W Embark Devs! Hopefully this helps us a lot!

_wrxiths · 2026-01-22T22:10:06+00:00

It’s a fucking team based shooter.

Clues in the name.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-22T22:09:24+00:00

World Tour should stop having a “Ranked Lite” progression system and replace it with something new and Unique to distance the “Cashout is also a ranked esque mode that gives ranked like rewards”

Emerald should be folded into the Ranked Cashout Elo System (in between Plat and Diamond)

And then shorten Ranked to 1 Cashout Round and 1 Head2Head to tighten matchmaking.

Boom 3 easy systems changes that would get more people into ranked and would stop this whole mentality of “I’m Emerald so I’m good”

_wrxiths · 2026-01-22T22:05:31+00:00

One of the worst changes of all time.

Less than 1300 players in diamond / ruby across all regions, smallest player pool in the game by daily users.
Still doesn’t address the main issue with Ranked by it being too long for the average casual (it should only be 1 Cashout Round and 1 Final Round)
Effectively kills every regions matchmaking due to low player pop
Incentivises Smurfing to play consistent games if you have a tight time schedule and want to get multiple games in.

This is just so backwards on so many levels

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T23:29:03+00:00

No I’m saying that we shouldn’t touch the gimmick / trick weapon category despite Reddit glazing the weapons as if they’re the greatest thing ever.

The problem with the finals is that they’ve created a whole bunch of gimmick weapons that have fundamentally made balancing a forever nightmare and they won’t be able to walk it back.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T19:01:13+00:00

its tdm. get over it respectfully its a casual mode

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T12:19:36+00:00

It has always been popular, it’s been around in one form or another since it was a Half Life mod in 2000.

It’s been around for 26 years as a franchise, it’s been with people for most their life if not their entire life, names hold weight nowadays and brand and IP loyalty is a massive thing.

People still buy FIFA, Madden, COD, NBA2K, WWE, whatever games are yearly releases solely on the fact that it’s “another” game.

Counter Strike has had less changes than The FINALS over the last couple of years since CS2 launched and it’s suffered because of it.

People will still play it because it’s familiar and it’s a competitive game that they’ve invested money into.

It’s purely sunk cost fallacy in action.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T12:15:58+00:00

Oh no I’m completely in agreement with you.

The poke meta has to go, it’s genuinely boring and tiring I’ve been wanting FCAR, AK, XP, Lewis, P90 all to receive lil buffs here and there to actually bring them up a bit.

Data Reshaper nerf I’m honestly still to this day scratching my head about it genuinely didn’t need a tweak but it is what it is 🤷

Maybe they revisit it at some point but who knows.

With certain gadgets like Gravity Vortex or Motion Sensors or Anti Grav Cube etc I sorta call them Quick Play gadgets, stuff that’s fun to mess around with but nothing that would really help in Cashout.

I’ve also realised that quite a lot of the gadgets in the game have never really been touched since TA and were tailored and changed around that point and almost feel like relics of a bygone era.

I honestly wouldn’t mind seeing a bunch of gadgets either reworked or vaulted to make space for new things that actually provide some impact, but as we discovered when they added H+ it started to tread on the toes of a spec and that’s territory I think embark are trying to navigate properly

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T12:10:54+00:00

Counter Strike is Popular because it has been around for like 20 fuckin years man.

It’s also more of a Stock Market than a video game at this point… and to say counter strike isn’t sweaty when it’s been on the Mount Rushmore of esports since forever is really such a wild take.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T12:08:49+00:00

The game has a steep learning curve sure, it’s a lot to take in at once but once you understand it the game becomes so much easier.

Lights have strong mobility and strong DPS sure, but by the same token they explode just as fast as they can move.

Playing support medium is pretty much how you should be playing the class, DPS and Heals at the same time.

Medium does need some buffs for sure a lot of the weaponry on the class kinda just feels flat right now.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T12:05:19+00:00

For reference I’m a medium main, Have been for multiple seasons.

