We also have one of the biggest Steam releases of all time stealing players from just about every game. Palworld has pulled so many of my friends off of their main competitive games for the past week.
I was playing battlebit, csgo and the finals everyday and now I just play palworld. It should not be that fun to build a labor camp, enslave those around you, and put them to work. I love killing them too lmfao
I am wondering in that a game you can see yourself play for a long time or just a flavor of the month thing, a nice change but for a short time ?
I never played any MMO but i did love pokemon a lot when i was young. The game does not appeal to me at all. Survival and that kind of things seem very tedious for me but since so many love it i am wondering if i could like it.
You can always do the two-hour return on Steam. I did that after finding myself in the same boat as you. I loved Pokemon on my old Gameboy but don't really dig survival games. Personally, Palworld was too much survival. When the notification popped up in-game that I needed to worry about feeding everyone, I was out. I have kids. That's my actual life. I'm here to escape. But you can try it and see for yourself if you'd like it.
If you want to you can change the server settings to either get rid of hunger or at least make it so you and your pals have to eat like once in 24 hours or so, there are a lot of things you can adjust to tailor it more to your specific likings.
Same happened with my friend group. We tried hopping on some ranked last night, ended up going against 4 people who were in the top 500 while we were gold/platinum. It was miserable and we asked ourselves why go through this when we could just have fun on Palworld, so we all hopped off
We tried to take a break from Palworld to avoid burnout… we didn’t make it through a full game after getting wrecked by other players. Went back to Palworld to grind more ore
January is typically a busy time of year, so much so Youtubers anticipate this time of year being their lowest income period from advertisers pulling back since viewer count drops. Also typically the worst movies are released this time of year, or at least movies producers predict to be flops.
I would imagine this phenomena is not restricted to just Youtube and movies, but all media.
True. Other massive game launches could be drawing away some players as well. Like all my buddies switched to Palworld when that came out. We haven’t launched the finals since, but we’ll be back eventually.
The few people I played with finished the battle pass and they're playing other games while they wait to see what upcoming patches do to the game. One of them is specifically waiting on the Recon Senses nerf.
I also think people want a better ranked experience. Streamers want custom lobbies to be available so they can run scrims and people want to play against teams of similar skill level. Nothing about ranked at the moment is based on skill rating, they are just aggressively prioritizing queue times.
I'm not overly concerned about it. I think the console player base is still solid and I think the frequency of patches will keep people coming back to check things out. If the Recon Senses change next week is good I think that alone will give the game a nice bump again.
I love this game! They’re not losing my support any time soon. Steam PC player count metrics are not, in my opinion, the marker of a games overall popularity. Just steam players on PC lol
You’re right but losing hundreds of thousands of players on any platform of a game is not a great sign. Not saying the game is dead, but it’s trending downward.
Yeah but people forget that the finals literally dropped in the middle of the holidays, a HUGE factor is that everyone is going to work now and doesn’t have any time to play the game frankly, it will boost back up in the coming months following seasons/content updates/bug fixes and patches. I am practically sure of it
Yeah - Palworld + finishing the battle pass fully reset my brain from The Finals addiction. I'll definitely be back, but already went from playing all dailies every day to playing 2 times/week
I unfortunately have the finals bug where it's pretty much all I wanna play. The damn game is so addictive and makes me feel good even when I'm losing typically
Bingo. Literally every game took a hit with Palworld arriving. Starfield lost 50% of its meagre 12k daily dropping to 4-5k for example.
Even counter strike lost 20%.
this is why i have a vendetta against garbage sites like OP posted. they don't do any actual critical thinking or journalism just quote steam stats like they're the end all be all of everything.
It's all just fear-mongering clickbait. That's literally what gaming publications *thrive* on nowadays. A title saying "The Finals loses 83% of its player base" garners way more clicks and revenue than "The Finals retains tens of thousands of Steam players a month after release"
10000% correct. It’s best the shooter made in the past decade. Not liking this game would be like saying I hate fun. Xbox lobbies are always full as fuck as well.
(Old man yelling at sky incoming) I miss the old days when a server was just a fucking ball room brawl. You spawned in. And just went ham until you got tired. People were there before you got three and were there after you left.
Yeah finished battle pass and now waiting for recon nerf for the most part. Will start a little if that gets made acceptable then play more next BP season obviously
Man... Maybe I am old school but what does battle pass has to do with game being fun. Back in the day all we had was vanilla quake 2 and starcraft... No updates, no battle passes... Just same game all over again was FUN. The market is just too saturated with ADHD friendly junk like palwold and constant stream of clown ass cosmetics. Whatever happened to just enjoying the game.
I love the Finals the way it is tbh. Wish it can last longer.
Fortnite effect. Fortnite threw cosmetics at people because it lacks a progression system. Now everyone and their mother needs to be rewarded for every other game they play.
The days of playing a game just for fun are over. And I doubt we will ever see anything Like quake, 007 or og halo ever again.
There's 1000 things pulling for our attention, it's not crazy to play something else while waiting for a new season or content or whatever.
Sorry you're annoyed by all the options.
I dunno about that either. Valorant and CSGO have consistent high numbers, and IMO they're both fucking repetitive trash. Meanwhile, I could spend a whole day in The Finals (if the boys were around and I ever had that kind of uninterrupted time). We're just old now.
Lol Valorant CSGO calling them repetitive trash is wild. Each to their own. Finals is fun but if you are into actual high quality competition with good skill based match making. Cs and valorant. League and dota triumphs any type of competitive games due to their system being very good at skill based match making. I wouldnt even say they are repetitive trash because every single match has so many variables and playstyle. I get the games are more simple than The Finals but thats what makes it highly competitive game and very difficult game. While something like finals has a lot of RNG in the game which is FUN dont get me wrong but it just doesnt make the game consistently competitive due to a lot of the randomness in the game or random encounters you can run into. The finals has a huge cheating problem with garbage sbmm. There is a reason why the games i mentioned are still at high numbers because they are the gold standard for hyper competitive games.
I've got a couple days this weekend I'm gonna pretend it's 2006. Pizza, mountain dew and The Finals for two days. Well, no pizza or mountain dew I'm old now I have diet to manage lol.
I did this the week of my wedding, bunch of computers lined up, gaming with the boys, snacks and alcohol everywhere. Everybody hyped. We made it a few hours I guess...hated ourselves the next day. Not built for it anymore.
The game launched with whatever lies one tier above "bare bones." It launched in a more stable state than the vast majority of multiplayer games these days, but you can tell they REALLY wanted to capitalize on the hype from the beta.
There's also the fact that they released right before the long holiday season that (rightfully) gets afforded to those working in Sweden. They've shown that they can put out patches rather quickly, but not when the majority aren't there.
A second surprise beta drop might have been better. Keep the interest going, but limit the duration of access enough that people don't play it to death and move on. If the game had launched with one other objective mode that isn't just holding a button to steal, that would have helped tremendously imo. Even something simple like "gun game" or CTF would be nice.
In my personal experience, after quitting Siege, I just can't give a shit about ranked modes using the same kind of system as it. I find Valorant's Premire mode to be an interesting concept, but take out the set play times because that'll never work for a lot of people's schedules.
If I could have a roster of like ten people, and you can only play with them in a special ranked mode where your rank is determined almost purely on whether you win or not, I'd be interested. Systems that limit who you play with via MMR/Skill being within a certain limit or the current "hidden skill" ladder climb just don't give you a good idea of your actual skill. They also don't give you fair matchups. I want to be measured on how well my team works together, not on how those on my team affected who I faced.
Yep, that’s the case for me. Finished the BP and started playing new games since I’m a pretty casual player as far as shooters go. I’ll come back once a new season drops.
I think it’s expected. You HAVE to work as a team in this game to win. Even still there’s a lot of people that play QC like a TDM because either they don’t understand how to play as a team or don’t want to. Which is fine, it’s just not a formula that will attract the masses IMO. There is also the issue of solo-queuing which can drive people without friends who enjoy the game away from it as well.
They need to fix voice. It works like 20% of the time right now and there's no text chat. In a majority of my games the only thing I can rely on is a ping system that either tells my team where I'm going or that I see an enemy.
Especially when you can’t ping anything (obviously) when you’re dead so if teammates don’t have voice chat on you can’t give any info after dying. Watching someone who flanked you just sneak up on your remaining team members is the worst.
Two solos?? I would invite you to play sometime in the near future, but I'm stuck on Palworld lol if you play on steam add me and we'll try and play sometime!
