Why I hate the finals and Embark: An autobiography
My name is MrEden111, often known as Eden, especially in circles on the finals as one of the most dedicated exclusive charge’n’slam sledge players since season 4 from Oceania.
The finals is, and more importantly, *was* a wonderful game, a breath of fresh air in a stale live service industry where your wallet was valued, you as a player was respected, and where the developers would constantly deliver breath taking updates. But having not played season 3, I had little idea of the horrors there were yet to come.
For many seasons the game was pumped with life, after the tremendous success of season 4 with a vast array of new content such as sponsorships, new weapons, and my all-time favourite map; fortune stadium. They would swing hard again with season 5, with Mexico themed beauty bringing in even more content (despite how op the Cerberus was), season 6 bringing even more wonder ignoring the Vegas reskin which was much better than its original predecessor (No the team death match map does not count) … but then came season 7. Because even accounting for the flaws, these were updates that did amazing for the health of the game. Alongside also dealing with issues such as the infamous taser (which later turned to the disabler) to rise player enjoyment.
But I wake up in the morning of season 7, and I open to read the patch notes, my hands went cold and palmy, my heart sank to rest on my lungs. The infamous sledge nerf, the turning point of the game for me and finally opened my eyes to the faults of Embark. Which as a noteworthy mention, was only caused because of this obsession in the heavy playerbase to use winch with the most current powerful weapon, leading to only the weapon being significantly nerfed, which is a relevant issue in the mindset of embark’s balancing philosophy to always look at the surface of the issue instead of the deeper reasons (unless if they outright ignore it of course).
It was then Embark took a turn for me, it was the first season they introduced the $50 ultimate battle trash and pushing out more and more expensive reskins/clothing, prioritising the store (which became even more evident in the future). They started to become more ignorant to the real issues plaguing the game in favour of streamers, they reduced the servers to cut costs down which made international play even worse and even made playing in your own country laggy just to min max profit margins. Melee as a whole by that point had been entirely side lined and made useless while lights became more of a major issue for the casual player base, with most solutions to the issue only worsening overall player enjoyment such as with the cl04 especially.
This all became worse by season 8, the infamous Esports season, for 110 days the game did not receive a single major balance nor particularly small one either because embark refused to endanger their forced esports. They lied to us and themselves that it would bring in new players when in fact it was the most damaging time for the playerbase since season 3. But embark will never have the humility to admit that they failed the players, because they are always right in their eyes with every decision they make and still intend to make season 12 a repeat having learned none of these mistakes.
Things got worse when Arc Raiders released, with an even smaller team, Embark rather than risking their profits. Focused their efforts on making store items before anything else as before every store update had an array of balance changes but it soon became just small footnotes. Leading to significantly less content overall and started to pour out half baked ideas such as the P90 (a glorified light smg for medium), the crossbow which is a reskinned pike, the sad joke of a hover pad and much else, which did little to improve the staling variety for the long-time players like me who made the majority of the player base (and their revenue). This also led to terrible balancing choices that left light just too powerful in the casual scene and left medium as well as heavy weaker, with guns like the light's m11 able to spray down a heavy in seconds with just hip fire.
But the melee was worst of all, melee has been the beaten children of the finals where especially heavy and medium have suffered the worse. Spear didn’t get a major update since season 3 and even took away the ability to emote cancel heavy attack somewhere around season 7 and then proceeded to NERF IT in the melee rework despite being the least popular melee weapon alongside taking away the popular fling technique. Riot shield got its ability to run at angles taken away because screw them I guess no unintended tech allowed for melee. But as a pure example of how Embark does not playtest their ideas at all prior to the new season, riot shield has become THE melee weapon with its shove and great damage making it way too powerful which I’m sure embark will swiftly nerf sooner or later.
With Sledge on the other end of the spectrum where it used the be the symbol of final melee down reduced to its kneecaps broken and now is just a mindless spam weapon where I long for the days you could do combos pre nerf with quick melee (rip m1 + qm = dead light). With the only other strong melee now just being the sword which despite what Embark has said, has only buffed its spamability by making m1 be almost as strong as lunge. The melee rework especially has done nothing to solve the issues of melee being unviable and still leaving melee as a braindead spam weapon category rather than anything that could be take seriously than just a pathetic annoying joke that ticks everyone off, me a sledge player included.
If you have read this far, I applaud you, I could go on all day, but I digress. Do not waste your time on this game, please. While it may be fun for a time, but in the end, it leaves you dead and hollow, wishing it felt as wonderful when you first played. Any hope I had in these Developers to make my favourite game great again have long since passed, and this mockery of a melee rework has put out the candle of whatever passion I had left.
Sincerely, Eden
