World Tour: High-Fashion Havoc

2024.11.14

ISEUL-T Cup
Week 9: High-Fashion Havoc  

High-Fashion has never soared this high!

ISEUL-T are rounding out their sponsorship for this season by raising the stakes cashouts to brand new heights! This week our arenas are painted in ISEUL-T’s signature colors and will feature Suspended Structures and Moving Platforms! 

Additionally we’re kicking off a brand new community event where we’re challenging all of you to successfully steal 600.000 cashouts within the last minute of a match! The intensity has never been higher in The Arena.

Get ready to show off your style and stylish plays in these Arenas;

• Monaco

• Skyway Stadium

• Kyoto

• Seoul

ISEUL-T – be ANYONE. be EVERYONE. be ISEUL-T.

Update 4.8.0

2024.11.20

Shred, forge, and fix!

This week’s update cranks the volume to 11 with store items that bring the noise and some much-needed fixes to The Arena.

Take center stage with Death by Rhodents! Smash your foes in style with the Wrath of Rats Set, complete with a sledgehammer electric guitar that riffs on inspect, or embrace your inner fan with the Thrash Rat Bundle. Prefer a more refined edge? The Synthronium Forge Set lets you channel futuristic craftsmanship in every encounter.

On the technical side, we’ve tuned up a whole bunch of bugs and included some much-needed quality-of-life changes with everything from fixing the interrupt steal contract not rewarding players properly, to a new accessibility option that replaces flashbang whiteouts with blackouts.

Looking ahead: Tomorrow kicks off Week 3 of the ISEUL-T Cup, alongside a brand-new community event. Stay tuned for all the details in tomorrow’s notes!

Check out this week’s store update:

And now, let’s dig into the fixes!

Content and Bug Fixes

Animation 

• Fix for rare cases where animations could get stuck in the charge and slam pose

• Fix for animations looking wrong when quickly inspecting after throwing a carriable

Audio 

• Added a potential fix to audio issues that caused weapon sounds to loop or not make any sounds  

Contracts

• Fixed a bug with the contract for interrupting steals that would sometimes not reward players properly

Game Modes

Cashout Gamemodes

• The flashing indication on the cashout station marker now plays for everyone, regardless of which team is stealing the cashout

• Fix for vaults no longer spawning when two cashouts are completed in the exact same frame

Gameplay

• Fixed the bug that turned leaking gas canisters into shields when picked up 

• Fixed an issue that caused gamemode objects (Cashboxes, Transfer stations, etc.) to “bounce” up and down in situations where they think they are out of bounds

Maps 

Monaco

• Fixed an issue near the park shed that allowed the cashbox to fall out of the gameplay space

Kyoto

• Re-fractured wall destruction into larger chunks to reduce the amount of small-scale debris and make destruction more consistent with other maps

Kyoto, Seoul & Skyway Stadium

• Objective spawns have been added back to moving platforms and elevators  

Movement

• Fixed an issue where input could become locked when using the Mesh Shield and inverted vertical camera control

Performance & Stability

• Fixed an issue that caused the contestant selection portion of the pre-round not to show 

Security

• Added a new cheating detection rule

Settings

• Fixed characters being stretched in strange ways when using an aspect ratio narrower than 16:9

• Added an accessibility option to make the flashbang blackout the screen,  instead of a whiteout

• Added input hints to the settings menu 

Specializations

Grapple Hook

• Added improved targeting, to solve the recurring bug where the hook would hit invisible targets 

Dash

• Fixed an issue that allowed players to interrupt dashes by emoting, making them lunge further than intended

UI

• Fixed an issue where explosive damage in the damage log would show the weapon that triggered the explosion instead of the explosion itself

• Gameplay UI is hidden while in the settings menu so that it's not visible while in the Video settings

• Made sure the Matchmaking information widget snaps to the correct location in ultra-wide resolutions

• Added input hints to all items when equipping

• Added the emerald rewards on the World Tour info screen

• Fixed an issue where the wrong sponsor might be shown in the map introduction sequence

World Tour: Fashion Week

2024.11.14

ISEUL-T Cup
Week 8: Fashion Week  

Hit the Runway!