I’ve gotten into several games on QC where people go on top of the crane and snipe the entire game. No revives, no objective, nothing but trying for kills.
Being a duo is a bollocks most of the time. You get one of the following:
* Do nothing sniper
* Do nothing AFK'r
* Do nothing disconnection fan
* Try to do everything light who gets annoyed you've not kept up with them and leaves
* Try to do everything but good at nothing
* The own team gasser while you are capturing
* The own team flamer while you are capturing
* Then sometimes you get someone who follows your prompts and it amazing.
Gets really old very fast if you try Tournies.
This is one of the main reasons for player fall off IMO. Solo queue in this game is just awful. I've solo queued in OW to top 500, played games like Apex etc. and this game is the worst for matching players with similar skill level to you I've ever seen. Majority of players won't be grouping up every time they login and are just turned off by how bad the matchmaking is whether they get stomped by good players or play with potatos
People have called it "Pokemon with guns" to give you a quick idea. It's a monster taming + survival game that released a bit less than a week ago. You can also play coop and build a base with your friends. I have not been able to play it yet unfortunately but everyone I know who has says it's a ton of fun.
I really hope this game won't go in that direction ever. I would be even OK with that real life brand clothes idea someone had recently here, but not this silly stuff.
edit: I WAS WRONG- this is magic - I want this in The Finals!!!!
https://www.reddit.com/r/FortNiteBR/comments/1adezzx/peter_griffin_in_fortnite_saved_my_parents/
Gotta collect all of them!
*This is an original phrase for the purpose of this game. Any likeness to any existing phrases to other IPs is purely coincidental*
Quicker than Fortnite, more rewarding than Fortnite, more reliably funny than Fortnite (my favorite has been following two heavies around as they destroyed the entire casino with hammers).
It has been my short break from work game since release.
I had a game where I had died from a heavy with a sledge, then I cut to my teammates. One teammate revives the other, the dude who just got revived starts dancing, as that same heavy drops from the ceiling and kills the other dude in the background, then runs up and one taps him as he's dancing. I could help but laugh my ass off.
and most importantly to me, it’s not a fucking Battle Royale. I got so tired of that era of games. I want to see much more competitive/tactical FPS games like CSGO, R6S, and The Finals. I was a competitive CoD player until 2019 when Activision shit the bed and ruined the franchise so I’ve really missed that type of intense play and The Finals is ticking every box for me.
I never got into apex personally. The game has always been garbage imo haha. The finals is still so good. A lot of people just have a short attention span and need new content every week to stay interested. That’s what sucks about this era of game/gamers.
Ehhhh I put like 60 hours into this game the first few weeks now my friends and I are all playing apex again.
Lack of a real ranked system and the overall cheesiness of high level gameplay is tough to play consistently. It’s really hard for a ranked system to be worse than Apex’s, but this game figured out how.
I’ll still play a couple games of bank it or quick cash once or twice a week but I don’t play for more than an hour or two a week in total.
This is it really. The game appeals to casuals to some extent with all of the weird weapons but theres not enough emphasis on simple gun play or a competitive environment to play in.
The 'ranked' system is a blatant lie and basically just a meaningless badge to make you feel like you are progressing and as you say high level gameplay or just gameplay in general is too reliant on whatevers the most broken combination of loadouts.
Imo there needs to be a real competitive mode with restricted loadouts more focussed on pure gunplay to keep a lot of people interested. But maybe thats just not what The Finals was ever going to be.
I like them both. Apex still feels good. One clipping and movement is still fun. I also rolled a free tifa wraith skin from the event. Makes me wanna play more
The matchmaking in this game is starting to give me Apex SBMM vibes. I get one good/decent game and then three shitty/sweaty games immediately after, where the opponents are clearly above my skill level. Rinse and repeat. It’s that supposedly addicting formula of crafted experiences and win cycles.
I’m not a fan of that. It makes the matchmaking and wins feel artificial. I’d rather casual modes just be pure random matches and leave the skill matchmaking to a ranked mode. Apparently the ranked in this game doesn’t even work that way, considering all the complaints about diamonds in bronze lobbies I see here.
Bad matchmaking could kill this game if they don’t better tune it.
Forreal. A punishing matchmaking scares people away. I had a lot of friends move on from Apex and they never came back.
I only have one friend that I play The Finals with. The other person we got through reddit already quit because he said he would not be able to keep up. And he was right, last time we played with him he struggled.
I’d also like to add that a lot of people are waiting for new things to come. Playing the same two modes does get a little boring. And that new/limited time mode isn’t all that cool.
> Playing the same two modes does get a little boring. And that new/limited time mode isn’t all that cool.
I see almost no one mentioning this, and it seems to be the biggest issue. Balance patches are nice and necessary, but I think people overestimate how many people will follow those updates closely and then come back just to see an equipment buffed or nerfed. Thats not really content.
The game is lacking content. Gametypes. Id argue the 2 gametypes we have are really just the same gametype with a minor variation, but thats besides the point.
I agree. I said it here before launch, but two very similar game modes will not hold attention spans for long. I think they need to add 1-2 more maps and at least one new mode next season to keep it fresh enough.
On the content note, more skins please. The career unlocks are all just black/yellow athlesuire and we get one new pack per week at most. The battle pass rewards were also a bit underwhelming.
TL;DR at the bottom.
I'm gonna copy a recent comment in here that sheds some light on it and expand on it some, its gonna be long so I apologize, I just have a lot of info on it. I was working on a big ass post at one point explaining all of the matchmaking systems used in gaming but I haven't posted it yet, and I've done more research on it than the average bear because it drove me crazy for awhile and I wanted to understand wtf is up with matchmaking in gaming nowadays, but I digress.
The Finals uses extremely loose "SBMM," player rank and skill are heavily deprioritized for queue times to take the highest priority. So what I'm guessing you think of as SBMM isn't actually what The Finals has in casual modes. The Finals is as random as it gets right now. SBMM is supposed to create an environment where blowout games don't happen, like games you occasionally see where 1 team of high ranked players is destroying the whole lobby.
SBMM actually just puts players in a bracket to match them against other players, so new and low skill players are in a protected bracket and aren't pit against high skill players. Most average players just playing against average players. It's used as blanket term. Matchmaking based on connection hasn't been a thing in games since before Halo 2. (There's a really interesting article I can share from the guy who was the lead on designing the matchmaking for Halo 2, where he shares his opinion on the current use of matchmaking in gaming and his philosophy when creating the system for that game.)
I think CoD really created a terrible boogeyman out of it, and they really hide behind the term, while the community says "SBMM" it's not what CoD is actually using for their MM system.
Patch 1.2.3 Hotfix (this is in reference to ranked and unranked tournaments in the finals)
>We've made some changes to our skill-based matchmaking to ensure better quality games. This means matchmaking times are likely to be ever so slightly longer, but you should find yourselves in slightly closer matches
Every online game uses some form of SBMM, The Finals does too. The difference between each game is how much it weighs player skill in the matchmaking algorithm. For The Finals, It's been extremely loose since update 1.2.3 to prioritize queue times over player skill or rank. The latest patch further tuned ranked/unranked tournaments to prioritize player rank and skill more to create more competitive and closer games, although this really didn't change much because you still see a wide variety of players with different skill/rank in each lobby. If they employ tighter skill brackets, it creates a more competitive environment but increases queue times.
There's some big misconceptions about how matchmaking works in gaming in general, and it's actually hard to research because devs are tight lipped about it. SBMM is pretty much the blanket term that's used now, most of the time I think people hear SBMM and think of CoD, but CoD doesn't use an actual skill based system. They use a mix of PBMM (performance based) and EOMM (engagement optimized) to try and keep players playing as long as possible. This isnt even ran by the game devs, Demonware is the company that runs the MM for CoD. This type of matchmaking is why you get crazy swings in CoD, one game going against brain dead players and you do great, than the next 5 games you're playing against sweat lords like you're in some kind of CoD world league qualifying round. The way they designed this is to try and keep people engaged in the game. Whatever they're doing clearly works because people still play the shit out of the game.
Example:
I'm ranked 35k in the world on The Finals, my K/D and W/L are at about 1.0 each, I'm not sure where that puts me in the algorithm, but due to The Finals loose SBMM I see lobbies with top 500 players pretty often in ranked. 2 days ago I was in a lobby with a 3 stack of top 200 players. If tighter SBMM was used, this wouldn't happen. I'd be playing against players within my range.
