Ubisoft’s XDefiant is an upcoming free-to-play first person arena shooter that, if I’m being honest, I didn’t originally feel interested in at all. I had no real connection to any of the factions from different Ubisoft games showcased in XDefiant, and the gameplay didn’t capture my interest. However, I got to play for about an hour in a closed preview event and I was surprised to find that I was wanting to get more playtime in after the servers closed down.
An hour isn’t really a lot of time to give a full preview in any game, so this is just a first impressions piece I wanted to share with you all. I had actually played XDefiant in 2021 with one of Ubisoft’s extremely NDA-ed closed tests, and this was a huge change up from that iteration. It’s a great sign to see that Ubisoft has taken feedback seriously and made some major changes.
In my opinion, XDefiant really didn’t have a sense of identity when the first closed test opened. I couldn’t figure out what the game was trying to do or how the game was supposed to feel. There was no real guidance on how to play the game or who the characters were. But loading into XDefiant now, there’s more structure to it.
Let’s start with Factions. There’s no story or narrative on why these agents from each Faction are in XDefiant. In speaking with Safy Saada, Creative Director, I was told that there’s no underlying story or reasoning for these characters being in XDefiant. They were merely inspirations.
Each Faction is really just like selecting a class with different Abilities and Ultras (ultimates). There were five Factions available in this closed beta and I detailed their abilities and class-specific traits below:
Each Faction has their own traits and abilities to make them stand out and be more viable in a team composition. There are six people on each team and there’s no limit on how many people can be from one Faction. I honestly found myself playing predominantly as The Division’s Cleaners or Splinter Cell’s Echelon.
The flamethrower Ultra that Cleaners have was incredibly strong, and by that I mean you barely had to touch an enemy’s hitbox to insta-kill them. Also, the flamethrower’s time to use let you get in quite a few kills before the Ultra was used up. Additionally, the incendiary rounds passive Cleaners have were equally as oppressive and overpowered. If you had an SMG you could basically run half your mag into an enemy and let the fire damage over time do its thing and watch your enemies desperately try to run away only to die around the corner due to the damage over time effect.
Echelon made it so my hitbox was incredibly small and I could run around in my invisible suit and pop in and out to kill enemies by surprise. I mostly bounced between these two Factions since they felt the most overpowered, but each Faction really had its own balance issues. The Libertad’s healing abilities nearly instantly healed me and my teammates and it was impossible to try and kill anyone standing in the area of effect healing because of how effective the rate of healing was.
There’s definitely a need for some heavy tuning and balance adjustments with the Factions and their abilities. Yes, XDefiant felt fun in that hour of playtime I got, but I could easily see how frustrating things could get if one team just absolutely rolled the other from being made up of all Cleaners. I think maybe limiting how many Factions are allowed to be in a team (like one Libertad and up to two of the other Factions) would be helpful, especially since each Faction seems to serve a specific team role.
But I liked that none of the Factions were limited to a specific weapon loadout. You can make loadouts that can then be selected by any Faction when you enter a match. The time to kill (TTK) was extremely fast and reminded me of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. The SMG and Shotguns were incredibly overpowered, not even with the Cleaners’ additional passive abilities. Thus, any faster rate of fire weapons and immediate burst weapons were the best to use in matches.
The shotgun, meanwhile, was basically a one-hit kill and SMGS barely needed to run through a full mag before shredding an opponent. Again, some aggressive balancing here will help the future of XDefiant, but I will say the gunplay and movement felt so much better in this game than Hyper Scape, which was Ubisoft’s other recent attempt at a free-to-play multiplayer shooter.
XDefiant unsurprisingly has game modes similar to Overwatch and Call of Duty, but the mix kept matches from feeling stagnant. The game modes included in the beta included Domination, Occupy, Escort, and Zone Control. I kept getting Domination and Zone Control so I can’t speak on the other game modes, but those two felt incredibly fast paced and fun. Even when I was getting killed repeatedly and trying to run back to defend a point, I found myself giggling every time I would sneak up on an enemy to take them by surprise before taking out their other teammates and securing a point for my team.
But it’s not enough for a multiplayer game to be fun these days. There are only so many hours in the day, so not every game can survive and thrive. So when I asked how this game would be supported as a live-service game, since I experienced a hefty laundry list of weapons, abilities, and mechanics that needed to be rebalanced, Saada explained that they built XDefiant to have a flexible code which would make future changes and updates easier to implement.
