The Finals players frustrated with “impossible to finish” Battle Pass
Embark StudiosThough The Finals has kept its player count high in the weeks following its release, those who have stuck with the game discovered that progressing through the Battle Pass requires a massive time commitment.
Battle Passes have become a part of pretty much any live-service multiplayer game, and they’re a tried and true method of giving players rewards for their continued investment in a multiplayer title. With how many games are competing for gamers’ attention, this approach makes a lot of sense.
However, there’s a certain balance that has to be struck for players to feel like their time investment is worthwhile. And, according to many of those who are progressing through The Finals‘ Battle Pass, that progress moves way too slow.
Those who are still playing the game are enjoying it (though it has its fair share of problems), but they may reconsider buying the next Battle Pass if they aren’t able to earn rewards more quickly in the future.
The Finals players call out the game’s “grindy” Battle Pass
The Finals, like pretty much any other free-to-play game on the market, relies upon cosmetics to keep itself alive. In order to stay afloat after the influx of players from its explosive launch, the devs have to find ways to make their cosmetic items seem appealing to players.
And, while it has a typical cash shop where players can access some more general costumes, items of clothing, and weapon skins, there’s also a Battle Pass that promises access to a variety of limited-time items that can only be accessed by progressing through the pass.
However, many players feel as if getting through the pass takes entirely too long, with many claiming it takes around an hour per tier on average. With the pass having 96 tiers, that adds up to almost 100 hours that players have to commit in order to get everything on offer.
This led to a somewhat controversial post from a player claiming that the Battle Pass is “impossible to finish” and takes too long to get through, as well as calling out that weeklies don’t carry over like, say, Apex Legends’ weekly challenges do. This sentiment was widely mirrored by the community, especially for those who play multiple games.
“I think a lot of people are missing the fact that basically every other multiplayer game also has a battle pass that demands a lot of your time. So if you want to play 2 or 3 other games AND get their battle passes, good luck finishing them all. If this is the only game you play, it’s not much of a problem because you’ll finish it eventually … probably… but that’s not realistic for a lot of people. ~100+ hour battlepasses can’t become the norm.” claimed one Reddit user.
Others claimed that OP has no right to complain considering we’re early into the season, with the main counter-argument being that, “you shouldn’t have to put 120+ hours into a game every few months to complete the battle pass,” according to a Redditor who claimed those with have limited time to play can’t realistically be expected to dump that much time into the game.
SkillUp also mentioned this in his review for the game and criticized the Battle Pass model as a whole, claiming that publishers need a different approach if they want players to keep buying so many BPs.
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SkillUp explained how he’s playing four different games with Battle Passes, none of which he’s been able to come close to completing in his free time. As a result, all of them feel like a bit of a waste considering he’ll likely miss out on a large portion of the rewards from each game, and is likely not to purchase many of these passes the next time around.
“Right now, every f***ing game has a Battle Pass, and all of them are tuned under the assumption you’ll play 60, or 70, 80, 100 hours to unlock all of the things. We can only do that if we commit to that one game, forsaking all others. I’d love it if publishers would just let us get through these Battle Passes faster.” SkillUp explained.
“I’m happy to pay for a season of new sh*t, and, if I can unlock all that stuff inside of 25-30 hours, it’d be happy days. I’m gonna feel really good about that purchase, and I’m gonna come back next season and buy it again.”
He concluded, “Publishers, if you listen to this, you guys have to figure this out. Because, if every game is gonna have a Battle Pass, you can’t tune the requirements as if no other games exist.”
