THE FINALS Help Center

It’s CNS’ turn to take over the World Tour, and they’re restoring Standard Cashout. They want you to see through the walls, but not with VAIIYA’s technology. It’s time to open your eyes. 

We also have a stacked store update, including a fun celebration for the 4th of July! With over 20 new items added, you’re sure to find something that catches your eye. Mesh hoodwear? Check. Prefer sending a message through rocket propelled fists? Check. Fan of the retro vibes and want a CL animation pack with fewer frames than shells - also check! 

Stop by the Store and check it out!

Have you ever wanted to greet opponents with one emote, but use a completely different one to show off when you win? Great - because now you can! Starting today you will be able to select separate intro and winner’s emotes, so you can give your opponents a curated “Hello!” and “Goodbye!”

The smarties (our smart dummies in the Practice Range) have been taking their Omega-3 supplements and have now improved even further! These even smarter smarties fight with more brainpower, and have been balanced to give you a fairer challenge! 

Oh, and whether you had mastered the Big Box Battle, or struggled to complete it, there’s something new for you: we have added an Easy and Hard version of the challenge!

Let’s get into all the changes in detail:

Balance Changes

Gadgets 

H+ Infuser

• Decreased the health given per shot from 20 to 15
  Dev Note: The flat healing per second on stationary targets during a Cashout steal has been more impactful than we expected. This change will address that specific use case, while ensuring the H+ is still valuable. 

Healing Emitter

• Cooldown now begins when the Emitter is destroyed, not on deployment

• Cooldown reduced from 35 seconds to 30 seconds

• Emitter can now be retrieved via the control tablet, setting its remaining cooldown to 15s

• Emitter can now be retrieved via a manual interaction, setting its remaining cooldown to 3s
  Dev Note: The Healing Emitter was a bit too forgiving in its initial state where players could drop it carelessly and still get good value. With these changes, smart placement becomes more important: keeping it alive now takes intention, and lazy deployments are more likely to backfire. This brings it closer in line with other deployables like the Guardian Turret. The reduced cooldown helps balance out the updated logic for when cooldown starts.

Gateway

• Increased the cooldown on items that travel through the gateway, before they’re able to re-enter it, from 0.5s to 1s, meaning objects thrown into the gateway should less frequently fall straight back through it

Weapons 

Dev Note: We recently took a closer look at equip/unequip times and realized that some had become a little out of sync with our initial intent and relative to other items. This led to inconsistencies that didn’t help the overall feel of the weapon system. We’ve now made small adjustments based on new baselines, listed below. Most changes should feel subtle, with a few minor exceptions. These new baselines also give us more room to fine-tune specific items in the future, using speed tweaks as soft buffs. We’ll keep an eye on how these smaller updates feel and adjust further if needed.

93R

• Decreased the weapon equip time from 0.2s to 0.15s

• Decreased the weapon unequip time from 0.2s to 0.15s

AKM

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.23s to 0.3s

• Decreased the weapon unequip time from 0.23s to 0.2s

ARN-220

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.2s to 0.3s

CB-01 Repeater

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.2s to 0.3s

Cerberus 12GA

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.2s to 0.3s

CL-40

• Increased self-damage multiplier from 1.25 to 1.35, meaning CL-40 players who shoot at their own feet will take slightly more damage

• Decreased inner blast radius from 60cm to 50cm, requiring players to be slightly more accurate to do maximum damage with a shot
  Dev Note: We’ve seen an increase in CL-40 usage since the Healing Emitter arrived in the game and, while we think the CL-40 should be somewhat of a hard counter to teams clustered around an Emitter, it’s slightly too effective at very close ranges and without requiring accuracy. These changes address those specific use cases, without hurting the CL-40s general effectiveness.  