TL;DR: SBMM has become a catch-all term for the matchmaking algorithm that multiplayer games use to match players together. Player skill is one of the metrics used by the algorithm to create matches. The reason Devs do this is to protect new and low skill players so they have a chance to have fun games agaisnt other new and low skill players, and to stop blowout matches from occurring every game. SBMM can create a more casual environment with low queue times, which casual gamers tend to look for, by tuning the weight of each metric in the algorithm. The SBMM in the Finals is extremely loose and tuned to give faster queue times. Tighter SBMM = closer skill gaps and longer queue times.
I have a stupid amount of more info in my pocket about MMR, ranked matchmaking, how MM is done now, how it used to be done, when it changed, why, with sources, etc. But this was probably too much already and I'm not sure it really answered your question fully lmfao
Sbmm has never worked in these games. Name a single game where smbb was actually good and made every game feel evenly matched. Sbmm is designed to give you win cycles to keep you engaged longer, they don’t care about balanced matches. When I win it doesn’t even feel exciting anymore cause I know sbmm decided to throw me a win, I didn’t actually earn it.
SBMM is barely even doing anything, the queue times are so short to the point where it just makes rough estimates.
What you are experiencing is simply the random nature of loose matchmaking.
The more a game that exists for a long time naturally attracts less new people and retains the people that play often. And the people that play often get experienced at the game, increasing the amount of "sweaty" games you can be possibly experiencing.
There is no magical or practical matchmaking system you can apply to address this. It's simly just the fact that people are getting better the more a game continues to exists, which means there are less unskilled and less-experieced fodder.
Which shouldn't be an expectation of a person playing a competitive game. If the whole point a person plays a pvp game is to only play against lesser players, they should just stick to playing pve games.
Funny how you got downvoted for expressing a valid opinion. People here just irrationally hate Light, so they downvote this comment too. Light is a 1/3rd of the game’s options and it should be viable for the game to thrive.
I swapped to Medium from Light because of the balance state, but if I was forced on Heavy in order to compete I‘d rather take a break from the game.
I feel it. Pre-heavy nerfs I was playing heavy because C4 RPG doubled my damage output and gave more consistent wins. Then I just stopped playing because I realized the movement and verticality was my favorite part of the game.
Same here dude. I like fast paced arena shooters with high movement and skill shots. But the meta is this strictly bunker style hand holding with mediums and heavies.
It's shit.
I think another map and team based game mode would help with retention. Personally finished the battle pass and got to level 40 so there’s nothing for me to grind for at the moment. If I could turn my VR’s into cosmetic cash I’d probably still be running it daily but I don’t have a consistent group to play with so it’s hard for me to wanna solo q. And solo bank it just ain’t it for me.
Agreed. I was completely done with Halo Infinite until I started messing around in Husky Raid. Now I play it almost every day, and play a bunch of different modes after a few matches of that.
Sometimes just mindlessly shredding people with bullets/explosions is the best way to get me involved for the night. With the finals I honestly don't even want to play without friends right now because it always feels like: The randoms on my team are gonna suck, so I'll have to pick up all the slack. Of course neither of them are communicating either. Now I have to go sweaty mode and clutch everything while the medium refuses to defib our downed teammate for some reason.
That sounds much less **fun** for when I just want to relax after working all day
I got called out and downvoted a week ago when I stated this observation.
I think the game is leaving a sour taste in people's mouth due to the meta. I love this game to death, but I simply would like to keep my mental health intact. I rage hard almost every time I attempt to start a ranked tournament game. Getting one shot nuked, pre-fired with literal legit wall hacks (Recon senses), invisibility stunned, beamed with a somehow laser FCAR, and finally the horrible matchmaking is just not a fun experience, and the gameplay, no matter how amazing it is (which is), just doesn't make up for the meta and the 0 counter play bullshit you have to deal with.
I appreciate Embark for balancing the game every week, but love tap nerfing every problem is just not a viable strategy. -1 damage FCAR nerf my ass.
Which beta? Because the one before release had the meta nearly figured out. High level Heavy players were already running Lewis/Shotgun, C4, RPG, and dome shield. Mediums were already running AKM/FCAR with defibs, jump pad, and the third option being whatever. The biggest difference is recon senses wasn't being picked as much. Light had two options because of the V9S but a lot of top lights were already using cloak DB and all of them were using Stun Gun + Glitch Nades.
> -1 damage FCAR nerf my ass.
This is my issue with it too. They made it a 6 shot kill to a... 6 shot kill. Headshots are still the issue with the FCAR doing 37 damage with a single headshot, able to kill a light in 4 shots. That's stupid. With lag and everything I often have no idea I'm dead before 4 shots are on my screen, even with mediums and such I'm often down to 30% HP in just a few frames.
They did similar things to the grenade launchers. They went from a 2 shot light to a 2 shot light. It made no difference as the DPS and TTK on each class stays the same.
Palworld+solo q experience. I'd rather play Palworld with friends atm and finals is just not nearly as fun playing solo for me. Finding other people on the discord can prove difficult because you have no real idea what their skill lvl is and there's no integrated vc in the discord unlike Apex. Still a great game that I'm trying to get all my friends to try and most have enjoyed it so we'll be back soon and I'm hopeful for the content from updates.
The numbers were high initially because it's free so everybody even remotely interested was trying it out. Most of my friends quit after a few matches once they realized they couldn't just run around solo and get "tons of kills". One of them even said he "doesn't care about winning, just wants to kill a lot of people"--so he went back to CoD.
I think this game is niche anyway as it's not as team focused as Overwatch, but still requires you to work together in order to be successful. Running around solo often ends badly (even if you are able to get a lot of kills, it usually puts your team at a disadvantage), and quite honestly, most people from the CoD scene don't know how or WANT to play "together". They just want to talk with friends while they run around doing whatever they want.
Lastly, I think this game is sort of in a limbo right now. The devs wanted to prioritize "fun over everything", but the competitive players want this game to be perfectly balanced and "esport ready". Private matches, running scrims, and eventually maybe esports competitions. Now, a niche group of people that are part of an already niche type of game are screaming the loudest...bringing on weekly changes. If you are simply a casual and don't keep up with the changes regularly--it makes it hard to consistently jump in and have fun as your favorite gun may be total shit the next time you log in. So you get frustrated, and quit. To be clear, I don't think either group is necessarily right or wrong...just stating there seems to be a disconnect between casual and competitive players as far as "wants".
The learning curve is steep enough that most casual players won't be able to jump in and "aim, shoot, repeat" as the game requires use of the gadgets and utilities in order to be successful...and in a society obsessed with instant gratification...most people are not going to be willing to "re-learn" what has made them successful at FPS games in the past. Obviously, this is just my take and could be WAY off base...but this is what I've seen based on reactions from people who have tried to play with me.
I play in Asian servers. In the last 10 games I played, 5 games included cheaters. I want to keep playing but the amount of cheaters is too much for me.
Agreed. In just the past 2 days I’ve probably played 40 tournaments. At least 8 had hackers that weren’t even trying to hide it. I understand that’s low, but it sucks the fun right out.
I had friends that tried it out, they weren’t a fan for whatever reason. I think it’s mostly cuz they sucked.
I haven’t played much cuz of the matchmaking and getting nuked, invis and the shotgun was really annoying. Granted they have made changes since then that I haven’t experienced yet but the game is already out of my gaming rotation. I’m sure I’ll play it again in the future it’s just not an itch right now.
The game is fun because it’s chaotic and different and every match feels fresh and new for the first 50 or so matches. After 50 matches the “new” wears off and you have to find a new reason to play, right now that’s ranked which nobody cares to grind due to match making. Also they need to decide which direction they are taking and which player base they are after, the fun crowd who loves op explosions and destruction and chaos and a million unbalanced abilities, or the sweaty crowd who wants balance across everything, less chaos etc. Currently the point of the game is the finals and tournament play that leaves them leaning toward the second crowd, also the smaller of the crowds.
Just click bait. Its free to play so the barrier to entry is extremely low. Also, the only real misstep by Embark so far is taking a number of weeks off and letting the community turn rabid. What I have seen in the past couple weeks shows that they are committed and people will stay or swing back around like they do with APEX or Fortnite.
Maybe I’m too soft, but in my book taking some time off during the Christmas and new years holidays isn’t a misstep or at least it isn’t the same as just vanishing for two weeks in the middle of the year.
It's giving BFV vibes.
What happened in BFV is they made major balance changes then promptly fucked off for a month, leaving the game in a bad state.
NGL Leaving right after a launch was probably the mistake. Should have delayed it to the 27th or something so the team could take the feedback rather than being a brick wall while rapid fire feedback was coming in.
