The Finals

New players describe being matched against veterans and smurf accounts from their first games: "Match after match, as a player with under 1,000 kills, I kept getting matched against veterans with 40k, 60k, 80k+ eliminations." One newcomer, put against people who had played since season 1, wrote: "Contrary to most companies beliefs when people get steam rolled every match it's not fun and it doesn't make them want to play the game more." Some give up within a few hours ("Unplayably horrendous new player experience, and it does not get better."), and another newcomer called it "Easily the worst new player experience of the decade." Veterans raise matchmaking too, describing lopsided ranked lobbies ("I was in Gold also getting queued against rubies.") and cycles of easy and impossible matches.

Players who stuck with it warn that learning takes a long time ("addicting, but you will be bad for your first 90 hours"), and a few welcomed the addition of bot matches: "They added bot matches and it progresses all the challenges and Emerald skin unlocks, so you no longer need to rely on a big player base to play this game." Newcomers ask for a protected space to learn: "Add a beginner friendly mode that can actually help people learn the game and understand mechanics".

Cheating complaints come mostly from experienced players. They describe aimbots, wall hacks and controller adapters in every mode, reports that seem to change nothing, and banned players returning on new free accounts: "Filled to the brim with cheaters, anti-cheat practically nonexistent." One reviewer noted that cheating is worst "in the modes that don't offer you a kill-cam, like Team Deathmatch." A few long-time players disagree about the scale and write that they rarely meet cheaters.

Players describe dying behind cover, shots that do not register, rubber-banding and the yellow or red network icon mid-match: "it all comes down to the crappy servers, they are so desynced its insane". One player adds that there is no ping readout: "I sure love not being able to see my ping!" Some long-time players tie worse servers to particular seasons.

Solo players describe teammates who ignore the objective, quit when a match turns, or never get replaced, leaving a team of two against full squads: "half your team leaves in the first 2 minutes of a match and you get no one to fill". Others are dropped into matches already lost. Some reviewers' advice is blunt ("DO NOT! Play this with squad fill."), and positive reviews keep saying the game is at its best with friends. "The META is having fun with your friends" is how one player summed it up.

A steady stream of reviews reports crashes, freezes on loading screens and launch errors, often after an update. Reviewers mention anti-cheat kicks for supposed game file modification, error codes and launch failures after patches. The penalty that follows makes it worse: "Game crashes all the time and gives you a leaving penalty." Players in ranked describe losing rank points for matches they were kicked from.

A smaller group reports permanent bans they believe were false, often blaming what they call the AI anti-cheat and support replies that feel automated. Reviewers say bans hit players using gyro aiming or Steam Input ("DO NOT play this game while using steam input or a steam controller"), and some report that such bans were later lifted. Their main worry is that no human reviews the case: "The risk of losing your account due to a false positive is simply too high." Some of them tell readers not to spend money on the game because of it.

Players in Oceania, Asia and the Middle East describe long queues, empty modes and matches on distant servers: "DEAD OCE PLAYER BASE", and from another region, "leaving me to play on servers with well over 200ms ping". Some positive reviews also wish the game had more players, and some veterans tie the small population to the matchmaking gaps above.

Some players dislike the AI-generated commentator voices and want human actors back: "They've make enough money to hire voice actors". Others simply find them distracting: "could do with less ai voicelines tho, the announcers' talking takes me out of the immersion a bit".

Veterans complain that new weapons and maps arrive slowly ("theyll at best provide 1 new gimmick every 3 months") and miss things that were taken out, such as Terminal Attack, Head2Head and the thermal vision gadget: "This will stay negative until they bring back thermal vision". One also asks for a basic competitive feature: "please add a match history, as a pvp game there is no way it doesnt have that."

A few players balk at the download and the size of frequent patches: "an install size of roughly 80G is honestly unacceptable for what the game is."

A handful of players say enemies are too hard to hear in the noise of a fight: "You simply do not hear them accurately or loudly enough until they are already breathing down your neck."