The Finals brings a fresh twist to the team-based FPS genre, offering dynamic virtual arenas and innovative gameplay mechanics. With so many ways to play, no two matches ever feel the same — whether you’re running and gunning, demolishing entire sections of the map, or sneaking through with a katana.
But no matter how you play, one thing never changes: connection issues suck. It doesn't matter how skilful or mechanical you are as a player, lag, high ping or packet loss can completely ruin your gameplay experience and lead to you and your team unnecessarily losing games.
This is where we come, the Netduma team have created this blog to help fix your connection issues in The Finals. In this blog we'll cover a range of tips and show you how to completely eliminate lag, high ping and packet loss in The Finals.
The Finals Server Status
Before we start changing your network setup or settings, the first thing to check if you suddenly start to lag is the server status. If The Finals game servers are experiencing issues or underperforming it may negatively affect your gameplay.
Unfortuntely, there's no official way to check if The Finals servers are down or experiencing issue. The best places we've found to check are The Finals Reddit, X account or Discord server.
If the servers are experiencing issues, there's no direct fix for it. It'll be down to the game developers to fix or update them for connections to return to normal.
If the servers are running normally and you're still lagging, then keep reading this blog to fix all connection issues in the Finals.
In-Game Settings
The Finals has a useful setting called Preferred Region which can be found under Gameplay and then General. This setting allows you to choose a region of servers across the world to play on.
This is an important setting as your in-game ping is calculated based on the game server your connect to. The greater the physical distance between you and the game server you connect to, the higher your ping will be.
This should be set to Automatic by default, which should allocate you to the best region for your location, but its worth checking if you are experiencing high ping in The Finals.
Its worth mentioning some regions will have multiple servers within them, so depending on where you live in a region you may still experience high ping when connecting to a far away server within the region. We have the ultimate solution to connecting to the best The Finals servers later on in this blog.
Use a Wired Connection
The quickest and easiest change you can make to drastically improve your connection in The Finals, or any online game, is switching to a wired ethernet connection.
Wi-Fi is incredibly convenient to get devices connected to your router, but its not ideal for a gaming connection. This is because Wi-Fi can suffer from interference and reduced signal strength, especially if it has to travel through walls or doors to reach your gaming device.
These Wi-Fi issues will cause ping spikes and packet loss in online games which can completely ruin your gameplay. A ethernet cable on the other hand provides a faster and more importantly stable connection between your router and gaming device.
Running a long cable across your home might not be possible, so you could look into Powerline Adapters which use your home electrical wiring to carry a wired connection, providing a stable connection without a wire.
How to get the Best Connection in The Finals
If the servers aren't experiencing issues and you're playing over a wired connection but still experiencing lag in The Finals, it might be time for a more serious solution. Introducing the Netduma R3 gaming router, the ultimate tool to optimising your connection in The Finals. Its powerful features can resolve high ping, packet loss and an unstable connection.
Fix High Ping in The Finals
Its quite hard to know what your ping is in The Finals as there's no way to display this statistic in game unfortunately. You'll definitely feel it when playing on a high ping though, your movement and inputs will feel sluggish and you'll be at a huge disadvantage.
The Geo-Filter feature on the Netduma R3 eliminates high ping in The Finals. It works by creating a customisable filter radius around your location that blocks connection to servers outside of it.
You can use another R3 feature - Ping Heatmap, to find the locations and connection quality of The Finals servers. Then with this information you can adjust your Geo-Filter to only include the best servers.
The side menu of the Geo-Filter will also show you your ping in real time when playing The Finals, so you won't need to guess anymore.
If you want to learn more about the Geo-Filter, or see the feature in action check out the video below:
Fix Ping Spikes in The Finals
With all of the chaos in The Finals, an unstable connection can make it hard to keep up. Constant changes in your ping, otherwise know as jitter can make you out of sync with the game server and cause your gameplay to feel unresponsive.
The Steady Ping feature on the R3 removes jitter from your connection and stabilises your ping for more fluid gameplay. Steady Ping automatically stabilises your ping when using the Geo-Filter so you'll be able to enjoy a low ping and stable connection.
The default Simple Mode does all of the work for you, but if you want to tinker with settings to find the sweet spot for your connection you can try Expert Mode.
Fix Packet Loss in The Finals
Last but not least, congestion on your network may be causing your connection issues. If you game on a busy network full of bandwidth heavy activity like streaming and downloading it can cause ping spikes and packet loss.
SmartBOOST on the Netduma R3 eliminates congestion across your whole network but managing your bandwidth between prioritised and non-prioritised traffic. This ensures important activities like gaming always get the optimal amount, but larger activities like streaming can't take more than they need.
As every device and applications only receives the amount of bandwidth they need, this removes congestion and stops bufferbloat from occurring on your network. This means your gaming experience will always stay fast and stable, no matter how busy your network is.
If you want to see SmartBOOST in action, check out our live demonstration of a busy network being optimised below: