Battle passes are one of the most controversial aspects of modern gaming, with seemingly every live-service title having a BP to grind through with each update. It’s a constant demand of the player’s time that makes playing multiple live-service games at a time a difficult juggling act – though it’s hard to say that’s not the entire point. PS5 and Xbox FPS hit The Finals is no different. After crunching the numbers for ourselves, we discovered The Finals battle pass will take you a staggering 59 days to finish if you complete every challenge, with little time to spare.
The Finals is exceptionally refreshing for the multiplayer FPS genre on PS5 and Xbox, quickly becoming one of the best FPS games and best multiplayer games thanks to its remarkable destructive environments and blazingly fast gameplay. However, its battle pass system is lagging behind, with many players – including ourselves – finding progression through its 96 levels to be too slow. Frustrated at how slow we seemed to be chipping away at The Finals’ battle pass, we decided to do some maths.
The main way to level up the battle pass is to complete daily and weekly challenges known as Contracts, though completing (especially winning) a match does reward a small amount of XP. Daily Contracts can reward you upwards of 12,000 XP per day if you complete all five and earn the bonus 6,000 XP, which is no small feat. As for Weekly Contracts, these can give you up to 20,000 XP per week if you complete every challenge. All in all, completing every daily and weekly challenge for a single week will give you 104,000 XP out of the 864,000 required to reach level 96. Yes, that means just over two months of grinding to finish the battle pass.
Completing each and every challenge is already a hard ask, resulting in you having to play with classes and playstyles you don’t necessarily want to for multiple matches each day, but to make matters worse, you’ve only got 96 days to complete it. This is an issue that Overwatch 2 ran into at launch before changes were made, with players raising concerns over slow battle pass progression heavily linked to completing bland challenges (at best) that got in the way of the fun.
Nevertheless, with almost all your battle pass XP coming from daily and weekly challenges, rather than playing matches, there’s also no way to catch up for missed days or weeks in The Finals – you can’t simply rush through matches to make up for missed daily challenges. Why does this matter? Well, it means if you take a break or join a season halfway through, you’re unlikely to be able to complete the battle pass in its entirety, making it a tough sell for new players.
While most players will likely complete the battle pass in time by regularly completing challenges and winning matches, it will be a close call for many players who don’t play nearly every day or simply struggle to complete the daily and weekly challenges in time.
Unlike other live-service games like Destiny 2, Fortnite, or Overwatch 2, The Finals lacks seasonal challenges that offer simple long-term challenges but oodles of XP in return. In other games, these typically task you with playing a certain number of matches, dealing damage, or earning a set amount of objective score across the full span of the season. These are a great way for latecomers to catch up just by playing the game, making up for the loss of daily challenge or even weekly challenge XP in other games. Paired with the low amounts of end-of-match XP and even challenge XP rewards, leveling up The Finals’ battle pass is undoubtedly a long-term goal and somewhat of a slog for many players.
This has already been met with frustration online. One player notes that they “wanna support the game but [slow battle pass progression] makes [them] less likely to buy the next pass if it feels impossible to complete”, a sentiment echoed by other players who are considering skipping the next battle pass out of fear of not finishing it in time, or the grind simply taking away from the fun. It doesn’t help that The Finals’ battle pass also offers up a lot of lackluster items, including a lot of stickers, that make leveling it up feel rather unrewarding outside of the big-ticket rewards.
The one positive, however, is that those with the premium pass will earn enough currency to be able to buy the next battle pass before even reaching the final level. As a result, buying a single pass and getting two-thirds into it can keep you going without worrying about wasting real money.
If The Finals wants to cement itself as one of the best games of all time, then making a satisfying progression system is paramount. With The Finals feeling like the first truly next-gen FPS on PS5 and Xbox, we’re hoping changes are made to speed up the process, or at least give players more opportunities to gain battle pass XP that eases up the pressure of playing every day just to tick a box. In the meantime, find out all the secret ways to demolish The Finals’ maps. If you’re looking for a leg-up to win more matches (and thus some sweet, sweet bonus XP), then we recommend checking out the best PS5 controllers and best Xbox controllers out there.