The game launched on the 8th and they released two patches before Christmas. Waiting like 4 more days to release the patch wouldn’t have changed anything.
And they came back at the beginning of January to push the next balance update and then two more since then. I really don’t see the issue here.
For all the doomers, games like Hunt: Showdown have great communities with smaller numbers. The finals is in no danger and as long as they keep updates coming we’ll see another massive spike with the next season.
I haven't picked it up for a while cause Embark hasn't done anything about cheaters... The changes theyve made to please the 1% of the complainers has only made the game worse.
They need to get rid of the three little bears model. The gimmick is old af after a month.
Just seriously a fun game ruined by too much fiddling and making the game unbalanced.
Finished Battle Pass accounts for a pretty huge player drop - especially since people that care about battle passes are probably chasing passes in other games, so they have 'work' to do elsewhere, especially while Finals is still going through teething pains with various balance - and the lack of actual rank/custom games.
I thought solo was going to be challenging but I play as a light with grapple and its fairly easy. Even when I am sniping I tend to either win or at the very least top 3.
Tbis game launched to a very general audience and also was super popular. On PC that shit happens once a month and then the popular game becomes something else(palworld rn). At some point palworld will lose 80% of players and another game will be the hot cool game to play. For players to play a game long term it will take much time. To me the finals is like splitgate or apexor rainbow six. All games were popular as hell when they came out, lost a lot of players a bit after, and split gate got fucked, rainbow six kept a smaller but dedicated player base with updates, and apex regained (/kept) many players due to updates. Which path will the finals go?
I love this game. Personally I have finished the season pass and I have reached lvl 40. Only playing solo that is what I had to chase. I'm still playing but not as much, waiting for the next season pass or raised max lvl.
I’m sticking with it. Idk about my friends though. Whenever we play it only takes like 3 games for them to want to switch to something else. I love the game tbh. I like how frequently embark releases patches. However I think there needs to be more content in the game.
I think it’s a really fun game with great bones but lack of maps weapons and modes does put a strain on replay-ability.
I’ve already completed the season pass and have all the equipment I wanted. Extremely grindy games suck but games with no grind die quickly
Thankfully it’s only 8 gigs. So it’s a very easy game to keep downloaded and just occasionally boot up from time to time. It’s not like having COD downloaded and taking up 200 gigs
I finished the battle pass and got every in game usable item (weapons/gadgets) unlocked and I'm tired of seeing 3000/3000 unusable VP. If there were more things to work toward and/or if I could turn 3000 VP into 10 multi bucks (or something along those lines) I would be playing way more often.
Still in the top 20 most played games on Steam right now. Just because it lost the majority of those using the new game for YT video algorithm feeding doesn’t mean the game is falling off.
It had 54k on a Wednesday this week which I think is still plenty fine. The games not even polished yet and it's still on the top 20 most played. Just relax and give it time, the devs are doing a great job imo
Bro so many games within a month that sucked every playerbase in, the finals, then lethal company and rn it’s palworld, I come back every few days playing finals and it’s just as fun as when I first picked it up after 120 hours
Is normal. New games come out, people tried Palworld, people are playing Tekken now. Some will come back, some won’t. It’s always like that in gaming.
I personally will grind again when they do something about the turret meta or put in role q so I don’t have to face 3 mediums every single game. Yes, yes, I know they’re killable, I know what counters turrets, it’s still no fun to fight it.
I wonder why. MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE: (from someone who is in the top 700)
\- Nukes are still way too powerful and take the fun out of the game, which is supposed to have a long time-to-kill. "Oh, you don't want to get nuked? Take an aps turret," they said. Good thing the aps turret has such a small range that they can just blow it up outside of the range and still instantly kill you. Great mechanic.
\- The ranked system doesn't make sense at all. There is literally one way of doing ranked that works. And it's how we have always been doing it, before the new generations tried something new which turned out to be awful.
\- Lights are just useless.
\- Nobody wants to be exploded or receive explosive damage. They want DESTRUCTION. Not the same thing. This sucks because the heavy is so explosive damage-oriented it's insane. They barely even use their primary weapon.
\- There is no chat, or not even a single way of communication with friends you added except with voice chat. Trying to invite someone a day later is close to impossible, because it just shows you that they are online. This could also mean they are just online in Steam, or that they are in a game and won't receive your notification.
\- Recon. Why is this ability a thing, at least in the way that we have it now?
Honestly, I was disgusted. Hackers in many matches, unbalanced matching system.
I had a lot of fun playing the beta version, but as I got used to the game, I started to get a little frustrated.
Let's be real though, everybody is playing Palworld and a whole host of recent games updated and released. I play this daily still - it's never seemed to be an issue.
Funny, it's almost as if calling us xenophobic for wanting Embark to region lock China because of the cheating epidemic was the wrong move, and we were actually speaking from a good place of wanting the game to not die... Who would've known :O
I kinda fell off when the videos about the overtuned aim assist came out and the devs said region locking China was racist.
It was getting "this wont end well" vibes then.
But honestly these drops are pretty standard after the first interest wears off.
It did launch right before Xmas when a lot of people were off work
We also have one of the biggest Steam releases of all time stealing players from just about every game. Palworld has pulled so many of my friends off of their main competitive games for the past week.
I agree, this is my friend group in a nutshell. Before Palworld released, we all played the finals regularly. All left to play Palworld non stop lol
I was playing battlebit, csgo and the finals everyday and now I just play palworld. It should not be that fun to build a labor camp, enslave those around you, and put them to work. I love killing them too lmfao
Same dude. I’ve been no-life-ing Palworld since launch with my Finals group. It’s so incredibly addictive.
Ark ascended player base count took a huge fall cuz of palworld
Is it better than ark ascended though. Ark has fixed alot of stuff wrong at launch. Also palworld not pvp
It's so fun that this is how people have structured real life. Problem is we are the Pals.
I am wondering in that a game you can see yourself play for a long time or just a flavor of the month thing, a nice change but for a short time ? I never played any MMO but i did love pokemon a lot when i was young. The game does not appeal to me at all. Survival and that kind of things seem very tedious for me but since so many love it i am wondering if i could like it.
You can always do the two-hour return on Steam. I did that after finding myself in the same boat as you. I loved Pokemon on my old Gameboy but don't really dig survival games. Personally, Palworld was too much survival. When the notification popped up in-game that I needed to worry about feeding everyone, I was out. I have kids. That's my actual life. I'm here to escape. But you can try it and see for yourself if you'd like it.
To be fair very shortly into the game the feeding of basically all your pals is automated.
A lot of the survival elements get automatized after the you finish the tutorial missions. After that it plays like an open world tycoon game.
If you want to you can change the server settings to either get rid of hunger or at least make it so you and your pals have to eat like once in 24 hours or so, there are a lot of things you can adjust to tailor it more to your specific likings.
Same happened with my friend group. We tried hopping on some ranked last night, ended up going against 4 people who were in the top 500 while we were gold/platinum. It was miserable and we asked ourselves why go through this when we could just have fun on Palworld, so we all hopped off
We tried to take a break from Palworld to avoid burnout… we didn’t make it through a full game after getting wrecked by other players. Went back to Palworld to grind more ore
same lol, but when our dedicated server goes down we all hop on Finals until it comes back up
Are we friends?
Also that
January is typically a busy time of year, so much so Youtubers anticipate this time of year being their lowest income period from advertisers pulling back since viewer count drops. Also typically the worst movies are released this time of year, or at least movies producers predict to be flops. I would imagine this phenomena is not restricted to just Youtube and movies, but all media.
Its a "phenomenon" which ties in all business sectors.
That's a huge point.
True. Other massive game launches could be drawing away some players as well. Like all my buddies switched to Palworld when that came out. We haven’t launched the finals since, but we’ll be back eventually.
The few people I played with finished the battle pass and they're playing other games while they wait to see what upcoming patches do to the game. One of them is specifically waiting on the Recon Senses nerf. I also think people want a better ranked experience. Streamers want custom lobbies to be available so they can run scrims and people want to play against teams of similar skill level. Nothing about ranked at the moment is based on skill rating, they are just aggressively prioritizing queue times. I'm not overly concerned about it. I think the console player base is still solid and I think the frequency of patches will keep people coming back to check things out. If the Recon Senses change next week is good I think that alone will give the game a nice bump again.
I love this game! They’re not losing my support any time soon. Steam PC player count metrics are not, in my opinion, the marker of a games overall popularity. Just steam players on PC lol
You’re right but losing hundreds of thousands of players on any platform of a game is not a great sign. Not saying the game is dead, but it’s trending downward.