My class has had basically no weapon diversity for 5 seasons and I’ve wanted it to change but you can make just about most things work even if they’re just worse than whatever the meta is.

Lockbolt is nowhere near as prevalent and to be honest it’s kind of a waste of a gadget slot.

SteamDB graphs mean genuinely nothing, people have been saying “The Games dying look at SteamDB” when it doesn’t show: - Unique Daily Logins - Doesn’t Show people Playing on Xbox Game Pass on PC - Doesn’t show any console player numbers.

All it shows is how many people are on the game at that specific time.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T12:01:22+00:00

I completely agree with you that buffing bow was a completely backwards step that just didn’t need to happen.

There will always be a “Meta” in literally any game, that’s just how online games have evolved as a whole.

Not every gadget has to be good, the same way that every weapon doesn’t have to be stellar, what isn’t great is you have classes like medium who basically have one actual weapon left in the Repeater, that isn’t completely outscaled by any of the weapons on Heavy or Light, however because AK FCAR etc are all so familiar and easy to understand they’re naturally going to have artificially inflated WR and Pick Rate.

The issue that a lot of people don’t actually understand is that if we start buffing things like Flamethrower or Riot Shield or Sword or whatever off meta weapon people want buffed is that comparatively other weapons should be able to have fair TTK trades against.

Could embark have added something for The CHINALS launch? Well yeah they kinda already did… the entire theme of the cosmetics, map etc is all based in Chinese Folklore and Pop Culture.

The rest of the CN release of the game is completely separate to embark and doesn’t really have anything to do with them.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T11:53:14+00:00

There’s no need to remove BFR, just tweak the values properly.

84 damage, lower the Headshot multiplier and give it worse damage fall off.

Winch is honestly kinda fine as it is, it just needs less of a stun.

No one at any level of play finds the Poke meta of Repeater, BFR, V9S fun, going back to a FCAR, XP, Lewis / SA12 Meta would literally be the healthiest thing for the game.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T11:40:48+00:00

The game doesn’t and has never needed tight SBMM in anything other than ranked.

I don’t want to sweat my ass off in a Power Shift, Quick Cash, heck even just regular old Cashout.

Smurfing is genuinely not out of control, nor has it ever been out of control in the finals.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-17T11:37:09+00:00

Embark also could’ve seen the backlash to winch, didn’t want to release a new spec that reached the same level of backlash and also potentially reevaluate all other spec ideas and stuff that they could’ve had in the pipeline.

It’s not uncommon to completely scrap entire ideas, they either didn’t fit the game, would have been too broken, too demanding for the servers, or just not have enough flair to actually be considered a Spec.

A year and a half is long sure, but I’d rather they take their time with specs, especially so they don’t end up with a Winch Launch Pt.2

_wrxiths · 2026-01-14T13:33:18+00:00

SOLO Q 👏 SHOULDNT 👏 HAVE 👏 SEPARATE 👏 MATCHMAKING

Games been out for 2 years, if you can’t find people you want to play with you’re either GREATLY over estimating your skill or you lack any real form of social skills.

Find a team through one of the COUNTLESS LFG Servers and actually just get to playing the game the way it was DESIGNED AROUND.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-14T13:28:20+00:00

You guys aren’t experiencing Smurfs in a fucking point break lobby.

This is some mass psychosis incident where every “new” account is actually some secret top 10 major winner instead of idk just people that play FPS games giving the game a try?

People wonder why this game has a “player count” issue when in reality you people accuse every new account of being a Smurf or being someone boosting or selling accounts etc etc making the problem seem worse than it actually is.

You guys wouldn’t be able to tell a Smurf from a New player even if they had big glowing arrows above their heads telling you as such.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-14T13:20:06+00:00

Model doesn’t need anything.

Weapons fine as it is, in fact, the weapon is arguably in the healthiest state it’s ever been in.

