XDefiant, Ubisoft’s latest free-to-play game, has had a thoroughly successful launch. However, some frustrating elements remain that should be addressed soon.
Despite a visibly chaotic development and first few hours, XDefiant has recovered quite well. Ubisoft’s latest free game seems to have found its audience. Despite all this, the multi-FPS is far from flawless. Some of these particularly frustrating issues should be fixed soon.
An upcoming update to keep XDefiant on its good path
If we can believe the rumors behind the scenes at XDefiant, this would be a long shot. Launching an FPS on the borders of giants like Call of Duty is a particularly risky bet. However, it seems that Ubisoft’s plan has worked and the release has even exceeded expectations. However, not everything is perfect. Matchmaking and netcode, among other things, are experiencing problems, the balancing leaves a lot to be desired and, unfortunately, players tend to abuse certain mechanics in abusive ways.
Ubisoft San Francisco will therefore have to react quickly on several fronts to keep XDefiant on its promising momentum. One of its developers wanted to reassure players on X.com. One thing in particular seems to be frustrating the community: spamming jumps and crouching. This seems to give players who abuse these mechanics a big advantage, so the studio is considering penalizing such abuse. Another issue related to the difference in vertical recoil between aiming and aimed fire is on the priority list and needs to be fixed as soon as possible. Hopefully broader issues like netcode will also be fixed as soon as possible.
With these urgent items in need of correction ruled out, Ubisoft still faces the difficult task of maintaining interest in XDefiant in the long term. The San Francisco office presented a fairly extensive program with four upcoming seasons and many new products. Will all this be enough for Ubisoft’s free-to-play game to compete against other major FPS games like Call of Duty? Only time will tell.