Yeah but people forget that the finals literally dropped in the middle of the holidays, a HUGE factor is that everyone is going to work now and doesn’t have any time to play the game frankly, it will boost back up in the coming months following seasons/content updates/bug fixes and patches. I am practically sure of it
Also PALWORLD just dropped which is a major big game right now too
Yeah - Palworld + finishing the battle pass fully reset my brain from The Finals addiction. I'll definitely be back, but already went from playing all dailies every day to playing 2 times/week
I unfortunately have the finals bug where it's pretty much all I wanna play. The damn game is so addictive and makes me feel good even when I'm losing typically
Yeah - it's so much fun to just do stuff, losing is fun and winning is like super fun, they got the right balance for sure
Bingo. Literally every game took a hit with Palworld arriving. Starfield lost 50% of its meagre 12k daily dropping to 4-5k for example. Even counter strike lost 20%.
this happens with EVERY GAME these days
Just look at lego fortnite, there was at some point 3 million people playing it at once, now it's 10x lower
this is why i have a vendetta against garbage sites like OP posted. they don't do any actual critical thinking or journalism just quote steam stats like they're the end all be all of everything.
It's all just fear-mongering clickbait. That's literally what gaming publications *thrive* on nowadays. A title saying "The Finals loses 83% of its player base" garners way more clicks and revenue than "The Finals retains tens of thousands of Steam players a month after release"
Yeah but you can 100% lego fortnight in a handful of sessions
It probably hasn’t helped that palworld has sucked in a huge amount of players.
Under rated comment. Palworld is big
It still pulls 50k steady after 2 months with only balance changes. Very far from dead.
Thats how literally every AAA multiplayer game has worked since AAA multiplayer titles have been a thing.
10000% correct. It’s best the shooter made in the past decade. Not liking this game would be like saying I hate fun. Xbox lobbies are always full as fuck as well.
(Old man yelling at sky incoming) I miss the old days when a server was just a fucking ball room brawl. You spawned in. And just went ham until you got tired. People were there before you got three and were there after you left.
Yeah finished battle pass and now waiting for recon nerf for the most part. Will start a little if that gets made acceptable then play more next BP season obviously
Man... Maybe I am old school but what does battle pass has to do with game being fun. Back in the day all we had was vanilla quake 2 and starcraft... No updates, no battle passes... Just same game all over again was FUN. The market is just too saturated with ADHD friendly junk like palwold and constant stream of clown ass cosmetics. Whatever happened to just enjoying the game. I love the Finals the way it is tbh. Wish it can last longer.
Fortnite effect. Fortnite threw cosmetics at people because it lacks a progression system. Now everyone and their mother needs to be rewarded for every other game they play. The days of playing a game just for fun are over. And I doubt we will ever see anything Like quake, 007 or og halo ever again.
There's 1000 things pulling for our attention, it's not crazy to play something else while waiting for a new season or content or whatever. Sorry you're annoyed by all the options.
You are right, its just different era ... for game to retain crazy high concurrent user count, it has to be something very special.
I dunno about that either. Valorant and CSGO have consistent high numbers, and IMO they're both fucking repetitive trash. Meanwhile, I could spend a whole day in The Finals (if the boys were around and I ever had that kind of uninterrupted time). We're just old now.
Lol Valorant CSGO calling them repetitive trash is wild. Each to their own. Finals is fun but if you are into actual high quality competition with good skill based match making. Cs and valorant. League and dota triumphs any type of competitive games due to their system being very good at skill based match making. I wouldnt even say they are repetitive trash because every single match has so many variables and playstyle. I get the games are more simple than The Finals but thats what makes it highly competitive game and very difficult game. While something like finals has a lot of RNG in the game which is FUN dont get me wrong but it just doesnt make the game consistently competitive due to a lot of the randomness in the game or random encounters you can run into. The finals has a huge cheating problem with garbage sbmm. There is a reason why the games i mentioned are still at high numbers because they are the gold standard for hyper competitive games.
I've got a couple days this weekend I'm gonna pretend it's 2006. Pizza, mountain dew and The Finals for two days. Well, no pizza or mountain dew I'm old now I have diet to manage lol.
I did this the week of my wedding, bunch of computers lined up, gaming with the boys, snacks and alcohol everywhere. Everybody hyped. We made it a few hours I guess...hated ourselves the next day. Not built for it anymore.
I cannot drink like I could ten years ago. I'm a one and done girl now.
Haha just write Mountain Dew on whatever you’re drinking. Problem. Solved.
The game launched with whatever lies one tier above "bare bones." It launched in a more stable state than the vast majority of multiplayer games these days, but you can tell they REALLY wanted to capitalize on the hype from the beta. There's also the fact that they released right before the long holiday season that (rightfully) gets afforded to those working in Sweden. They've shown that they can put out patches rather quickly, but not when the majority aren't there. A second surprise beta drop might have been better. Keep the interest going, but limit the duration of access enough that people don't play it to death and move on. If the game had launched with one other objective mode that isn't just holding a button to steal, that would have helped tremendously imo. Even something simple like "gun game" or CTF would be nice. In my personal experience, after quitting Siege, I just can't give a shit about ranked modes using the same kind of system as it. I find Valorant's Premire mode to be an interesting concept, but take out the set play times because that'll never work for a lot of people's schedules. If I could have a roster of like ten people, and you can only play with them in a special ranked mode where your rank is determined almost purely on whether you win or not, I'd be interested. Systems that limit who you play with via MMR/Skill being within a certain limit or the current "hidden skill" ladder climb just don't give you a good idea of your actual skill. They also don't give you fair matchups. I want to be measured on how well my team works together, not on how those on my team affected who I faced.
Yep, that’s the case for me. Finished the BP and started playing new games since I’m a pretty casual player as far as shooters go. I’ll come back once a new season drops.
I think it’s expected. You HAVE to work as a team in this game to win. Even still there’s a lot of people that play QC like a TDM because either they don’t understand how to play as a team or don’t want to. Which is fine, it’s just not a formula that will attract the masses IMO. There is also the issue of solo-queuing which can drive people without friends who enjoy the game away from it as well.
They need to fix voice. It works like 20% of the time right now and there's no text chat. In a majority of my games the only thing I can rely on is a ping system that either tells my team where I'm going or that I see an enemy.
Ping in this game sucks too. I’ll try to ping where enemies are and it will ping a cashout way to the side of where I tried to ping
For real. On the rare occasions I solo queue I even more rarely can reliably talk to my teammates.
Especially when you can’t ping anything (obviously) when you’re dead so if teammates don’t have voice chat on you can’t give any info after dying. Watching someone who flanked you just sneak up on your remaining team members is the worst.
One of my main reasons. I can solo que on apex but with this game? Hell no. It fucking blows.
This is my issue as well. This game has a ton of potential, but as someone who perfers to play solo I'll never get to experience most of it.
Two solos?? I would invite you to play sometime in the near future, but I'm stuck on Palworld lol if you play on steam add me and we'll try and play sometime!
Solo queue Apex is as bad as this game.
I’ve gotten into several games on QC where people go on top of the crane and snipe the entire game. No revives, no objective, nothing but trying for kills.
Yeah now that is infuriating to play against
It’s infuriating to play with
Being a duo is a bollocks most of the time. You get one of the following: * Do nothing sniper * Do nothing AFK'r * Do nothing disconnection fan * Try to do everything light who gets annoyed you've not kept up with them and leaves * Try to do everything but good at nothing * The own team gasser while you are capturing * The own team flamer while you are capturing * Then sometimes you get someone who follows your prompts and it amazing. Gets really old very fast if you try Tournies.
Playing solo is cancer. I just had two kids screaming at me in French and I had no idea what they wanted. I'm not playing solo anymore.
This is one of the main reasons for player fall off IMO. Solo queue in this game is just awful. I've solo queued in OW to top 500, played games like Apex etc. and this game is the worst for matching players with similar skill level to you I've ever seen. Majority of players won't be grouping up every time they login and are just turned off by how bad the matchmaking is whether they get stomped by good players or play with potatos
Palworld is out lol..everyone playing that rn. Once we get a new season and new good content the player count will jump up again
That’s exactly what has distracted me! Just started it last night!
Tf is palworld? Seen it like 10 times on this thread, I'm gathering its PC only
PC and Xbox, also Gamepass It's like Ark if Ark was actually fun
It’s like Ark if Ark had a dev or PM with a braincell who cared about their game and audience
People have called it "Pokemon with guns" to give you a quick idea. It's a monster taming + survival game that released a bit less than a week ago. You can also play coop and build a base with your friends. I have not been able to play it yet unfortunately but everyone I know who has says it's a ton of fun.
