Respec Order 2.0
2026.06.17
Hey folks, in our 10.3 update we ran a World Tour Stop called Respec Order, which was a test of some new core balance values for health and speed aimed at addressing issues we see in the game related to team cohesion and balancing of certain weapons. Full details on those issues, our goals and our first steps can be found in a blog post we made at the time, here.
In 10.12, Respec Order is returning to World Tour, this time for two weeks, with some additional changes to allow more detailed testing. In this blog post I want to talk through what we learned from the first test, what we've changed for this new test and where these changes might be going in the future.
So let’s jump in!
RESPEC ORDER | GOALS
As stated in the previous blog, we had two main goals for Respec Order:
Movement Speed: We often see that the very wide range of body type movement speeds in the game causes teams to drift apart, making teamplay harder especially for solo or more casual players. We wanted to test if bringing the movement speeds closer together could improve team cohesion by reducing this drift
Health Scale: We know that extreme differences in health values in FPS games can make certain weapon types very hard to balance to feel good at both ends of the health scale (i.e. the gun feels good versus Heavy and Light equally). We want to test if compressing that scale can help make weapon balancing easier to do and if it can lead to better feeling combat
In 10.3, the purpose of the test was to establish a baseline for further balancing and testing, with the primary focus being the impact of movement speeds, while the health scale changes were more of a 'squint' test to give us information on how they might behave. Unless this test had been a disaster, this was always going to be just the first in a series of tests, so let's go through what we learned.
RESPEC ORDER | PLAYER FEEDBACK
First off, I want to thank everybody for testing Respec Order, providing feedback and especially those completing the survey we shared. During the week of the test the number of players playing World Tour jumped 20%, which shows us your enthusiasm for the test. We really appreciate the community's willingness to help us make the game better. Let's look at how you felt about the test.
As well as gaining lots of data from the Respec Order test, we also ran a survey to get players' feelings on the changes. In total we received approximately 53,000 survey responses.
We asked players to score Respec Order out of 5, with 5 being the most positive response. Here's what we found:
The average survey score was 2.93, so fairly neutral
When weighted by rounds played, players who played the event more scored the changes slightly higher at 2.98
When weighted by rounds, players who played Light most during the test averaged a score of 3.08. Scores of those who mostly played Medium or Heavy averaged out at 2.93
So overall, the feedback to the test was fairly neutral.
In addition to asking you to score the changes, we also gave you the option to leave comments and feedback. The top three most common positives and negatives from the feedback were:
Positives
Many players really liked the improved mobility on the Heavy archetype
Many players agreed that a smaller range of health values would make balancing easier
Many players commented that they could now chase down enemies more effectively, which they liked
Negatives
Many players felt the increased health on Lights, while retaining the current version of Evasive Dash, was too powerful
Many players felt the Heavy became too squishy with their reduced health and lost their tank identity
Many players expressed concern that we might lose archetype identities with these changes
Overall, when it comes to player sentiment and this feedback, there isn't a strong 'yes' in favor of making these changes to the main game just yet, but there's also not a strong 'no' against them either, which is why we want to keep exploring the idea with some additional and more refined tests.
With the feedback discussed, let's now take a look at what we learned from some of the data.
RESPEC ORDER | TEAM COHESION DATA
As stated above, the main goal of the movement speed changes was to try and improve team coordination in matches by reducing how often teams drift apart due to varying speeds.
To analyze the changes, we measured the distance between all members of the same team at key moments in a round, where we expected drift to be its worst:
10 seconds after initial spawns or team wipes
When a Vault is started by a team
When a Cashout is started by a team
At those points, we'd measure the distance between players A and B, B and C and C and A on the same team, giving us a score for approximate proximity. We could then compare those data samples from the Respec Order test with Cashout in the game the week before the test (our baseline).
The first finding we made is that the average team separation didn't really change, but that measure somewhat hides the details of what happened. When we look at team separation per team composition, it becomes clearer.
The chart above shows the average separation distance for each type of team composition before the Respec Order patch and then during it. What we see is the average separation between teams running a lot of Heavies and Lights (HHL, HLL and HML) dropped by around 3%, meaning more cohesion. This is especially important as HML is by far the most popular team composition in the game, being picked almost twice as often as the next most popular composition.
The reason the average team separation didn't go up, despite the improvements in compositions like HML, is that some of the more Heavy focused team compositions (those with no Lights) actually started to drift apart more, such as HHH where average separation increased by around 1.4%.
Overall, we see this as an improvement and a step towards the goal we had, but it is a more marginal improvement than we expected.
RESPEC ORDER | LEARNINGS FROM HEALTH AND SPEED CHANGES ON ARCHETYPES
When it comes to how usage of the different Archetypes changed with both the Health and Speed changes, we learned several things. Let's look at the individual archetypes first.
One way to appraise the changes Respec Order made is to look at how it impacted each Archetype's win rate, as well as their pick rate (or popularity). In the chart below we plot Archetype round win percentage on the Y-axis and Archetype pick rate percentage on the X-axis, with rings showing where the Archetype was prior to Respec Order and circles showing where they moved to during Respec Order.
Note in the following charts that S or Small refer to the Light Archetype, which is labelled 'Small' in some of our analytics data
What you see here is that Heavy, which for a long time has been our most winning but least popular Archetype, barely moved but did head slightly towards a more balanced win rate.