Welcome to Fashion Week! The ISEUL-T Cup continues with a passion for fashion! Dress to impress this week and submit your best look for the chance to win a prize! 

We’re partnering with THE FINALS Runway to pick the top 25 most head-turning looks! Head over to the fan-run subreddit, r/TheFinalsRunway, and read the rules to enter! Don’t forget to participate in the vote! May the most stylish contestant win! 

Let’s start the festivities! 

Stomp the catwalk in this week’s Arenas: 

• Fortune Stadium

• Monaco

• Skyway Stadium

• Vegas

ISEUL-T – be ANYONE. be EVERYONE. be ISEUL-T. 

Update 4.7.0

2024.11.13

Get in sync with the Synthsprawler and juggle your way to victory!

Get ready to turn heads in the Arena with Update 4.7!

Suit up with The Synthsprawler to bring futuristic flair to the Arena, or add a playful punch with the Playtime Payload Set for your .50 Akimbo. For those who love precision, Juggle Jam has you covered with timing-perfect animations.

Plus, we’re just a day away from Week 2 of the ISEUL-T Cup in the World Tour, and this week there’ll be a community focus on fashion! Keep an eye out for Thursday’s notes to catch all the info.

Now, let’s check out this week’s store update:

World Tour: OPENING WEEK

2024.11.07

ISEUL-T Cup
Week 7: Opening Week  

Passion for Fashion?

Today we usher in the ISEUL-T Cup, a new leg of the World Tour sponsored by ISEUL-T! 

They’ve cleaned up the arenas from last week's chaotic, frightful, spooky season and are offering us stylish arenas with standard cashout rules!

Here are this week’s Arenas: 

• Fortune Stadium

• Monaco

• Skyway Stadium

• Vegas

ISEUL-T – be ANYONE. be EVERYONE. be ISEUL-T. 

Update 4.6.0

2024.11.06

Mid-way through Season 4

It’s halftime in The Arena and we bid our second sponsor, HOLTOW, farewell and Thank You for the generous sponsorship this season! ISEUL-T are next in line and have some big shoes to fill following last week’s Trick or Treat event in the World Tour - but if anyone can do it, and in a grandiose fashion, it’s ISEUL-T.

Don't forget to keep spinning the wheel! Ticket drops end on the 13th but the event will stay live until the 15th, giving you time to spend your tickets and pick up a few last items in peace. Good luck!

This week we are bringing you some balance changes, reducing the effective range of both the Healing Beam and the Sword, while adjusting the Pike-556 to have a clearer ranged identity. There’s also a boatload of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements coming your way, with everything from a fix for beards clipping through headwear to some much-needed performance improvements for XBOX.

Worried about what to do when the sun goes dark? Thanks to this week’s store update, and HOLTOW’s generous Insurance Set - you don’t need to worry.

Check it out here:

Now, let’s dig into the changes!

Balance Changes

Healing Beam

• Decreased max target distance from 12m to 10m

• Decreased  max healing distance from 15m to 13m

• Decreased  time before we disconnect a blocked healing beam, from 1s to 0.75s

Dev Note: We felt the existing range of the Healing Beam was causing teams to benefit from healing in combat, without the associated risks of close proximity. We feel with this closer range we open up more opportunities to counter-play teams that are healing in combat, via various Gadgets. Wherever we can, we prefer to try and solve possible balance issues via counter-play, rather than straight-up nerfs, and we think this change should offer opportunities here, but as always we’ll monitor the impact of the change and adjust as needed.  

Pike-556

• Decreased damage from 52 to 47

• Increased damage falloff multiplier at max range from 75% to 85%, increasing the damage at longer ranges

Dev Note: We felt the Pike-556 still remained too strong in close-range encounters despite the previous damage adjustments. With these changes we make the weapon less effective at closer ranges while maintaining its effectiveness at longer ranges

Pyro Grenade

• Pyro Grenades will now deal damage to shields, such as the Dome Shield and Mesh Shield

Sword

• Decreased  lunge duration of the secondary attack from 0.4 to 0.3 seconds, resulting in ~1m reduction in distance, from roughly 7m to 6m

• Decreased  the length of the secondary attack’s hit sweep by 55cm

Dev Note: These changes should decrease the effective range of the lunge attack by ~1.5m, hopefully making the Sword slightly less oppressive for players facing it. 