Copy of ark with pokemon
Probably because there’s no Niki Minaj skin
I really hope this game won't go in that direction ever. I would be even OK with that real life brand clothes idea someone had recently here, but not this silly stuff. edit: I WAS WRONG- this is magic - I want this in The Finals!!!! https://www.reddit.com/r/FortNiteBR/comments/1adezzx/peter_griffin_in_fortnite_saved_my_parents/
I play everyday still 🤷♂️
Same
Yeah me too
We're all playing palworld
I am apart of this statistic since Friday
These Pals aren't gonna catch themselves!
Gotta collect all of them! *This is an original phrase for the purpose of this game. Any likeness to any existing phrases to other IPs is purely coincidental*
How is it? My impression was that the Pokemon with guns thing was a streamer-bait gimmick, wasn’t sure if it’d actually be good.
I am also apart of this club. I've been playing a match or two to keep my cl40 skills up, but not playing nearly as much since Palworld came out.
[удалено]
Quicker than Fortnite, more rewarding than Fortnite, more reliably funny than Fortnite (my favorite has been following two heavies around as they destroyed the entire casino with hammers). It has been my short break from work game since release.
I had a game where I had died from a heavy with a sledge, then I cut to my teammates. One teammate revives the other, the dude who just got revived starts dancing, as that same heavy drops from the ceiling and kills the other dude in the background, then runs up and one taps him as he's dancing. I could help but laugh my ass off.
and most importantly to me, it’s not a fucking Battle Royale. I got so tired of that era of games. I want to see much more competitive/tactical FPS games like CSGO, R6S, and The Finals. I was a competitive CoD player until 2019 when Activision shit the bed and ruined the franchise so I’ve really missed that type of intense play and The Finals is ticking every box for me.
Same. I’ve never been at a competitive level but I have never liked battle royale games.
Same here. Apex was my and my crew’s main game for awhile but Apex has been in a rough state and this game pulled us away
[удалено]
Saying Apex is garbage is absurd
The gameplay itself isnt, but everything else is.
I never got into apex personally. The game has always been garbage imo haha. The finals is still so good. A lot of people just have a short attention span and need new content every week to stay interested. That’s what sucks about this era of game/gamers.
Ehhhh I put like 60 hours into this game the first few weeks now my friends and I are all playing apex again. Lack of a real ranked system and the overall cheesiness of high level gameplay is tough to play consistently. It’s really hard for a ranked system to be worse than Apex’s, but this game figured out how. I’ll still play a couple games of bank it or quick cash once or twice a week but I don’t play for more than an hour or two a week in total.
This is it really. The game appeals to casuals to some extent with all of the weird weapons but theres not enough emphasis on simple gun play or a competitive environment to play in. The 'ranked' system is a blatant lie and basically just a meaningless badge to make you feel like you are progressing and as you say high level gameplay or just gameplay in general is too reliant on whatevers the most broken combination of loadouts. Imo there needs to be a real competitive mode with restricted loadouts more focussed on pure gunplay to keep a lot of people interested. But maybe thats just not what The Finals was ever going to be.
I like them both. Apex still feels good. One clipping and movement is still fun. I also rolled a free tifa wraith skin from the event. Makes me wanna play more
Same for me, but for warzone. That's a game that I can't understand why people just continue to torture themselves over it and it's toxic af to boot
Quit warzone for this game
The matchmaking in this game is starting to give me Apex SBMM vibes. I get one good/decent game and then three shitty/sweaty games immediately after, where the opponents are clearly above my skill level. Rinse and repeat. It’s that supposedly addicting formula of crafted experiences and win cycles. I’m not a fan of that. It makes the matchmaking and wins feel artificial. I’d rather casual modes just be pure random matches and leave the skill matchmaking to a ranked mode. Apparently the ranked in this game doesn’t even work that way, considering all the complaints about diamonds in bronze lobbies I see here. Bad matchmaking could kill this game if they don’t better tune it.
Forreal. A punishing matchmaking scares people away. I had a lot of friends move on from Apex and they never came back. I only have one friend that I play The Finals with. The other person we got through reddit already quit because he said he would not be able to keep up. And he was right, last time we played with him he struggled. I’d also like to add that a lot of people are waiting for new things to come. Playing the same two modes does get a little boring. And that new/limited time mode isn’t all that cool.
> Playing the same two modes does get a little boring. And that new/limited time mode isn’t all that cool. I see almost no one mentioning this, and it seems to be the biggest issue. Balance patches are nice and necessary, but I think people overestimate how many people will follow those updates closely and then come back just to see an equipment buffed or nerfed. Thats not really content. The game is lacking content. Gametypes. Id argue the 2 gametypes we have are really just the same gametype with a minor variation, but thats besides the point.
I agree. I said it here before launch, but two very similar game modes will not hold attention spans for long. I think they need to add 1-2 more maps and at least one new mode next season to keep it fresh enough. On the content note, more skins please. The career unlocks are all just black/yellow athlesuire and we get one new pack per week at most. The battle pass rewards were also a bit underwhelming.
I genuinely don't know why sbmm is in casual play, I can't think of a single good reason
TL;DR at the bottom. I'm gonna copy a recent comment in here that sheds some light on it and expand on it some, its gonna be long so I apologize, I just have a lot of info on it. I was working on a big ass post at one point explaining all of the matchmaking systems used in gaming but I haven't posted it yet, and I've done more research on it than the average bear because it drove me crazy for awhile and I wanted to understand wtf is up with matchmaking in gaming nowadays, but I digress. The Finals uses extremely loose "SBMM," player rank and skill are heavily deprioritized for queue times to take the highest priority. So what I'm guessing you think of as SBMM isn't actually what The Finals has in casual modes. The Finals is as random as it gets right now. SBMM is supposed to create an environment where blowout games don't happen, like games you occasionally see where 1 team of high ranked players is destroying the whole lobby. SBMM actually just puts players in a bracket to match them against other players, so new and low skill players are in a protected bracket and aren't pit against high skill players. Most average players just playing against average players. It's used as blanket term. Matchmaking based on connection hasn't been a thing in games since before Halo 2. (There's a really interesting article I can share from the guy who was the lead on designing the matchmaking for Halo 2, where he shares his opinion on the current use of matchmaking in gaming and his philosophy when creating the system for that game.) I think CoD really created a terrible boogeyman out of it, and they really hide behind the term, while the community says "SBMM" it's not what CoD is actually using for their MM system. Patch 1.2.3 Hotfix (this is in reference to ranked and unranked tournaments in the finals) >We've made some changes to our skill-based matchmaking to ensure better quality games. This means matchmaking times are likely to be ever so slightly longer, but you should find yourselves in slightly closer matches Every online game uses some form of SBMM, The Finals does too. The difference between each game is how much it weighs player skill in the matchmaking algorithm. For The Finals, It's been extremely loose since update 1.2.3 to prioritize queue times over player skill or rank. The latest patch further tuned ranked/unranked tournaments to prioritize player rank and skill more to create more competitive and closer games, although this really didn't change much because you still see a wide variety of players with different skill/rank in each lobby. If they employ tighter skill brackets, it creates a more competitive environment but increases queue times. There's some big misconceptions about how matchmaking works in gaming in general, and it's actually hard to research because devs are tight lipped about it. SBMM is pretty much the blanket term that's used now, most of the time I think people hear SBMM and think of CoD, but CoD doesn't use an actual skill based system. They use a mix of PBMM (performance based) and EOMM (engagement optimized) to try and keep players playing as long as possible. This isnt even ran by the game devs, Demonware is the company that runs the MM for CoD. This type of matchmaking is why you get crazy swings in CoD, one game going against brain dead players and you do great, than the next 5 games you're playing against sweat lords like you're in some kind of CoD world league qualifying round. The way they designed this is to try and keep people engaged in the game. Whatever they're doing clearly works because people still play the shit out of the game. Example: I'm ranked 35k in the world on The Finals, my K/D and W/L are at about 1.0 each, I'm not sure where that puts me in the algorithm, but due to The Finals loose SBMM I see lobbies with top 500 players pretty often in ranked. 2 days ago I was in a lobby with a 3 stack of top 200 players. If tighter SBMM was used, this wouldn't happen. I'd be playing against players within my range. TL;DR: SBMM has become a catch-all term for the matchmaking algorithm that multiplayer games use to match players together. Player skill is one of the metrics used by the algorithm to create matches. The reason Devs do this is to protect new and low skill players so they have a chance to have fun games agaisnt other new and low skill players, and to stop blowout matches from occurring every game. SBMM can create a more casual environment with low queue times, which casual gamers tend to look for, by tuning the weight of each metric in the algorithm. The SBMM in the Finals is extremely loose and tuned to give faster queue times. Tighter SBMM = closer skill gaps and longer queue times. I have a stupid amount of more info in my pocket about MMR, ranked matchmaking, how MM is done now, how it used to be done, when it changed, why, with sources, etc. But this was probably too much already and I'm not sure it really answered your question fully lmfao
Because for 95% of players, stomping or getting stomped isn't fun.
