XDefiant Devs Discuss Movement, Game Balance, and Maps

• XDefiant launched to positive reviews and large player numbers.
• Ubisoft addresses hit registration and desyncing issues.
• Team uses data and feedback for updates and balancing.
• Bunny hopping mechanics are being tweaked for balance.
• Maps in XDefiant receive high praise from fans and critics.

Ubisoft's XDefiant: A New Contender in the FPS Arena

As the dust settled on a hectic and messy launch, I got the chance to talk with FPS XDefiant's executive producer Mark Rubin and creative director Safy Saada about the free-to-play Call of Duty-like's first few weeks.

We discussed how the Ubisoft team balances the game, the all-important bunny hopping, creating good maps, and the future for the live-service game.

Launch and Initial Reception

XDefiant launched last month to mostly positive reviews and large player numbers.

Since then, the game has received a handful of updates as the live-service journey begins, and XDefiant evolves and changes over the coming months and years.

Rubin explained to Streamers Visuals that Ubisoft had tried to keep the game pretty low-key and grassroots.

The idea was to build a game and a dedicated community of players at the same time. However, the massive influx of new players and eyeballs since launch isn’t a bad thing.

This tells us that gamers are genuinely interested in what we’re doing and are enjoying the fun gameplay that we’ve created, explained Rubin.

How Ubisoft Plans to Fix and Balance XDefiant

While many people have hopped into Ubisoft's new F2P shooter, there have been some complaints from players about hit registration issues and desyncing problems.

Basically, players are sharing clips of being killed behind a wall because, on the other player's screen, they hadn’t made it to safety yet. Or they’re sharing videos of players being shot but not taking damage as you would expect.

Rubin acknowledged these issues and stated, "We’ve had a great launch so far, but it has come with some issues. We own that and we’re not trying to hide from it."

This is the first FPS powered by the Snowdrop engine, which requires a lot of work to reconfigure. There are growing pains, but in a good way for this team.

Rubin further added that as a live game, the real work is just beginning, and they absolutely will continue to fix, tune, and improve every part of XDefiant.

Updating XDefiant: Philosophy and Approach

With millions of players yelling online about problems, balance, and changes, I wondered what Ubisoft's philosophy was for updating XDefiant and possibly changing its meta with a patch.

Creative director Safy Saada explained that the team waits long enough to get plenty of data and then combines that with player feedback.

As XDefiant evolves, we will keep fine-tuning the game, said Saada. We know we’ll always have an evolving meta, and that’s a key element for this type of game.

Every time the team adds something new, like a faction or weapon, they’ll probably have to rebalance existing content. The creative director confirmed with Streamers Visuals that Ubisoft plans to use private test servers in the future to ensure its first iteration of a change is as balanced as possible.

Bunny Hopping in XDefiant

One hot topic among the player base right now is bunny hopping in XDefiant. This is the act of players hopping up and down in different directions in firefights.

At launch, players complained it was too easy to bunny hop and get kills. In a recent patch, Ubisoft added some aiming accuracy penalties to bunny hopping. But many players are still not happy about the current jumping meta.

Rubin confirmed to Streamers Visuals that they won’t be nerfing bunny hopping into the ground. However, the team is still tweaking movement and the hops.

Our intent was to always have XDefiant be a skilled FPS with good, clean-feeling movement that’s not overly complex but is fun to master, said Rubin.

Making XDefiant's Fan-Favorite Maps

The game’s various maps are one area of XDefiant that has received near-universal praise from fans and critics alike.

While a couple of them aren’t as great as the rest, the majority of XDefiant's 14 maps are fantastic, rivaling the maps found in many other popular shooters.

Saada says he and the team are super happy about how XDefiant’s maps have been so well received by the community.

According to the creative director, the maps in XDefiant are one of the game’s key pillars.

The team always tries to start simple and really wanted to go back to the original three-lane maps found in older Call of Duty games and similar shooters of the era.

In the game’s next season, starting on July 2, Clubhouse from Rainbow Six Siege will be added to XDefiant.

While that Ubisoft tactical shooter is known for its destructible environments, XDefiant can’t match that kind of gameplay. However, Ubisoft still found a way to celebrate the game and its destruction.

The Challenges of Making Something Like XDefiant

A lot of work goes into developing, launching, and then maintaining an online video game.

Saada thinks players know more today than 20 years ago about how complicated these games are to develop.

Even the team, made up of experienced devs, didn’t quite realize the amount of work involved with a game like XDefiant until they actually started to make it.

While making a game like this takes a lot of time and energy, it’s also a very fascinating process.

To start with just an idea and work all the way to the point where it gets in the hands of players and then making that idea evolve while experiencing it with the players, it’s a fascinating process, said Saada.

XDefiant is out now on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Its new season starts on July 1.

We also spoke to Ubisoft about how it picks which factions to add to XDefiant and if the panda dancer from Just Dance will arrive in the FPS one day.