Content and Bug Fixes 

Animation 

• Updated player card pose for the ‘Tripwire Tango’ Emote

• Fixed an issue where the Winch Claw animation would not play when firing the main weapon

• Fixed an issue with the Throwing Knives where the player’s arms could end up in a locked state after using the secondary attack

• Made adjustments to how the sprint animations are triggered for the .50 Akimbo pistols. Previously when continuously pressing the assigned sprint button, animations would retrigger making the experience feel a bit clumsy. This should now feel smoother

• Fixed an issue where you could enter a faulty movement state when detaching from a broken ladder in the practice range

Audio 

• Fixed an issue that could cause the commentators to mention it was the first team wipe when the second team wipe of a match happened

• Fixed an issue where the Treat Hunt introduction video had the wrong audio file and incorrect subtitles

• Added more line variations when new vaults spawn, 1 minute left and 30 seconds left

• Improved delivery on June’s respawn lines

Contracts

• Players can no longer progress healing-based Contracts by restoring teammates’ health that was lost due to self-damage. Only healing damage caused by enemy players will count

• Players can now only progress revive-based Contracts by reviving teammates that were eliminated by opposing players. Reviving players who eliminated themselves will not be counted

• Fixed an issue where kills caused by throwables were not granting combat score

Customization

• Fixed an issue where beards would clip through some helmets

• Made the Tacticool charm heavier, to prevent erratic movement

• Added a leaderboard to the ÖRF backpack in-game (visible on the backpack!)

• Fixed an issue where sometimes the wrong watch was displayed 

• Fixed an issue that caused many headwear items to not be displayed on characters at a distance

• Fixed an issue where certain headwear would not fully dissolve when a contestant was eliminated

• Fixed an issue that caused emote sound effects to be played when editing player cards

• Improved the experience of equipping player card items in store bundles

• Fixed an issue that caused some weapon skins to load incorrectly, glitch in the game, or not load at all on Xbox

Game Modes

• Fixed multiple issues with outline colors on contestants

• Fixed an issue where the "being revived" prompt could get stuck on screen

• Fixed an issue where thrown Cash Boxes didn't get deposited if you died before they hit the Cashout Station

• Improved the movement behaviors of the flying saucers in the Alien Invasion gameshow event

Maps

Kyoto

• Improved collision on stepping stone paths to smooth out traversal over the available water crossings

• Reduced and consolidated the amount of exposed objectives in the Villa Compound garden to make combat more directional and less chaotic

• Small tweaks to the interior layouts of the Guest House, Training Quarters, and Residential zones with the aim of improving readability and reducing complexity

Practice Range 

• Re-introduced the suspended barrel bags 

Seoul

• Fixed an issue where several walkways in the Data Center were floating

• Fixed an issue where some ladders on the billboards were floating

• Fixed an issue where several railings in Seoul had more health than intended

General

• Fixed an issue where cobwebs on some maps could block interactions 

Performance & Stability

• Added Temporal Super-Resolution (TSR) as a new Resolution Scaling Method in the Video Settings

• Fixed an issue where large-scale destruction could lead to late-joining/reconnecting players having desynced debris on the map

• Fixed an issue that would cause severe performance degradation on Xbox Series S

UI 

• Added an option to allow players to reset or turn off tutorial hints in the settings menu, resetting hints will return players to the main menu 

• New look for the matchmaking widget

• Fixed an issue where the end-of-round progression screen for Sponsors would appear faulty for players who have reached the maximum Sponsor rank

• Fixed an issue where the ‘Blinded Opponent’ score message wouldn’t disappear until the enemy was eliminated

• Fixed an issue where environmental kills could result in a large negative score on Contracts (this issue only affected the UI, not the actual Contract progress)

Weapons 

Riot Shield

• Fixed an issue where the Riot Shield could catch on fire

Melee Attacks

• Fixed an issue where the third-person visual and audio impact effects of a melee attack would be delayed
  
  

World Tour: Trick or Treat

2024.10.31

HOLTOW CLASSIC
Week 6: Trick or Treat 

This week, HOLTOW has pulled out all the stops, dimmed the lights, and turned the Arena into a place where things go bump in the night…things like Pumpkins that explode on impact, so keep your gourd up! 