Medium, by far the most popular Archetype and with a more balanced win rate, won slightly less and also became slightly less popular, somewhat increasing Archetype diversity overall.
The biggest impact though was to Light, the Archetype that traditionally has the lowest win rate. Its win rate jumped up quite a bit, as did its pick rate, mostly at the expense of Medium.
It's worth bearing in mind here that these are just averages, and averages do hide a lot of detail. Players frequently do much better or much worse than average when it comes to Archetype win rates, so a lot of your performance on each of these still comes down to your own skill.
Generally speaking, the closer these Archetypes move towards each other on this graph while retaining their own styles, the happier we are as a dev team and the healthier, more varied and more competitive we feel the game is. So the fact that this chart shows the Archetypes trending towards each other in terms of performance is a good sign, especially given this was a very basic test without additional balance changes.
This good news gets even better when we look at the same data per team composition. The chart below plots the same Win Rate compared to Pick Rate data as above, but for each of the possible team compositions (again, S here means Light). What we want to see here is the compositions all clustering closer together, meaning they're all similarly viable in terms of winning and popular in terms of selection.
What we see here is that most compositions during Respec Order did move much closer together. Compositions involving a lot of Light players (in this case SSS, HSS, MSS etc) all increased slightly in popularity and considerably in win rates. Many of the compositions that run a lot of Heavies moved slightly down in win rate and pick rate, but not drastically.
The one outlier here is, and always has been, the HML composition as the most balanced composition. It's not critical to us that this composition is the most common — THE FINALS is about adapting and finding your own strategy, so we're always in favour of more variety in team composition, but if any composition is to be most popular we'd prefer it to be the diverse HML.
We think this trend is also good news for the game. The fact that compositions appear to have become a little more balanced and equally viable is a good thing, although we do have to view this through the lens that there were no additional supporting balance changes during this test.
It's worth noting, these are just some of the ways we measured the impact of Respec Order. We have lots of additional data relating to weapon effectiveness and use rates that we've also reviewed, but for the purposes (and length) of this blog, we want to focus on the more core findings.
RESPEC ORDER | SO WHAT’S NEXT?
Based on all the learnings described above, and everything else we've analyzed from the event, our feeling is that Respec Order is a step in the right direction for the balance of THE FINALS, but way more testing is needed, and that testing needs to be more detailed, before we could ever consider these changes reaching the main game.
So, what's next then?
As stated previously, in 10.12 Respec Order will be live again as a World Tour Stop in Cashout mode for two weeks. This time, we've made a number of additional changes to Weapons and Specializations to support the movement speed and health changes that are in the test, so this test will be more detailed and more nuanced. Details of all the Respec Order specific balance changes are listed below, including a more detailed breakdown of the speed and health changes that were live in the last test and will be live again in this one.
This will be the next test, likely not the last. If this test goes well and player sentiment is more positive, then we'll almost certainly continue to pursue these changes, but that will absolutely come with more tests before ever entering the 'main game'. If sentiment turns more negative and the community clearly doesn't like the changes, then we'll have to consider whether we should do any further tests. Either way, these changes won't suddenly jump to the main game without the community giving feedback.
So, this is your time to try a different version of THE FINALS, to play Respec Order again and to provide feedback. We hope you're happy to help and that you enjoy playing Respec Order over the next two weeks.
RESPEC ORDER | MODE-SPECIFIC PATCH NOTES
These changes are mostly focused on offsetting, or adapting to, the impacts of speed and health changes, such as weapon breakpoints that moved. They're also based on data from the first Respec Order test and how we saw the performance of certain items adjust based on the speed and health changes. In some cases, changes are also adjustments we'd like to make to the main game, but that we currently feel we can't due to the health scale.
All comparisons here are to values in the main game, not the last Respec Order changes.
Light Archetype
Attributes
Increased health from 150 to 175
Increased health regen delays from 7s to 8s
Decreased sprint forwards from 7m/s to 6.6m/s
Decreased sprint strafe from 4.6m/s to 4.4m/s
Decreased run forwards from 5.5m/s to 5.1m/s
Decreased run strafe from 4.4m/s to 4.2m/s
Decreased run backpedal from 3.8m/s to 3.7m/s
93R
Decreased damage from 25 to 24
Decreased fire rate from 210 RPM to 200 RPM
Evasive Dash
Decreased the number of charges from 3 to 2
Decreased cooldown from 7.5s to 6.5
LH1
Decreased damage from 44 to 42
Increased the damage fall-off start range from 45m to 50m
Increased the damage fall-off end range from 50m to 55m
Medium Archetype
Cerberus
Increased damage per pellet from 8 to 9
CB-01
Increased damage from 84 to 88
FAMAS
Increased damage per shot from 23 to 24
Model 1887
Increased damage per pellet from 12 to 13
Pike-556
Increased damage from 49 to 52
Heavy Archetype
Attributes
Decreased health from 350 to 325
Increased sprint forwards from 5.8m/s to 6m/s
Increased sprint strafe from 3.65m/s to 3.8m/s
Increased run forwards from 3.8m/s to 4.25m/s
Increased run strafe from 3.2m/s to 3.6m/s
Increased run backpedal from 3m/s to 3.2m/s
BFR Titan
Increased damage from 88 to 95
MGL-32
Increased max damage from 83 to 97
Increased damage at the edge of the outer blast radius from 10 to 12
SA1216
Decreased damage per pellet from 6 to 5
