The Finals, while an excellent take on first-person shooters, suffers from poor game balance
The Finals is one of the newest FPS games that has taken the gaming world by storm. With unique maps and a destructible environment, this multiplayer brought a breath of fresh air to the FPS scene.
Right after its official release, this title faced several significant issues with its gameplay. The game’s barrier to entry quickly rose to a high ceiling, making it much harder for casual players, even in quickplay servers.
As the players define the meta of The Finals, the game’s balance issues come to light. Here are the top five things we have found that need quick fixes for the game to solidify itself for Esports and its longevity.
Explosives Are Difficult to Counter
If you have been playing The Finals recently, you are likely familiar with the term “nuke,” which is used to describe barrels equipped with C4 or explosive mines that can kill the Medium and Light class with one shot. The C4 and explosive mines do not reach far when you throw them, but they can go a solid distance when attached to a barrel.
While explosives are excellent for destroying buildings in The Finals, their damage to players appears too extreme, to the point of being overpowered. Being able to kill someone with one single explosive or poison barrel equipped with C4 instantly makes a 3v3 fight unfair.
Light Class Melee Is Underpowered
There are two melees available for the Light class: Dagger and Sword. The dagger can kill with one shot if you land a backstab on specific classes, and the sword rewards good movement.
While these weapons are fun to use, they are heavily underpowered, especially the dagger. There are a few reasons for this:
- Backstabs with the dagger can sometimes miss even if you are right on the target
- The “Dead Go Boom” event makes meleeing obsolete, as you will die as soon as you kill someone beside you
- Medium class’ recon doesn’t allow Light players to sneak up to enemies to perform melee kills even when using Cloaking Device
Recon Meta
The Medium class is equipped with two gadgets that allow players to see opponents through walls and obstacles: Sonar Grenade and Tracking Dart. While these gadgets seem fair and easy to counter, Mediums’ “Recon Senses” ability is hard to work around and currently dominates the servers as part of the meta.
Recon Senses allow you to see the enemies throughout the map, and having no distance limit overpowers it. Moreover, this ability does not have a single-use cooldown. Therefore, Medium players can single-handedly stop any attempts of other teams trying to sneak up. Overall, what makes Recon Senses so overpowered is the fact that using any other ability on ranked is not as helpful.
Aim Assist On PC
Aim assist is a controversial topic when it comes to FPS, but for The Finals, some players abuse this mechanic even on mouse and keyboard. Using a Steam setting, some MnK players are using aim assist that’s even more powerful than what’s available for controllers.
While we don’t have much to complain about controller players using aim assist to match against MnK users, having this mechanic on mouse and keyboard gives some players an unfair advantage. On top of that, Medium class players with recon abilities can abuse aim assist even more.
Core Problems with Ranked
Currently, there are two major issues with The Finals ranked:
- Skill-based matchmaking is rare
- Rank progression rewards hours spent over the skills of the players
Climbing up the ranks in The Finals is very slow. Unless you constantly win tournaments, you will be receiving way less FP for the time you have spent. u/PD2CWE on r/thefinals pointed out this issue in detail:
“The ranked system is completely flawed, because a team who qualifies R1 and R2, and gets 4th place in R3, gets +15FP for 30 minutes of game time, whereas a team who gets knocked out at 3rd place of R1 twice in a row, gets +20FP for 20 minutes of game time, they get MORE FP for less time spent.”
Final Notes
The increase in cheaters is another issue hurting The Finals’ ranked matches. Thankfully, Embark Studios is aware of this and even had massive ban waves recently. On the other hand, the points reflected above are some of the core gameplay issues that need resolving as the game finishes taking its baby steps.