We hope you’ll have a ghoulishly good time destroying the Arena and smashing pumpkins to delight the fans and take out the competition! 

The Arena’s this week are waiting for you. Enter, if you dare: 

• Spooky Kyoto

• Spooky Horizon 

• Spooky Monaco

• Spooky Seoul

HOLTOW – We know what you fear. But fear not. 

Update 4.5.0

2024.10.30

Halloween is here! 

We’ve got an all-new event with 27 collectible rewards and an explosive addition to the World Tour maps starting tomorrow, sponsored by HOLTOW, who reminds you to carve your pumpkins with extreme caution! 

For today…

Join the Treat Hunt Collection Event

Feeling dizzy, Contestant? It might be the copious amounts of OSPUZE-flavored Halloween candy you’ve been eating, or it could be our brand new feature - the Wheel!

The Reward Wheel is something we’ve never seen before in THE FINALS! We realized that we could not be the World's greatest game show without a flashy wheel of amazing prizes!

This Halloween, instead of adding all of these amazing cosmetics to the store, we’ve added them to the Reward Wheel. In order to spin the wheel and win something, you must have a ticket, and you can earn up to three tickets per day by completing daily contracts! 

There’s an equal chance of winning every item, and if there’s a specific item you want from the wheel you can buy it using either VR’s or Multibucks (depending on the item) - no luck needed! If you spend a ticket on a spin and wind up on a reward you already have, you’ll get some VR’s back - so every spin is a win!

If you collect all the rewards featured on the wheel, you’ll get the grand prize: the Stealth Specter Bundle, which is sure to make you stand out in The Arena!

The event goes live right now, and will be live for two full weeks - so make sure you hop in right now, work your way through those contracts, and…

SPIN. 

THAT. 

WHEEL!

Do you know what makes this Halloween event extra scary? We’ve never done anything like this before. We want to keep finding new ways to reward and amuse you while keeping the game new and fun! Because this is so new, we would love your feedback on this event. So when it’s over, we’ll ask you to fill out a short survey about your experience. 

In this update, the store is Spookier than ever! If you’re still unsure about what to dress up as for Halloween the Seas The Day bundle has you covered, it even comes with a pirate’s booty worth of Multibucks!

For those of you fighting for the top 500, this week, we are introducing Ruby level to the leaderboards! 

Check out this week’s balance changes and a longer dev note on how we approach balance changes this season:

Balance Changes

A note on balance changes– 

Our approach to balancing the game has evolved since the first season of THE FINALS! In the beginning, we made a lot of changes because the game was brand new and we suddenly had a constant flow of players to provide feedback, telemetry, and information that we could use to calibrate and experiment with quickly. 

As time marches on and we start to see this game reach a more stable state, we want to fall into a more sustainable and reliable rhythm that gives us time to plan larger and more meaningful shifts in balance based on how we see the community engage with the meta.

As such, our intent is to do those larger, meta-altering balance passes at the start of each new season, where we can introduce new strategies and ways to play. Then, as needed, we’ll perform another pass halfway through each season aimed at polishing the current meta and addressing major feedback points from our core without fully resetting the meta and causing confusion. 

Between these two major balance passes, we’ll only perform smaller nudges to the balance that aim to smooth out the current experience when absolutely necessary. 

We’re hopeful this approach will lead to a smoother and clearer experience for you and help set better expectations regarding the weekly game updates while being kinder to our players and to our team! 

Weapons 

Model 1887

• Increased inner pellet radius from 0.45 to 0.65, making the weapon less accurate at longer ranges

• Increased outer pellet radius from 1.3 to 1.7, making the weapon less accurate at longer ranges

• Decreased damage falloff multiplier from 65% to 60%, causing the weapon to do less damage at range

Dev Note: One way we investigate the balance of weapons is to look at effectiveness in gameplay (i.e. stats like damage, kill rates, headshot rates, and accuracy), in addition to stats like usage and win rates. Looking at this data alone, the Model 1887 is good but not exceptional when it comes to effectiveness during play. However, we’ve seen a large uptick in usage, mostly in higher-skill tiers which has led to the gun being very prevalent in matches and leading to a somewhat stale meta. This ‘nudge’ to the effective range will hopefully disrupt this trend, without making the weapon weaker than its nearest competitors when it comes to effectiveness (i.e. the AKM, Famas and Pike-556).  