FAMAS

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.2s to 0.3s

• Decreased the weapon unequip time from 0.23s to 0.2s

FCAR

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.2s to 0.3s

• Decreased the weapon unequip time from 0.23s to 0.2s

KS-23

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.2s to 0.3s

Lewis Gun

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.23s to 0.35s

• Decreased the weapon unequip time from 0.3s to 0.25s

LH1

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.15s to 0.3s

• Increased the weapon unequip time from 0.15s to 0.2s

M134 Minigun

• Increased the weapon unequip time from 0.2s to 0.25s

Model 1887

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.15s to 0.3s

• Increased the weapon unequip time from 0.15s to 0.2s

Pike-556

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.2s to 0.3s

SA1216

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.15s to 0.3s

• Increased the weapon unequip time from 0.15s to 0.2s

SH1900

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.15s to 0.2s

• Increased the weapon unequip time from 0.15s to 0.2s

ShAK-50

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.2s to 0.3s

Sledgehammer

• Increased the height of the primary attack hit sweep from 15cm to 25cm, making this type of attack more reliable
  Dev Note: We’ve been monitoring player feedback on melee hit detection and suspect some issues stem from depth perception in first-person view or from sweeps not perfectly matching their animations. This update addresses one such case, and we’re reviewing other melee sweeps for follow-up changes later this season. These adjustments are separate from the broader melee quality-of-life improvements we’re planning for the future.

XP-54

• Decreased the weapon equip time from 0.23s to 0.2s

• Decreased the weapon unequip time from 0.23s to 0.2s

SR-84

• Increased the weapon equip time from 0.15s to 0.3s

• Increased the weapon unequip time from 0.15s to 0.2s

New Weapon System

• Temporarily disabled to fix major bugs
  Dev Note: We’ve temporarily disabled the new weapon system for automatic weapons to fix an issue causing delayed “laggy” hit feedback. While this removes the delay, it may reintroduce some older issues like the occasional “can’t fire” bug. Once we’ve identified and resolved the feedback delay, we’ll re-enable the new system. 

Content and Bug Fixes

Animation 

• New animation customization slot available! You can now customize your cycle action animations

• Improved animations when dashing while charging with the Sword or holding Grenades

• Fixed a minor visual issue during the Double Up Reload from Empty Animation for the ARN-220

Audio 

• Re-mastered some player voice-over content

• Added Scotty and June commentary for when a team has two Cashouts in progress simultaneously

• Added voice-over lines from the player’s respawn statue, audible to their Squad when requesting a revive

Characters

• Heavy muscular body types have been given more defined anatomy/muscles

Controller

• Fixed a bug where controller would rumble from far away explosions

Cosmetics

• You can now select your Contestant’s intro and winner's emotes separately!

• Closed Beta Chic shoes now display correctly on Heavy and Medium contestants

• Campsite Creeper facewear no longer clips with Sal's Halo and Orbital Witness headwear

• Synapse Coreframe and Termiframe chassis no longer clip with Cursed soles and Memento Pumps

• Fixed an issue where the Outfit Creation Inspect screen only allowed zooming on the Contestant's face

• Fixed decals being mirrored upside down on the ISEUL-T Blueprint Bloom CB-01 skin

• Fixed Kanji being mirrored on the grips of the Shinjuku Slicer Revolver skin

• Fix for The Freeze Frame Emote so the bullets do not appear in the wrong location when viewed from certain perspectives 

Contracts

• Fixed an issue that prevented the contract “Set 5 opponents on fire with the Pyro Mine or Pyro Grenade” from progressing

Gadgets

Data Reshaper

• Improved its visual effect for the Healing Emitter and Breaching Drill

H+ Infuser

• Fixed issue where it would look like it was out of ammo while it was not

Healing Emitter

• Fixed an issue where it wouldn't connect to players who stood below it when placed on a platform or ledge

Game Modes

General

• Upgraded the winners sequence for all modes!

Cashout

• Fixed an issue that could cause Vaults to occasionally spawn within 10m of a Cashout station

Practice Range: Dojo Challenges 

• Added Easy and Hard difficulties to the Big Box Challenge 

• Improved bot accuracy across difficulty settings for more consistent results

• Added more behavior profiles so bots act more nuanced based on weapon type

• Fixed incorrect naming of the middle difficulty in Shooting Gallery from Medium to Standard

• Fixed an issue where damage received from a sparring bot in a previous challenge attempt was shown in a new attempt

• Resolved navigation issues on the challenge selection screen when using a controller

• Fixed a minor UI issue where the back button on the challenge selection widget would distort when hovered

Gameplay

• Made doors more responsive by reducing interaction delay

• Fixed an issue where detected enemies would not appear if they were inside Smoke, when detected by the Tracking Dart, Sonar Granade, or Proximity Sensor 
  Dev Note: We believe the increased prevalence of Smoke Grenades over the last season or two has been in part down to this bug. It was always our intent that scanning devices would see through smoke and act as a hard-counter to it. This fix restores that functionality.

