jumping, sprinting, or zoomed in, to make the weapon more accurate

Security 

• AFK/Idle rule enhancements

• Added detections for software such as cheat tools and injectors, leading to suspensions

Update 2.4.0

2024.04.10

NEW COMMUNITY EVENT

It’s time again to work together as a community for a special prize! This time, you’ll be touring the globe on the Power Shift Platform! Not just once, but 10 times around the Earth! Push and pull that platform far enough and everyone will win a pink Historical Hi-Fi boombox to wear in the Arena! Fail to go the distance and the item becomes an unreachable relic! YOU CAN DO IT! 

Earn the Community-Event-Exclusvie Historif Hi Fi Boombox in Pink!

There will be a leaderboard tracking individual success (with distance added based on your collaborative team effort). 

Want an opportunity for extra prizes during the event?

Join the Official Discord for a chance to earn some swag!

Here is this week’s Store update:

Now for the notes!

This week we are making quality-of-life improvements, adding some new functionality to contracts, another mode to Private Matches, and fixing bugs. 

Players can now track up to 5 contracts inside the game, and you can find options in the settings menu to determine how much (or how little) information is displayed. You’ll also see improvements to the backfill settings on Power Shift, the removal of the glitching UI when eliminated, and a smarter Battlepass that always jumps to your current page.

Finally, we’ve added Solo Bank It to Private Matches and have fixed a number of contracts in the career circuit that were causing headaches to the majority of players.

All this and more! Read the details below: 

Audio

• Fixed an issue where turret sounds could linger if you quickly picked up the Guardian Turret after placing it down.

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where the deployment preview of placeable gadgets could be seen while being revived

• Fixed an issue where the Mesh Shield could be deployed while emoting

• Fixed an issue where the Dematerializer could interact with Goo

• Fixed an issue where you could pick up objects during an interaction

• Fixed animations sometimes retriggering when entering a Gateway

• Fixed an issue where Guardian Turrets would target respawning Defibrillated players who are immune to damage

• Added functionality allowing projectile weapons, such as different Grenades, the RPG, MG32L, and CL-40 to pass through friendly teammates
  Dev note: This change is to address repeated issues where players would damage themselves if a teammate passed close by them right as they fired the weapon 

• Fixed an issue where players using a Riot Shield would not trigger mines

• Fixed an issue where the throwing arc preview would still appear after a throw had been canceled

• Fixed an issue where some objects, such as Barricades, could travel upwards too quickly when affected by the Anti-Gravity Cube

Modes

• Power Shift

• Improved rules for backfilling on Power Shift mode. Players should no longer be backfilled into matches if the platform is within 20% of its final destination

• Solo Bank It 

• Added to Private Matches 

• Practice Range 

• Fixed an issue where mines would not be triggered by bots

Maps 

• Seoul: 

• Fixed overlapping assets

• Las Vegas:

• Improved far shadow distance in lighting 

• Fix for fog bleeding through walls on low and medium-quality settings

• Monaco: 

• Fix for players getting stuck on balconies in certain situations

• Adjusted the glass on the construction site crane so you can throw grenades through them

UI/UX

• Fixed incorrect tutorial video for the Goo grenade

• First-person animations now loop when being previewed

• Added support for zooming in on character items in the Battlepass and Store

• Added tracking ability for up to 5 contracts 

• Fixed the request respawn button not being responsive

• Tweaked squad intro cameras in Power Shift

• Fixed an issue where first-person animations sometimes would not get equipped

• Fixed the UI shaking after being eliminated

• Fix for some players showing up as diamond league rank in the scoreboard when rank could not be fetched in time

• UI Polish for the Scoreboard

• Set the current Battlepass page to be shown first 

Animation

• Fixed an issue where melee swings would not play after a charge and slam

General 

• Frame rate limit setting will now default to 60 on laptops for new installs
  Dev Note: This will help to prevent thermal issues causing heavy stuttering on some laptops. The frame rate limiter can be disabled or adjusted in the video settings menu.

• Upgraded FSR2 to version 2.2.1 to fix a memory leak

• Fixed an issue where fog would bleed through walls on lower-quality settings

Contracts

• Replaced "Win 1 Tournament" with "Deal 750 Fire Damage to Opponents" in Circuit 1, Stage 3

• Reduced "Deal 5000 damage with grenades" to 2500 in Circuit 1, Stage 1 

• Reduced "Get 11 kills in one round" to 6 in Circuit 1, Stage 4

Security Updates

• Fixed an issue that kicked players from the game and displayed error code TFAV1012

• Gradual rollout of Secureboot enforcement for Win 11 to prevent cheats from running  

• Removed identified game executable vulnerabilities

• Enhanced rules for suspensions, including updated limitations for leaderboard presence 

• Updates and improvements

Update 2.3.0

2024.04.04

UPDATES, BALANCE CHANGES AND THE SKILL ISSUE DISCORD QUEST

We’re excited to announce our very first Discord Quest! You can earn the Skill Issue Set by streaming your gameplay to at least one friend on Discord for 15 minutes. It’s only available on the PC version of Discord, and will work even in a private DM! You can even invite your friend to play with you!

Check out the outfit below:

You can also check out our store update:

And finally, the first version of the ranked progression indicator which shows how you move up and down in rank after each ranked tournament has been added! Your feedback continues to be critical on this, so please keep it coming! 

Here are the updates: 

Balancing 

• FAMAS

• Increased recoil curve recovery delay from 0.68 to 0.8

• Increased recoil recovery time from 0.8 to 1
  Dev note: These changes cause automatic recoil recovery to kick in slightly later than before a player finishes firing. It helps prevent an issue where players who pressed the fire button slightly slower than other players felt they saw a very different recoil pattern for the gun
  

Modes

• Power Shift

• Added SYS$HORIZON to the map pool 

• Enabled a new HUD 

• The platform will now deal damage to players that are squished underneath it, to fix the issue where you could be pushed through the ground when trapped  

UI 

• Fixed a bug where the revive tab and respawn coins were swapped in the scoreboard

• Corrected an issue that made the Career Circuit page appear smaller after viewing rewards on console 

• Fixed an issue where Bank Rabbit Bundle couldn’t be purchased via the outfit screen 

Ranked 

• Added an end-of-match screen to indicate the change in rank

• Added animations to the end-of-match rank screen to show when a player is close to going up or down in rank 

PLEASE NOTE:
We have a known issue where all players will see the incorrect ranking the first time they boot the game. You can ignore this screen, as it will only show once and will not affect your actual ranking in any way. We decided it was better to go out with this incorrect screen, than to hold off on this feature for another week.