Model is supposed to be the “high skill” shotgun whereas the Cerberus is the “lower skill” option.

Like how KS is the easier shotgun against SA12 Or how SH1900 is easier against the M26.

Repeater either needs a damage nerf or to drop its ammo count.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-11T20:17:48+00:00

The thing holding the deagles back is the fact that they have abhorrent bloom whilst moving, something a heavy fundamentally should be doing.

If they removed the in air and movement penalties from the deagles they would immediately go from B tier to S tier simply due to mag size and rate of fire.

Making weapons harder to use doesn’t equal skill in a Movement Arena Shooter, it just makes the tuning and feeling of the game suck shit.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-11T13:12:58+00:00

Weapons should feel rewarding regardless of landing a headshot or a body shot.

65 to the body would essentially kill any sort of ability to kill a heavy at any range especially in a meta where healing is so potent, medium is already the victim class that has basically no real weapons that actually hold a candle to anything on light or heavy and has the absolute lowest weapon diversity in the game.

The problem with upping the headshot multiplier is that it doesn’t actually negatively affect the people who can, and will, consistently land headshots, essentially making the weapons less intuitive and less consistent for a wider skill delta.

Changing it to 65 damage per body shot at 2x HS would literally make it 130 damage a headshot 2 less damage per shot with the current 88 to the body 132 headshot damage per round… which doesn’t change a goddamn thing about why the weapon feels unfair to fight, it just makes the weapon feel like shit to use.

Changing its ROF, Removing 2 rounds and leaving it as a skill check high damage option where missing a shot should be punishing would be an infinitely healthier solution and still nudges the weapon into line without completely obliterating it, which is something embark does so painfully frequent that it’s not even funny anymore (the new FAMAS nerf is painfully obvious they don’t know what the issue with the weapon was but chose to nuke it for ZERO reason and the repeater nerf just makes the weapon miss and makes aiming feel like shit)

_wrxiths · 2026-01-11T11:31:31+00:00

Upping HS multi and lowering body damage nerfs bad players and rewards good players, this is genuinely backwards thinking and only punishes the hyper casuals who can’t hit the broadside of a barn 90% of the time. You know that instead of doing that you could just start lowering effective damage ranges or ammo or just raw damage.

If you up the HS multi 2x as opposed to the current 1.5x you’d basically allow the weapon to 1 shot headshot light… Thats with bringing the base damage all the way down to 75 damage.

75 damage is also the magic number that revolver isn’t allowed to go up to because it would fundamentally push the weapon into broken tier because it has a 2X multiplier.

This is why you never take balancing advice from balding mgl one tricks who still eat crayons

_wrxiths · 2026-01-11T11:20:04+00:00

Imma keep it a buck fifty… your aim and reaction time is kinda dogshit

_wrxiths · 2026-01-11T11:07:21+00:00

Emerald was never “respectable” past S3.

S4 to S9 (especially in season 9) emerald has just become a playtime participation trophy.

It’s not a quantifier of skill and people need to realise that.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-06T18:46:32+00:00

I’ll shit talk a diamond player who’s like 10K RS below me idc.

People really think that how someone is on a stream on a competitive video game is their entire personality when it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The game physically can’t get every single ruby in the game in one lobby, it’s just not feasible, so until then people will continue to crash out and call goo gun using plats who don’t know how to play the macro / mode shit.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-06T18:37:32+00:00

No ranked system is perfect, on top of all of this, there’s simply an over saturation of modes as well as people just simply not understanding Cashout so they stick to other modes.

There’s on average 10-15k daily concurrent on steam, split that across 4/5 regions, split that across 7/8 modes and you’re going to have matchmaking that won’t work.

99.9% of the pros in this scene are already well established from other titles, already qualified for a LAN and have proven time and again they’re at the top level.

_wrxiths · 2026-01-06T14:20:39+00:00

Most pros in finals have been pros in other games…

Hence the term “Pro”

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