This was pretty huge for me since one of my main games is Apex Legends and one of the consistent issues throughout the seasons there have been audio bugs. Oftentimes there are no audio cues on abilities, weapons, or footsteps and that has been a huge problem with Apex. Respawn has stated that they’re not able to just fix things immediately because the code would break from the two years they’ve spent updating the game so it’s more complicated than pushing a simple fix.
So hearing Ubisoft specify that they are building XDefiant to be flexible with updates and changes is incredibly relieving, especially since I wasn’t a huge fan of how they handled Hyper Scape, a game I reviewed and specified had a huge potential but wasn’t updated fast enough to actually survive past a month of its release. I feel very hopeful for XDefiant as it shows a lot of signs that Ubisoft has learned from its past mistakes of launching an FPS game that just did not resonate with the current standard for FPS games.
Again, it’s not perfect and definitely requires a lot of major and fine tuning. But the core gameplay is there and it’s fun. There’s another Closed Beta happening on the 13th and I’ll be playing more then to see if changes have been made and how updates feel, but I’m genuinely feeling optimistic about the trajectory of XDefiant.
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An hour isn’t really a lot of time to give a full preview in any game, so this is just a first impressions piece I wanted to share with you all. I had actually played XDefiant in 2021 with one of Ubisoft’s extremely NDA-ed closed tests, and this was a huge change up from that iteration. It’s a great sign to see that Ubisoft has taken feedback seriously and made some major changes.
In my opinion, XDefiant really didn’t have a sense of identity when the first closed test opened. I couldn’t figure out what the game was trying to do or how the game was supposed to feel. There was no real guidance on how to play the game or who the characters were. But loading into XDefiant now, there’s more structure to it.
Factions
Let’s start with Factions. There’s no story or narrative on why these agents from each Faction are in XDefiant. In speaking with Safy Saada, Creative Director, I was told that there’s no underlying story or reasoning for these characters being in XDefiant. They were merely inspirations.
Each Faction is really just like selecting a class with different Abilities and Ultras (ultimates). There were five Factions available in this closed beta and I detailed their abilities and class-specific traits below:
- Cleaners: Origin - Tom Clancy’s The Division.
- Passive:
- Incendiary Rounds: Weapons inflict extra burn damage over time but decreases the weapon range
- Abilities:
- Incinerator Drone: Napalm-Delivering drone burns everything in its flightpath
- Firebomb: Throw a Molotov cocktail causing explosive damage and lighting the area with fire
- Ultra
- Bring out a flamethrower that incinerates enemies
- Passive:
- Dedsec: Origin - Watchdogs 2
- Passive:
- Fabricator: After a device is deployed, your Fabricator prints a new one
- Abilities:
- Hijack: Hack enemy-deployed abilities and make them yours
- Spiderbot: Deploy a Spiderbot that will target and stun the nearest enemy
- Ultra:
- Lockout: Deploy an EMP that prevents enemies from using their Abilities and Ultras in the radius of the Lockout
- Passive:
- Echelon: Origin - Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
- Passive:
- Low Profile: Your character does not appear on the enemy’s minimap
- Abilities:
- Digital Ghillie Suit: Turn invisible when not shooting your weapon
- Intel Suit: Periodic sonar waves reveal where enemies are around you
- Ultra:
- Sonar Goggles: Activates your sonar goggles to see through walls and allows you to deploy Sam Fischer’s 5.7 pistol to eliminate enemies
- Passive:
- Libertad: Origin - Far Cry 6
- Passive:
- Espiritu de Libertad: You slowly heal over time and heal nearby enemies over time as well
- Abilities:
- BioVida Boost: You regen health and boost the total amount of health for you and nearby enemies in a specific radius
- El Remedio: Throw a gas canister that heals friendlies until it’s destroyed or out of fuel
- Ultra:
- Medico Supremo: Your Medico backpack provides a large health and healing boost for a limited time
- Passive:
- Phantoms: Origin - Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Phantoms
- Passive
- Hardened: Health increased
- Abilities
- Mag Barrier: Deploy an electromagnetic barrier that blocks incoming enemy fire and grenades while letting you shoot through it
- Blitz Shield: Equip a tactical shield that lets you shield bash with melee
- Ultra
- Aegis: Deploy a spherical plasma shield that moves with you and equips you with an electro shotgun
- Passive
Each Faction has their own traits and abilities to make them stand out and be more viable in a team composition. There are six people on each team and there’s no limit on how many people can be from one Faction. I honestly found myself playing predominantly as The Division’s Cleaners or Splinter Cell’s Echelon.
