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Balancing a game is a never ending task that constantly needs monitoring and adjusting to ensure that the developers are delivering the best experience to its players, and The Finals is no exception. There are many sets of data that developers use to determine what balance changes need to be made, and sometimes this can come from community feedback.
But, one of the main problems with taking feedback from the community is that most of the time it is given with the individual player’s preferences in mind rather than the game as a whole. This is something The Finals developers Embark Studios witnesses often, especially when it comes to daily complaints about the Light build and weapons such as the FCAR.
U/YoYo_Ismael taken to Reddit to discuss balancing in The Finals and why Embark Studios shouldn’t listen to the community when it comes to making changes saying,
“Embark should play the game and do their own balance changes, listening to the community should be the secondary priority, and here’s why…Because we a lot of us are dumb, we complained about light gadgets and when they got nerfed we complained about the nerf.”
The Reddit user does make a good point in that many of us are not game developers, and for the most part don’t understand what goes into balancing a game as a whole and instead often focus on our own needs as a player. U/Leavenofrybehind highlights this point saying,
“People want solo balancing in a team game. That’s the bottom line issue.
They have to fix the user issue by setting more clarification on team support and objectives for game play.”
U/TehANTARES does counter this by noting that sometimes developers understand the fundamentals and mechanics of a game well beyond the average player and it can be difficult for them to see the game through the eyes of someone that may play the game casually, noting that,
“On first, I must agree that players are illiterate in the area of game design and balancing.But in general, I disagree with your statement that listening to the community should be secondary. Game developers have a very limited perspective. They know everything about the game, they know how things work, and their performance could be almost on the pro level, as testing every little stupidity several times a day will make your play fast and precise even in your sleep.
Developers cannot forget what they know, they cannot pretend to be inexperienced players, they cannot degrade their skill consistently to simulate how a casual player would react in a given situation. Game developers are not casual players, so if they’re making a game for wide audience, they will definitely miss the goal in some aspects. And for that reason, they need aid even from the lines of the community.”
Finally, U/PGSyphir does point out that a lot of player complaints are done in the echo chamber of social media and Reddit and many developers don’t read these, or put much stock into them.
“I doubt Embark even looks at Reddit my guy. However in game design we have a great saying I forgot who said it: “The player is terrible at solving issues, but great at finding them”. You SHOULD as a dev listen to their players, just not their solutions.”
Overall, player feedback is important as it comes from the people that are directly supporting the gam and keeping it alive, so developers do need to ensure that their needs are met. But, it is also important to separate what it just players complaining because they just lost a game to a better player and what is a genuine issue in the game. To keep up to date with the best metas in the game, we highly recommend checking out our The Finals best Light build guide, the best Medium build guide, and the best Heavy build guide.