Maps

Bernal

• Fixed a zipline that was slightly floating above the ground next to the Chapel

• Suspended Structures: slightly adjusted the cover placement on the top floor of the ISEUL-T suspended structure to create better cover

General

•  Partially destroyed structures in the environment now have improved visuals along their damaged edges. These visuals are also more consistent and appear more accurately.

The size of these visuals also has been slightly reduced so that the visual damage on the environment is also easier for players to see.

• Fix for inconsistency of lamp bulb assets not being breakable across maps

Monaco

• Fixed floating rubble piles in “Duck and Cover” variation

Nozomi/Citadel

• Moved the map border in a bit behind the Operations Center and Cybercafe so you can see it from behind the windows to better understand that there's a death pit behind them

Kyoto

• The Pagoda in Kyoto has received a new destruction pass and now behaves more realistically when collapsing

Seoul

• Fixed an issue with one of the buildings where the floor had no collision making you fall through it

• Fixed a gap in the floor of the Data Center where a floor piece was offset

• Fix for white lines occasionally showing up on the Construction site floor

SYS$HORIZON

• Fixed a spot on a facade to prevent players from hiding in semi-transparent cubes

Skyway Stadium

• Fixed a rendering issue for the elevator shaft on the rooftop hospital building

• Skyway Stadium has received a destruction upgrade. The new destruction features allow players to cause better looking destruction more reliably and realistically

Private Matches

• Fixed an issue where the player tile drag-and-drop action could be continued all the way into the match

• Added the limited mode “Blast Off!” to private matches while the game mode is active

Rendering

• Increase main menu and intro sequence reflection quality

Social

• Fixed an issue where the system menu could appear when closing the text chat using the ESC key

• People who have sent you a pending friend request will no longer be able to join voice chat if your privacy setting is set to Friends Only

• Fixed an issue where the option to send a Rise & Shine recruitment request was possible to players that are not eligible to be a prospect

Specializations

• Fixed an issue where Charge 'N Slam running speed would be slowed down if initiated while firing

Spectator

• Fixed the player Team list overflowing the Private Match spectator UI when playing with three Teams

UI

• You can now spawn into the Practice Range with a selected Weapon from the equipment screen

• Users who are not yet connected to a game are now visible on the scoreboard. They will only be removed when they have abandoned the session

• Added support for filters in the Charms/Stickers screens

• Fixed an issue allowing players to ping objects through walls at slight angles

• Fixed the Weapon Sights menu not showing which Contestants already had the Sights equipped

• Fixed an issue where the team respawn countdown timer could show a very large number

• Fixed an issue where the currently selected Weapon customization reset after returning from the Inspect menu

• Fixed Career progression rewards so they no longer sometimes had a locked icon when they were unlocked

• Fixed purchase prompt always appearing after exiting Inspect in the Legacy Battlepass purchase screen

• Fixed Contestants not loading with correct items equipped when returning to the customization menu after opening a bundle preview

•  Fixed an issue which would randomly open the Contestant selection menu after unlocking the Light Build

Security

With every big update comes a renewed commitment from our Anti-Cheat team:

Cheat makers operate in a low-risk, high-reward world. They profit by selling cheats, oftentimes packing them with malware that harms their own customers, and they face very little consequences for their actions.  Meanwhile, players who use their cheats risk losing everything: their accounts, their money, their time, and their chance to participate in events and competitions. 

Our strategy for combating this is simple: raise the cost, difficulty, and time required to develop and distribute cheats. 

As mentioned in the 7.0 patch notes, a lot of cheats these days use a kernel-driver to read and write memory to gain an unfair advantage. This means that they run in a privileged mode in the Windows operating system, making it unlikely and in some cases impossible to detect via Anti-Cheat in the game client. The technical solution to combat this is kernel-driver Anti-Cheat. We believe that this is, and will be, a requirement for every competitive multiplayer game for the foreseeable future.

We’re also using machine learning to analyze player behavior, and we have been doing so since the launch of THE FINALS. Machine learning provides valuable insights, especially when detecting cheats such as aimbot usage.

In the coming months, we will also begin an incremental rollout of a new kernel-based anti-cheat solution, intended to significantly raise the bar for cheat makers. 

Cheat makers exploit everyone: players, developers, and the community itself. We’re committed to protecting fair play and adapting to new threats. 

Despite claims from cheat developers that they’re “undetectable,” every cheat leaves breadcrumbs and we’ve been following them. Closely.

/Chim and Magnum