The Finals needs these five changes to make Season 4 a hit

After what feels like forever, we’re in the final stretch of Season 3 of The Finals and I for one can’t wait to see what the devs over at Embark have in store. Thankfully, the return of ranked Cashout has already been announced, to the rapturous delight of seemingly every single player, signalling that Season 4 already seems set to improve upon 3 on the back of that change alone.

But, of course, it won’t be the only change, and neither should it be. It’s no secret that the player count for the game has been steadily decreasing, albeit slowly, and while it’s far from the dead game some naysayers would have you believe it is, it’s still an issue. Season 4 could be the biggest season yet for The Finals, and if it’s going to bring the game back to its peak, there are five big changes Embark need to make.

Make The Finals The Finals again

The Finals is one of the most unique shooters on the market, if not the most unique. While a major part of that is one of a kind game modes like Cashout, what really sells that uniqueness is the wildly eccentric setting of a game show, and in Season 3, we haven’t got those game show vibes that were so exciting at launch.

With World Tour, we still got a bit of that game show magic, but there’s so much more that Embark could do with this premise. For example, community events in which every player represents a different sponsor for the chance to earn unique rewards; sponsors dropping supply drops into the arena mid-match to help out a struggling team; clans for groups of friends to work towards certain goals and challenges together. There’s so much more that Embark can do with this premise, and with their recent promise that ‘The Finals is back’, I’m hoping that’s exactly what we can expect.

A World Tour rework

The idea of World Tour is a great one – play tournaments to rank up, and receive more points the further you progress in those tournaments. But where it falls flat is that around the time you hit Gold, it turns into an almighty grindfest. With so many points required, and so few points given for anything but a tournament win, even getting to Emerald is a struggle. Once you’re there, you’ve got a frankly insulting 63 more tournaments to win to hit Emerald 1.

It’s just not worth it. Plenty of players across Reddit and social media will tell you so, while plenty more will tell you that the grind was so daunting that they haven’t even bothered attempting to reach it. It turns out that playing the exact same mode over and over again for very little gain isn’t that fun, and if Embark wants players to stick around for World Tour next Season, we need some changes.

Make the requirements for Gold and Emerald a bit lower. Increase the points you earn for lower-ranked finishes so that even if you lose, you haven’t just wasted 20 minutes for nothing. Add in some progression rewards so that players don’t have to wait until Season 5 to get anything from World Tour. Add in different game modes at each stop to keep things fresh throughout the Season. World Tour needs a refresh, and now is the time to do it.

Support-focused Light gadgets

We all have those teammates who instantly lock in Light, spend the match farming kills and never play the objective – and it’s hard to blame them. Where Heavy players have shields and mines and Medium players have heal beams and a defibrillator, Light has almost no team-oriented gadgetry on hand. If you’re a Light player, often the only value you can provide to your team is by getting frags.

Right now, Light gadgets all but require a lone-wolf playstyle. But, The Finals is a team game, and all the deathmatching ability in the world won’t help you against a coordinated three-man squad. Light needs some more synergy with their teammates to encourage the teamwork that gets wins, and discourage simply farming kills for no reason.

Deathmatch

If you load up The Finals right now and want to warm up before joining a game, you’ve got two options. You can head into practice mode and fight against some inanimate mannequins, or you can, uh, join a game. I play like hot garbage when I first boot up the game and I don’t love having to play a full game to warm up every time I want to head into ranked.

Enter, Deathmatch. Five minutes, instant respawns, whatever weapons you like. Not only is it a quick and easy way to get warmed up before heading into a real match, but it’s a far better way of practising your aim than firing at those dummies in the practice range. Honestly, this seems like a no-brainer to me and I’m baffled that it’s not in the game yet.

Community and social rework

For all its faults (and in my opinion, there are many) Overwatch 2 has some of the best social features of any game around. You can view your friends’ profiles and compare seemingly endless stats and rankings. You can see which friends are in a game or in a lobby and request to join their party; The Finals has none of this. 

I want to know how many hours I’ve spent in World Tour, how many times I’ve made the semis, the finals, how many wins I’ve got, and I want to be able to compare all of that with my friends. I want to see ranks below the top 10,000 to see exactly where I stack up with the community as a whole. I want to know how many kills and assists I have in each mode, map, and weapon. You can’t even check your stats from a game you’ve just played once you hit the main menu. All I want is to dunk on my friends because I’ve got a higher win rate than them – is that too much to ask?

I said it before, and I’ll say it again. The Finals is one of the most unique shooters I’ve ever played, and what makes it so great is what sets it apart from the Fortnites, CoDs and Valorants of the world. Embark needs to stop trying to lure players away from other games with modes like Terminal Attack, effectively copy-pasted from Counter-Strike. Instead, focus on the game modes, the setting, and the incredibly out-there gameplay that drew us all in when the game first dropped, and the quality will speak for itself.