XDefiant Season 1 Release Date and Updates
XDefiant's long-awaited first season is right around the corner. We've got you covered with everything you need to know.
Release Date
Year 1 Season 1 of XDefiant is going live July 2 at 6am PST/ 9am EST. There are 2 hours of expected server downtime leading up to the patch going live.
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Patch Notes
This article will discuss the most important and significant changes being made going into Season 1. For a comprehensive list of ALL changes, you can view the full patch notes on Ubisoft's website here.
Non-Gameplay Changes:
- Battle pass XP from tier-to-tier has been lowered to allow for battle pass progression to feel faster.
- Match XP has been altered to reward less for being the match MVP and more for completing the match. This is to encourage all players to keep playing rather than just the best players.
- They listened to the community and added a headshot icon to the killfeed because "it feels good to rub it in."
- Added Creator Codes (function the same as creator codes in all other games).
- Players can no longer make and join parties with players on the other team during the match.
- No more whispers in text chat.
- Tweaked audio mixing for in-game voices and sound effects.
- Players who played in closed beta will get Kersey's Dungaree skin that they were supposed to have kept.
- Fixed Ubisoft Connect challenge-tracking.
- General performance fixes.
Gameplay Changes:
Factions:
- NEW FACTION: GSK: Coming from Team Rainbow, these German special forces operators specialize in crowd control and securing areas. They feature electrified barbed wire (inspired from Bandit), Jaeger's ADS for coutner incoming enemy devices, and flash charges on a riot shield Ultra (inspired by Blitz). There doesn't seem to be much IQ inspiration, though that makes sense given her gadget likely wouldn't work well in a game as fast paced as XDefiant.
- They nerfed the Mag Barrier by decreasing its hit points from 500 to 400 and increasing its cooldown by 10 seconds from 30 to 40.
- Phantoms' Ultra "AEGIS" now takes damage from EMP granades. (It will take 6 total to completely destroy it).
- The DedSec Spiderbot has been both buffed and nerfed. Multiple SpiderBots will no longer go for the same target or ignore people it recently facehugged. However, its cooldown was also increased from 25 to 40 seconds.
Maps and Game Modes:
- Clubhouse is the new map being added. Inspired by the Rainbow Six Siege map. It's not one-to-one the same map. It's been tweaked slightly in ways to make it fit an arcade shooter better but it is basically the same map, which is cool.
- Capture the Flag (CTF) has been added.
Weapons and Devices:
- Flinch while being shot is seeing a variety of tweaks to make it more consistent and easier to play around.
- New weapon- L115 sniper rifle. Should fill the niche between the basic sniper and the TAC-50.
- New weapon- LVOA-C assault rifle. It's basically an M4A1 with more recoil, less range, but a faster fire rate.
- New weapon- Sawed Off shotgun. This is a secondary weapon that likely serves as a moderately worse version as the Double-Barreled Shotgun primary weapon.
- New mastery skins: Titanium VIolet (Weapon Level 300), Titanium Azure (Weapon Level 350), and Titanium Prisma (Weapon Level 400).
- New visual effect for the flash grenades
- Fixed an exploit that allowed players to have multiple devices
There you have it. That's everything you need to know about what to expect in XDefiant's upcoming inaugural season. The preseason event has proven to be successful and allowed Ubisoft to get the game into the hands of players and while ironing out some of the issues behind the scenes and the game is now (mostly) ready to hit its seasonal structure in stride.
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