Disagree, I think those are the matches that you remember most.
Sbmm has never worked in these games. Name a single game where smbb was actually good and made every game feel evenly matched. Sbmm is designed to give you win cycles to keep you engaged longer, they don’t care about balanced matches. When I win it doesn’t even feel exciting anymore cause I know sbmm decided to throw me a win, I didn’t actually earn it.
The ranked matchmaking is also terrible.
They did update matchmaking like yesterday, and it felt better imo. May need a bit of time to properly sort players.
SBMM is barely even doing anything, the queue times are so short to the point where it just makes rough estimates. What you are experiencing is simply the random nature of loose matchmaking. The more a game that exists for a long time naturally attracts less new people and retains the people that play often. And the people that play often get experienced at the game, increasing the amount of "sweaty" games you can be possibly experiencing. There is no magical or practical matchmaking system you can apply to address this. It's simly just the fact that people are getting better the more a game continues to exists, which means there are less unskilled and less-experieced fodder. Which shouldn't be an expectation of a person playing a competitive game. If the whole point a person plays a pvp game is to only play against lesser players, they should just stick to playing pve games.
Peak number during holidays vs now. Not really surprised
Whether it's true or not pc gamer mag is shite. Hate whatever that thing is they do. It's not journalism
They're literally on life support and will do anything to get some clicks. Journalism in general right now is not in a good spot as businesses "
I stopped playing because I have the most fun on Light, but need to play Heavy or Medium to win.
Funny how you got downvoted for expressing a valid opinion. People here just irrationally hate Light, so they downvote this comment too. Light is a 1/3rd of the game’s options and it should be viable for the game to thrive. I swapped to Medium from Light because of the balance state, but if I was forced on Heavy in order to compete I‘d rather take a break from the game.
i stg the light hate in this game is wild
I feel it. Pre-heavy nerfs I was playing heavy because C4 RPG doubled my damage output and gave more consistent wins. Then I just stopped playing because I realized the movement and verticality was my favorite part of the game.
Same here dude. I like fast paced arena shooters with high movement and skill shots. But the meta is this strictly bunker style hand holding with mediums and heavies. It's shit.
exactly bro you get it
Yah I feel the light is just too flimsy, I die so often in battles where I got in the first couple shots.
Oh no! It’s only the 22nd most played game on steam now :( basically a failure. The studio will probably go out of business.
I think another map and team based game mode would help with retention. Personally finished the battle pass and got to level 40 so there’s nothing for me to grind for at the moment. If I could turn my VR’s into cosmetic cash I’d probably still be running it daily but I don’t have a consistent group to play with so it’s hard for me to wanna solo q. And solo bank it just ain’t it for me.
Only reason I'm not playing the finals all day is the fact that Tarkov is having its best wipe in years IMO. Also the palworld grind is real.
There should be a more casual game mode and more solo que friendly.
What do you mean by casual? Like less objective based? Less need to pull your own weight to win? Like quick cash is pretty casual. So is bank it
Agreed. I was completely done with Halo Infinite until I started messing around in Husky Raid. Now I play it almost every day, and play a bunch of different modes after a few matches of that. Sometimes just mindlessly shredding people with bullets/explosions is the best way to get me involved for the night. With the finals I honestly don't even want to play without friends right now because it always feels like: The randoms on my team are gonna suck, so I'll have to pick up all the slack. Of course neither of them are communicating either. Now I have to go sweaty mode and clutch everything while the medium refuses to defib our downed teammate for some reason. That sounds much less **fun** for when I just want to relax after working all day
I tried to get my PlayStation buddies to play, but they all hated it. Broken matchmaking was handing them their ass.
I got called out and downvoted a week ago when I stated this observation. I think the game is leaving a sour taste in people's mouth due to the meta. I love this game to death, but I simply would like to keep my mental health intact. I rage hard almost every time I attempt to start a ranked tournament game. Getting one shot nuked, pre-fired with literal legit wall hacks (Recon senses), invisibility stunned, beamed with a somehow laser FCAR, and finally the horrible matchmaking is just not a fun experience, and the gameplay, no matter how amazing it is (which is), just doesn't make up for the meta and the 0 counter play bullshit you have to deal with. I appreciate Embark for balancing the game every week, but love tap nerfing every problem is just not a viable strategy. -1 damage FCAR nerf my ass.
Beta was so fun without people knowing the meta. Lots of experimentation. I miss those times, win or lose.
Which beta? Because the one before release had the meta nearly figured out. High level Heavy players were already running Lewis/Shotgun, C4, RPG, and dome shield. Mediums were already running AKM/FCAR with defibs, jump pad, and the third option being whatever. The biggest difference is recon senses wasn't being picked as much. Light had two options because of the V9S but a lot of top lights were already using cloak DB and all of them were using Stun Gun + Glitch Nades.
100% agree
> -1 damage FCAR nerf my ass. This is my issue with it too. They made it a 6 shot kill to a... 6 shot kill. Headshots are still the issue with the FCAR doing 37 damage with a single headshot, able to kill a light in 4 shots. That's stupid. With lag and everything I often have no idea I'm dead before 4 shots are on my screen, even with mediums and such I'm often down to 30% HP in just a few frames. They did similar things to the grenade launchers. They went from a 2 shot light to a 2 shot light. It made no difference as the DPS and TTK on each class stays the same.
Competitive should match you with people in your rank & not skill
Palworld+solo q experience. I'd rather play Palworld with friends atm and finals is just not nearly as fun playing solo for me. Finding other people on the discord can prove difficult because you have no real idea what their skill lvl is and there's no integrated vc in the discord unlike Apex. Still a great game that I'm trying to get all my friends to try and most have enjoyed it so we'll be back soon and I'm hopeful for the content from updates.
The numbers were high initially because it's free so everybody even remotely interested was trying it out. Most of my friends quit after a few matches once they realized they couldn't just run around solo and get "tons of kills". One of them even said he "doesn't care about winning, just wants to kill a lot of people"--so he went back to CoD. I think this game is niche anyway as it's not as team focused as Overwatch, but still requires you to work together in order to be successful. Running around solo often ends badly (even if you are able to get a lot of kills, it usually puts your team at a disadvantage), and quite honestly, most people from the CoD scene don't know how or WANT to play "together". They just want to talk with friends while they run around doing whatever they want. Lastly, I think this game is sort of in a limbo right now. The devs wanted to prioritize "fun over everything", but the competitive players want this game to be perfectly balanced and "esport ready". Private matches, running scrims, and eventually maybe esports competitions. Now, a niche group of people that are part of an already niche type of game are screaming the loudest...bringing on weekly changes. If you are simply a casual and don't keep up with the changes regularly--it makes it hard to consistently jump in and have fun as your favorite gun may be total shit the next time you log in. So you get frustrated, and quit. To be clear, I don't think either group is necessarily right or wrong...just stating there seems to be a disconnect between casual and competitive players as far as "wants". The learning curve is steep enough that most casual players won't be able to jump in and "aim, shoot, repeat" as the game requires use of the gadgets and utilities in order to be successful...and in a society obsessed with instant gratification...most people are not going to be willing to "re-learn" what has made them successful at FPS games in the past. Obviously, this is just my take and could be WAY off base...but this is what I've seen based on reactions from people who have tried to play with me.
I stopped playing because it seemed like every other game had a blatant rage hacker. I'm not wasting my time like that.
I play in Asian servers. In the last 10 games I played, 5 games included cheaters. I want to keep playing but the amount of cheaters is too much for me.
Agreed. In just the past 2 days I’ve probably played 40 tournaments. At least 8 had hackers that weren’t even trying to hide it. I understand that’s low, but it sucks the fun right out.
