The Real Reasons So Many Quit - The Finals
I want you to try to imagine a time many decades into the future where virtual worlds have become virtually indistinguishable from reality, and within these worlds exist modern gladiatorial-style arenas where the brave and the fullhearted alike battle it out for both fame and. This is the concept behind the action-packed FPS called the finals and with season 1 now wrapped up we take a retrospective look on how this great game did such a good job initially at least inserting itself into a market that was already dominated by the likes of Call of Duty Apex Legends and Battlefield but beyond that we also take a look at some of the lessons learned from season 1 as by the end of the season the game lost about 90%, of its launch playeras we Deep dive the root causes of this with the view that going forward into season 2 embar have taken the necessary steps to ensure this great game reaches its full potential it is worth noing that I only played the steam version of the game but I have clocked in well over 200 hours at this point and with all that said let's just dive straight into it, where left or right don't you got to go left and go, right, who went. Right sc went right if I was to describe to you in one short sentence what the finals is like I might say something along the lines of it's an attractive aromatic blend of other FPS games that you know and love particularly Apex Legends Battlefield and Call of Duty but I wouldn't want you to get mistaken into thinking this is just a carbon copy of those of the games because while yes the similarities to other FPS titles are there it brings so many new and interesting things to the table that the finals is its own Beast entirely, it's no secret that freeo player live service games require lots of people deciding that this is their main game this is the game they're going to dedicate hundreds if not thousands of hours to they must decide to participate in seasonal events to complete battle passes and to buy skins and without this the game simply dies rest in peace the cycle Frontier gone but not forgotten , now at the start of the article I paused a question in a market dominated by Apex Legends Battlefield and Call of Duty how does a newcomer like the finals enter that market but then conceivably, contend with the big dogs how does it draw players from these wellestablished IPS.
Entering the fps market
And pull them over to their game. Well i do have a theory as to how, and it's all to do with psychology. So I've got a background in sales and in sales there's a technique called building Rapport in basic terms you take somebody who is qualified to buy your product and you use certain techniques to get them to like you do this because well simply people buy from people they like well obviously the finals isn't a salesperson, it's a product so how does this product get you to at least in the short term like it I believe it achieves this by using a sense of the familiar, so like I mentioned I believe the finals is a blend of other FPS titles it has similar Gunplay to card it has movement that's reminiscent of Apex Legends and it has destructible environments akin to Battlefield so what happens is you see the game is free to play so there's no Financial barrier to entry so you then decide to step away from your comfort zone and give it a try and what you find is you feel an immediate sense of a familiar and it doesn't matter which of these games you've played previously, something about the finals will still feel familiar to you if you've played any of these games the famili.
Is safe the familiar is comfortable. Safety and comfort are buying emotions. Now the game is free to play, so you're not buying the game, but they subconsciously sold you on the idea of it. It's the same as what you know, but it's also something new and different. New is a novelty, and novel is a dopamine hook.
They have blended the familiar and the novel in an attractive Unreal Engine 5 package, and they've given it to you, Free, absolutely genius. The question is, for me, whether they did this intentionally or whether it was just some beautiful coincidence based purely on their creativity.
Player retention figures
Inspirations : So they've gained your curiosity, and then they got your attention, but have they been able to maintain that attention through time? Gentlemen you had my curiosity. But now that you have my attention, according to Steam DB, the unfortunate answer is no; they haven't, at least not for the majority of you.
If we look at the figures, since the game launched in December, there was a peak of around 240, 000 players with an initial dropoff that was pretty steep, but in January alone they lost over 125, 000 players and a further 67, 000 in February. But why have so many left so quickly? I can already hear you shouting at your screen, but all games go through this decline, and yes.
I understand this, but the drop-off here has been quite severe. With a lot of Polish and interesting concepts, why did everyone go? Well, as much as I'm banging on about it, I don't have the silver bullet answer to this, but I do have some ideas as to the contributing factors, and I don't think it's one single thing.
I don't think there's one single factor you can point to, but rather several things that, when combined, have started chipping away at the player's motivation. And overall, just wearing the player base down death by a thousand cuts, if you will, or more specifically, death by three main cuts, at least according to the Reddit community.
Some weeks ago, I reached out to Reddit to ask them why they felt the player base had dropped off so much, and to my surprise, a lot of people wanted to wait in and have their say. Some of the main points that kept popping up were balance issues, lack of content, and cheaters.
Cheaters
And well I agree so I am going to Deep dive each these three points but first I'm going to touch on the cheetah problem since there's not really that much to talk about we all know cheetahs are the [ __ ] Pond Life Of The Gaming Community they are nothing more than parasitic entities that subsist on the misery of others and they are the scourge of online Gamers and gaming companies the world over and nobody is surprised they have infected, this game as well unfortunately, for the finals the cheetah issue was at its worst right at the start when most of the player base was interested to play but not yet committed, and I certainly feel that those that were sitting at this border between interest and commitment were the most affected.
And many people left. I will say that as of right now, there do seem to be far fewer cheaters than there were.