The flamethrower Ultra that Cleaners have was incredibly strong, and by that I mean you barely had to touch an enemy’s hitbox to insta-kill them. Also, the flamethrower’s time to use let you get in quite a few kills before the Ultra was used up. Additionally, the incendiary rounds passive Cleaners have were equally as oppressive and overpowered. If you had an SMG you could basically run half your mag into an enemy and let the fire damage over time do its thing and watch your enemies desperately try to run away only to die around the corner due to the damage over time effect.
Echelon made it so my hitbox was incredibly small and I could run around in my invisible suit and pop in and out to kill enemies by surprise. I mostly bounced between these two Factions since they felt the most overpowered, but each Faction really had its own balance issues. The Libertad’s healing abilities nearly instantly healed me and my teammates and it was impossible to try and kill anyone standing in the area of effect healing because of how effective the rate of healing was.
There’s definitely a need for some heavy tuning and balance adjustments with the Factions and their abilities. Yes, XDefiant felt fun in that hour of playtime I got, but I could easily see how frustrating things could get if one team just absolutely rolled the other from being made up of all Cleaners. I think maybe limiting how many Factions are allowed to be in a team (like one Libertad and up to two of the other Factions) would be helpful, especially since each Faction seems to serve a specific team role.
Weapons
But I liked that none of the Factions were limited to a specific weapon loadout. You can make loadouts that can then be selected by any Faction when you enter a match. The time to kill (TTK) was extremely fast and reminded me of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. The SMG and Shotguns were incredibly overpowered, not even with the Cleaners’ additional passive abilities. Thus, any faster rate of fire weapons and immediate burst weapons were the best to use in matches.
The shotgun, meanwhile, was basically a one-hit kill and SMGS barely needed to run through a full mag before shredding an opponent. Again, some aggressive balancing here will help the future of XDefiant, but I will say the gunplay and movement felt so much better in this game than Hyper Scape, which was Ubisoft’s other recent attempt at a free-to-play multiplayer shooter.
XDefiant unsurprisingly has game modes similar to Overwatch and Call of Duty, but the mix kept matches from feeling stagnant. The game modes included in the beta included Domination, Occupy, Escort, and Zone Control. I kept getting Domination and Zone Control so I can’t speak on the other game modes, but those two felt incredibly fast paced and fun. Even when I was getting killed repeatedly and trying to run back to defend a point, I found myself giggling every time I would sneak up on an enemy to take them by surprise before taking out their other teammates and securing a point for my team.
Live Service
But it’s not enough for a multiplayer game to be fun these days. There are only so many hours in the day, so not every game can survive and thrive. So when I asked how this game would be supported as a live-service game, since I experienced a hefty laundry list of weapons, abilities, and mechanics that needed to be rebalanced, Saada explained that they built XDefiant to have a flexible code which would make future changes and updates easier to implement.
This was pretty huge for me since one of my main games is Apex Legends and one of the consistent issues throughout the seasons there have been audio bugs. Oftentimes there are no audio cues on abilities, weapons, or footsteps and that has been a huge problem with Apex. Respawn has stated that they’re not able to just fix things immediately because the code would break from the two years they’ve spent updating the game so it’s more complicated than pushing a simple fix.
So hearing Ubisoft specify that they are building XDefiant to be flexible with updates and changes is incredibly relieving, especially since I wasn’t a huge fan of how they handled Hyper Scape, a game I reviewed and specified had a huge potential but wasn’t updated fast enough to actually survive past a month of its release. I feel very hopeful for XDefiant as it shows a lot of signs that Ubisoft has learned from its past mistakes of launching an FPS game that just did not resonate with the current standard for FPS games.
Again, it’s not perfect and definitely requires a lot of major and fine tuning. But the core gameplay is there and it’s fun. There’s another Closed Beta happening on the 13th and I’ll be playing more then to see if changes have been made and how updates feel, but I’m genuinely feeling optimistic about the trajectory of XDefiant.
Continue reading...