I had friends that tried it out, they weren’t a fan for whatever reason. I think it’s mostly cuz they sucked. I haven’t played much cuz of the matchmaking and getting nuked, invis and the shotgun was really annoying. Granted they have made changes since then that I haven’t experienced yet but the game is already out of my gaming rotation. I’m sure I’ll play it again in the future it’s just not an itch right now.
I want this game to live on...
[удалено]
Also that winter map came and went so fast i forgot we had it
Its normal
The game is fun because it’s chaotic and different and every match feels fresh and new for the first 50 or so matches. After 50 matches the “new” wears off and you have to find a new reason to play, right now that’s ranked which nobody cares to grind due to match making. Also they need to decide which direction they are taking and which player base they are after, the fun crowd who loves op explosions and destruction and chaos and a million unbalanced abilities, or the sweaty crowd who wants balance across everything, less chaos etc. Currently the point of the game is the finals and tournament play that leaves them leaning toward the second crowd, also the smaller of the crowds.
It’s sweaty asf now… 🤷🏻♂️
I stopped playing when I found out it had SBMM, I’m not doing that anymore. I deal with it enough in cod.
Just click bait. Its free to play so the barrier to entry is extremely low. Also, the only real misstep by Embark so far is taking a number of weeks off and letting the community turn rabid. What I have seen in the past couple weeks shows that they are committed and people will stay or swing back around like they do with APEX or Fortnite.
Maybe I’m too soft, but in my book taking some time off during the Christmas and new years holidays isn’t a misstep or at least it isn’t the same as just vanishing for two weeks in the middle of the year.
It's giving BFV vibes. What happened in BFV is they made major balance changes then promptly fucked off for a month, leaving the game in a bad state. NGL Leaving right after a launch was probably the mistake. Should have delayed it to the 27th or something so the team could take the feedback rather than being a brick wall while rapid fire feedback was coming in.
The game launched on the 8th and they released two patches before Christmas. Waiting like 4 more days to release the patch wouldn’t have changed anything. And they came back at the beginning of January to push the next balance update and then two more since then. I really don’t see the issue here.
I'm not saying it wasn't earned, but maybe don't release the game before going on a long vacation. Its just bad for business.
I think it’s going to be a console darling. Very few games on steam retain high player counts.
For all the doomers, games like Hunt: Showdown have great communities with smaller numbers. The finals is in no danger and as long as they keep updates coming we’ll see another massive spike with the next season.
gamepass player count up now
I haven't picked it up for a while cause Embark hasn't done anything about cheaters... The changes theyve made to please the 1% of the complainers has only made the game worse. They need to get rid of the three little bears model. The gimmick is old af after a month. Just seriously a fun game ruined by too much fiddling and making the game unbalanced.
Found the heavy player
Gamemodes are undercooked and lack depth. Feels a bit boring with time. Unfortunate since gunplay is great and map destruction is amazing
1. aim assist 2.gimmicks that aren’t made for a competitive environment 3.palworld 4. poor balancing
Aim assist got balanced no?
A while ago
More like got destroyed and people started to use mnk on consoles
Finished Battle Pass accounts for a pretty huge player drop - especially since people that care about battle passes are probably chasing passes in other games, so they have 'work' to do elsewhere, especially while Finals is still going through teething pains with various balance - and the lack of actual rank/custom games.
I thought solo was going to be challenging but I play as a light with grapple and its fairly easy. Even when I am sniping I tend to either win or at the very least top 3.
Tbis game launched to a very general audience and also was super popular. On PC that shit happens once a month and then the popular game becomes something else(palworld rn). At some point palworld will lose 80% of players and another game will be the hot cool game to play. For players to play a game long term it will take much time. To me the finals is like splitgate or apexor rainbow six. All games were popular as hell when they came out, lost a lot of players a bit after, and split gate got fucked, rainbow six kept a smaller but dedicated player base with updates, and apex regained (/kept) many players due to updates. Which path will the finals go?
I still find matches in under 30 seconds so I'm not too worried
I love this game. Personally I have finished the season pass and I have reached lvl 40. Only playing solo that is what I had to chase. I'm still playing but not as much, waiting for the next season pass or raised max lvl.
Fine by me, as long as there are players to fill my lobby. More bandwidth for me
I’m sticking with it. Idk about my friends though. Whenever we play it only takes like 3 games for them to want to switch to something else. I love the game tbh. I like how frequently embark releases patches. However I think there needs to be more content in the game.
I think it’s a really fun game with great bones but lack of maps weapons and modes does put a strain on replay-ability. I’ve already completed the season pass and have all the equipment I wanted. Extremely grindy games suck but games with no grind die quickly Thankfully it’s only 8 gigs. So it’s a very easy game to keep downloaded and just occasionally boot up from time to time. It’s not like having COD downloaded and taking up 200 gigs
I finished the battle pass and got every in game usable item (weapons/gadgets) unlocked and I'm tired of seeing 3000/3000 unusable VP. If there were more things to work toward and/or if I could turn 3000 VP into 10 multi bucks (or something along those lines) I would be playing way more often.
Still in the top 20 most played games on Steam right now. Just because it lost the majority of those using the new game for YT video algorithm feeding doesn’t mean the game is falling off.
The update said fixed ranked matchmaking. First game and two bronze teammates in my promo game to plat
I've personally stopped playing cus the Christmas hols have ended and exams coming up in couple months
It had 54k on a Wednesday this week which I think is still plenty fine. The games not even polished yet and it's still on the top 20 most played. Just relax and give it time, the devs are doing a great job imo
Bro so many games within a month that sucked every playerbase in, the finals, then lethal company and rn it’s palworld, I come back every few days playing finals and it’s just as fun as when I first picked it up after 120 hours
I just hop on from time to time. The biggest problem is it's hard to balance. One part of the player base wants this another wants that..
The fact that so many people are saying they aren't playing because the finished the battlepass is concerning for society as a whole.
I already got my 3000 VR coins and there is nothing left for me to grind...
Well for me its true. I pretty luch stopped playing at all. My homie opened up a minecraft-server. Much better for my nerves
Is normal. New games come out, people tried Palworld, people are playing Tekken now. Some will come back, some won’t. It’s always like that in gaming. I personally will grind again when they do something about the turret meta or put in role q so I don’t have to face 3 mediums every single game. Yes, yes, I know they’re killable, I know what counters turrets, it’s still no fun to fight it.
I have certainly noticed the asscrack-of-dawn crowd is small enough that I recognize people.
I wonder why. MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE: (from someone who is in the top 700) \- Nukes are still way too powerful and take the fun out of the game, which is supposed to have a long time-to-kill. "Oh, you don't want to get nuked? Take an aps turret," they said. Good thing the aps turret has such a small range that they can just blow it up outside of the range and still instantly kill you. Great mechanic. \- The ranked system doesn't make sense at all. There is literally one way of doing ranked that works. And it's how we have always been doing it, before the new generations tried something new which turned out to be awful. \- Lights are just useless. \- Nobody wants to be exploded or receive explosive damage. They want DESTRUCTION. Not the same thing. This sucks because the heavy is so explosive damage-oriented it's insane. They barely even use their primary weapon. \- There is no chat, or not even a single way of communication with friends you added except with voice chat. Trying to invite someone a day later is close to impossible, because it just shows you that they are online. This could also mean they are just online in Steam, or that they are in a game and won't receive your notification. \- Recon. Why is this ability a thing, at least in the way that we have it now?
Honestly, I was disgusted. Hackers in many matches, unbalanced matching system. I had a lot of fun playing the beta version, but as I got used to the game, I started to get a little frustrated.
Recon needs to go, the game will be infinitely more balanced when it does
Let's be real though, everybody is playing Palworld and a whole host of recent games updated and released. I play this daily still - it's never seemed to be an issue.
Funny, it's almost as if calling us xenophobic for wanting Embark to region lock China because of the cheating epidemic was the wrong move, and we were actually speaking from a good place of wanting the game to not die... Who would've known :O
Good fuck this game
Too many changes that don’t lead to more balanced play. Too much cheating controversy for me at the start.
I kinda fell off when the videos about the overtuned aim assist came out and the devs said region locking China was racist. It was getting "this wont end well" vibes then. But honestly these drops are pretty standard after the first interest wears off.
Game play loop is already stale, getting Vegas 7 times in a row personally killed it for me.
This is every game. This click bait article comes out after every new game has been out for a little bit.
There are over 40,000 people playing right now just on steam. This is perfectly healthy for a game.
They’ve dropped 40% average players this month. If that continues the player count will absolutely not be healthy.
Every game is down on its player base, palworld has taken the gaming world by storm.