XP-54

• Increased damage falloff start distance from 15m to 20m, making the weapon more impactful at range

• Increased damage falloff end distance from 25m to 30m, making the weapon more impactful at range

• Decreased damage falloff multiplier from 65% to 62%

Content and Bug Fixes 

Contracts

• Added new Halloween Contracts as part of the Treat Hunt event

• Fixed an issue where the damage values earned on Contracts could be broken, showing large negative scores 

Specializations

Cloaking Device

• Fixed an issue introduced in 4.4 that caused refraction effects like cloaking, and parts of the dematerialize effect, to not be visible when the effect quality is set to medium 

Dematerializer

• Fixed an issue where environmental kills were not detected when the dematerialized ‘floor’ was an air vent or other small prop

UI

• Fixed an issue where players might not be able to equip an item immediately after purchasing it

• Fixed various issues where player outlines could have the wrong color

• Fixed an occasional issue where new players could become stuck in the account linking flow

• Fixed an issue where the Contract screen would unlock at the wrong time for new players during the first-time user experience

Sponsors 

• Increased the number of Fans that can be earned by 50% to 100%, depending on the action type

• Disabled the ability to earn Fans with the Healing Beam
  Dev Note: We’ve disabled the earning of Fans via the Healing Beam as it was too easy for players to exploit this mechanic to farm Fans, at the cost of good, competitive matches. We only want Fans to be earnable for actions that can be completed regardless of the Contestant setup.  

VRs

• Increased the VR cap from 3000 to 5000

Weapons

Alternate Scopes

• Fixed an issue where weapons with an attached sight could have a skewed pose when aiming down sights, causing the sight to be misaligned with where the weapon is aimed
  
  
  

World Tour: Cosmic Liability

2024.10.24

HOLTOW CLASSIC
Week 5: Cosmic Liability

HOLTOW invites you to experience the frightening possibility of an Alien Invasion in week 5 of the World Tour!

This week, you’ll have to cashout while avoiding enemy teams and a beefed-up threat from above! Aliens have descended upon the arena, and this time, they mean business! The UFOs’ anti-gravity beams will now be able to pick up contestants and — as a reminder to get your HOLTOW insurance — that beam hurts! Watch out for their super-charged lasers, too!

The arena rotation for this week includes the following arenas, some with Halloween-themed decor:

• Skyway Stadium

• Vegas

• Spooky Monaco

• Spooky Seoul

HOLTOW - Digitally Insured, Virtually Secured.

Update 4.4.0

2024.10.23

It’s getting spooky in The Arena!

With Halloween taking the spotlight next week, you might start seeing spooky changes around the Arena starting today! Dress up in your most ghoulish get-up, send shivers down enemy contestants' virtual spines as an Underworld Outcast, and get trick-or-treating before the season ends! 

In this patch, you’ll find changes and fixes, including the introduction of a system to reward kills to players based on environmental kills that launch players off the map, among other things! 

Check out the changes below and stay tuned for a World Tour update tomorrow that is out of this world, setting a spooky stage for things to come, and a new set of Twitch Drops to collect as we creep closer to Fright Night! 

Balance Changes

Weapons 

Sledgehammer

• Decreased the sweep duration of the secondary attack by 25%

• Decreased the sweep width of the secondary attack from 30cm to 25cm

• Increased the sweep width of the primary attack from 12cm to 15cm

Dev Note: These changes make the Sledgehammer’s hit sweeps more accurately match the attack animations which hopefully makes the weapon feel more reliable for its victims. We noticed that in some cases players would be hit despite the Sledgehammer’s model not passing near to them at all, which could cause a lot of confusion.

Content and Bug Fixes

Animation

• Fixed an issue where audio was looping when vaulting over certain obstacles
  

Audio 

• Replaced the Cl 40 grenade impact sound to lessen ear fatigue

Bugs

• Fixed an issue that caused a hang for players using DX11

• Fixed an issue where certain usage of goo could result in players bypassing collision

• Potential fix for players becoming permanently invisible during a round

• Fixed one of the issues which could cause destruction to appear out of sync 

Cosmetics

• Fixed an issue where the "Stuck on you" sticker on FCAR skin could be floating when using the Ironsight

Contracts

• Re-balanced some of the distance-based Contracts to make achieving them a better experience 

Environmental Eliminations

• Updated the kill system to detect and reward players for ‘environmental kills’, i.e. kills where a player falls out of bounds and dies due to the actions of another player

Examples of the types of falling kills this system can now detect include: 

• Removing the floor from underneath a player (e.g. destroying Seoul’s sky bridge or removing it via the Dematerializer)

• Blocking a player with Goo or a thrown carriables

• Destroying ziplines carrying a player

• Firing a player out of the level with a Jump Pad

• Lifting a player out of the level with the Anti-Gravity Cube

• Pulling a player out of the level with the Winch Claw

• Knocking a player out of the level with Charge ‘n Slam

• Causing a player to fall out of the level using the Gateway 

Dev Note:  This is the first iteration of this system. There's quite a few knobs to turn since there's a huge amount of ways in which players can end up falling out of bounds. We can't track absolutely all types of interactions due to the infinite amount of possibilities, including exceptions such as physics-to-physics interactions (i.e. objects/building pieces pushing at each other), but we've tried to catch most of the common ones. We'll keep on iterating and try to address as much of the feedback as possible in coming releases!

Gadgets

Anti-Gravity Cube

• Fixed various unintended bugs with the Anti-Gravity Cube

Dev Notes: Unfortunately folks, with these fixes the age of the “Goo plane” is over. We loved your imagination with these creations, but this is not a form of locomotion we ever intended for the game and, as well as being very counterintuitive for many players, they can also negatively impact pacing.

Glitch Trap

• Added squad colors to the Glitch Trap 

RPG-7

• Fixed an issue where the RPG would restock ammo too early in the reload animation

Game Modes

Practice Range

• Fixed an issue where practice dummies would block explosive damage

Maps

Monaco

• Added additional exit point at the top of the alley zipline, allowing players to jump directly on the opposite rooftop.

Kyoto

• Small flow improvements around the side of the Pavilion, preventing players from getting stuck between bamboos or get snagged on lanterns

Settings 

• Added a new option called "Resolution Scale Mode" when TAAU is the selected resolution scaling method. This new setting defaults to the "Auto" option, which selects resolution scaling automatically based on your screen resolution. The alternative "Manual" option allows adjusting the resolution scale value with the "Resolution Scale" slider, just like before

• Adjusted the way the GPUs FSR2 and XeSS are selected by default. Both of these are high-quality techniques that are not suitable for low-end GPUs. For low-end GPUs, TAAU will be the default resolution scaling method from now on

Specializations

Goo Gun

• Goo projectiles from the Goo Gun will now stick to the base of turrets in the same way as goo from barrels

UI

• Fixed an issue where players moving from Platinum 1 to Diamond 4 in World Tour would see the wrong badge and progress bar on the World Tour screen

• Fixed an issue where scoring events would show the score gained twice on the HUD, for example: “Vault Opened 500 +500” 

• Fixed an issue where the larger Battle Pass reward images didn’t cover the whole tile

• Fixed an issue where Mouse and Keyboard users could only use the Mouse Wheel to zoom in/out on cosmetics on the Sponsor screen when the mouse was placed in the top part of the screen

• Fixed an issue where game mode tiles could get stuck in the hover state

• Fixed an issue where player names would not update immediately when using the ‘Hide Playernames’ option

• Added friends filter to the leaderboard

• Fixed an issue where friends’ names could show up incorrectly on leaderboards after toggling the friends filter

• Adjusted healthbars back to intended height

VFX

• Fixed an issue that caused the fog at the edge of the screen to flicker occasionally

VOIP

• Fixed an issue on consoles where VOIP would stop working after entering the console overlay after launching the game

Weapons 

Alternate Sights 

• Fixed an issue where the player’s gun could be offset when playing with a sight 

AKM

• Updated the ammo count on the item overview screen

CL-40

• Updated the ammo count on the item overview screen