The closed beta for XDefiant has come and gone.
Hundreds of thousands watched on Twitch, thousands played, and Ubisoft got a ton of valuable feedback and data.
After a week of playing, here's the main takeaway:
XDefiant is surprisingly in a unique spot to succeed but it needs to make these changes.
Let's be real honest, if XDefiant wasn't free-to-play, no one would bother buying it — we have Call of Duty for our online arcade-arena shooter.
Love it or hate it, Call of Duty will always be king.
But can you answer this? Name one current, popular, and free-to-play arcade-arena shooter that doesn't prioritize heroes.
Every popular arcade shooter is a battle royale. And the arcade arena shooter market, specifically, is dominated by Overwatch. But that's all about hero abilities.
XDefiant prioritizes gunplay — the heroes' specials are an afterthought.
XDefiant is basically a free-to-play, small-player count, Call of Duty experience being made by a competent AAA developer.
There's nothing else like it in the FPS market. But that won't be enough.
If XDefiant just launches with more content and bug fixes, it won't last long.
Think about it this way, if Black Ops II got a 1-to-1 remaster in today's market, it wouldn't be the banger everyone assumes.
The market and player base has evolved and moved on from that experience.
And that's what XDefiant currently feels like — a barebones, decades-old arcade shooter. It's a fun, but very shallow experience.
Ubisoft is going to have to make 3 fundamental changes to XDefiant to create a meatier free-to-play product with staying power.
The movement in XDefiant is good — I'm sure you've seen the "movement king" videos floating around.
It looks and feels great from your point of view, but from everyone else's, it's impossible to consistently hit high-movement players.
Ubisoft can go one of two ways.
I don't think anyone wants them to nerf anything. Movement has become one of the expected skill gaps in modern arcade shooters.
Instead, they need to make the transitions between hopping, sliding, and strafing look more fluid from the spectator's perspective.
Apex Legends handles complex transitions perfectly.
If Ubisoft can smoothen everything out in this game, it's going to be like butter to play.
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