Introduction
Welcome back to another episode of "Before You Buy," the show where we give you some straight-up gameplay and our first impressions of the latest games released. Hi folks, it's Falcon, and today on Game Ranks, skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) is the word of the day and the hook that Ubisoft is using to try to bring some attention to the newest free-to-play FPS, XDefiant. It's a word that's become increasingly controversial in online multiplayer servers, with a lot of people starting to turn on the entire concept. This game is jumping into the discourse with both barrels. The developers threw down the gauntlet with this statement, where they said in no uncertain terms, "We, the developers, believe that no SBMM is paramount to fun and a varied game experience in the long term," and said that there would be no skill-based matchmaking in the casual playlist. If you've played enough CoD or at least have been paying attention to the community lately, this is a big deal.
Gameplay Overview
Skill-based matchmaking is when a game tries to match up players of a similar skill level, which doesn't sound that bad at first glance. It just sounds like a more even playing field, but it can also be a drag where every game is repetitive, and you can tell how it's going to be decided within the first 30 seconds. Without skill-based matchmaking, XDefiant hopes to make matches that are more varied and fun for casual players. A fine idea, but unfortunately, the issues surrounding the game are more interesting than the game itself. Have you played Call of Duty? It's like that, with some pretty standard hero players thrown in.
Core Mechanics
XDefiant is a free-to-play 6v6 or 4v4 team-based arena shooter, and if you've ever played another game like this, then it's incredibly easy to jump into because it's practically the same. You've got your standard selection of guns—there are 24—but everything but the baseline weapons are locked from the start. You can slide, mantle, crouch, aim down sights and weapon mods unlock as you increase your weapon level. It's Call of Duty with a few Overwatch powers and game modes. It doesn't play as smoothly as your modern Call of Duty game, but it's serviceable, with the fast respawn times that keep you never really waiting around. The real waiting comes in the lobbies, at least for people who tried to get into the game on the first day. The server situation on day one was an absolute disaster, almost as bad as Payday 3.
Launch Issues
Here's my experience trying to get into the game: I join a lobby, wait around for a minute, and the game kicks me out. I try again and again and again. Sometimes it kicked me out within seconds; others I had to stare at the screen for minutes before it would boot me back to the title screen. But it went on like this for hours—way too long. I mean, I'm just trying to get some first impressions for the latest games released here; why make it so hard, Ubisoft? Why make it so hard? When I finally did manage to join the game, the matchmaking couldn't even fill out a full team, leading to ridiculously one-sided matches. And when the game was over in a few minutes, I'd get kicked out of the lobby and the whole process started over again. This is how it was for most of the day. Eventually, the entire Ubisoft launcher went down for an hour too. The whole thing was a mess. You'd think they'd have planned this out better for day one, but I guess not. At least by the end of the day, it seemed like the matchmaking issue was finally resolved because I was able to get into games consistently after that. But the net code remained spotty. You never really tell for certain in these games whether it's you or the game, but there are moments where it felt like my shots were just not being registered at all, and there were multiple instances of me dying around corners.
Gameplay Experience
Now, to be quite fair, it wasn't always like that. For the most part, my experience playing the game when I was actually in a match was pretty smooth. But the net code is an issue. It's a thing people complained about in the beta, and it seems to not be fully fixed. I am aware that I'm talking about the skill-based matchmaking and server issues more than the actual game, but look at the game: it's Call of Duty. That's what it is. It's not that it's bad because it's not. It's pretty fun as an off-brand Call of Duty with a more reasonable file size and minus the Activision stink. But it does have the Ubisoft stink, so I guess it's a different stink. Is that good or bad? I don't know what I want to say about that.
Faction System
To give the game its unique flair, there are currently five factions from various Ubisoft franchises. You can play as the Cleaners from The Division, who have fire-based abilities, Phantoms from Ghost Recon, Echelon from Splinter Cell, Libertad from Far Cry 6, and DedSec from Watch Dogs. The last ones are locked out unless you pay up or complete the challenge to unlock them. I will say that I do like the faction idea. Rather than having specific characters with abilities, the powers are split between these factions. So Cleaners can deploy fire drones and have a passive that gives them fire ammo. Phantoms can lay down shields and get bonus health to make them tackier—stuff like that. The powers are all mostly things you've seen in older Call of Duties or Overwatch; there's not a whole lot of creativity here. Nothing stands out except for Echelon, who gets the overpowered sonar ability that has a ridiculously short cooldown. If you want, you and everyone on your team can essentially wall-hack the whole time. I suspect there's a serious nerf incoming for this one, making the cooldown way longer.
Balance Issues
I think that's all you need in general. I don't know if I consider these powers particularly balanced though. Some come off as nearly worthless, like the Cleaners' everything and the grenades in general are annoyingly awkward to use. The Phantoms, in general, are also pretty annoying. They're heavies with deployable shields that recharge quickly in a game with many, many maps containing obvious choke points they can exploit. I did have a pretty fair amount of fun with the riot shields. Many players didn't know how to respond to them, so you get easy kills with them, but that doesn't speak to it being a balanced game that works right. It kind of feels like they're just throwing abilities in randomly to see what works. There are also ultras that you can pop if you get enough kills, but matches are generally so quick you rarely see these powers show up, which honestly I think is a positive. Play Overwatch, and you're seeing ultimates all the time, and it gets kind of annoying there. A lot of these ultras don't seem that strong as is, so they're probably more of a novelty than a game-changer, and I don't know how worthwhile that is.
Character and Weapon Design
I like the factions. I think some of these characters have pretty cool designs, but they're missing so much of the identity of their franchises. All the guns are just generic expected weapons. There's an M16, AK-47, MP4, and a completely worthless shotgun, which—I like shotguns. That's what I use in these games. I don't care if they're a little underpowered in a game, but worthless like this? It pisses me off. But there's all the usual equipment, and nothing stands out. For a game that's borrowing so much from the Black Ops games, they could have thrown in some wacky guns to give the game some personality. There are some goofy makeshift weapons in Far Cry 6 or the 3D-printed guns in Watch Dogs. They could have thrown in the Gremlin from Ghost Recon, and the SC20K rifle from Splinter Cell. I mean, there's a lot of stuff specific to the franchises included in this game that could have been fun, even as skins. But it's just a bunch of boring, obvious guns that appear in every other FPS game ever.
Map Design
If I can give the game one positive, though, it's the maps. They remind me of Black Ops 2 in a good way. They're big, colorful, and visually interesting. There's a good selection of them. It takes a while before you start seeing the same map in rotation. They're all pretty fun to play in, and they're fairly flat overall. There are a few vertical maps, but only a few. I think for this type of gameplay, the flat maps work better, and they leaned into that rather than the other way around. Good choice. Most of the maps are taken in some way from one of the factions, so there are Division maps, Far Cry maps, and Watch Dogs maps, among others. But those are what stand out most to me. There's a level set on the Noodle campus from Watch Dogs 2, which is a great setting for a multiplayer level. They're pretty well designed too and closely follow the Treyarch three-lane map style. Compared to how sloppy some of the maps got in Modern Warfare 1 and 2, the new ones I mean, this is a breath of fresh air.
Game Modes
The actual game modes aren't anything new, but again, they work well enough. There's no Team Deathmatch in the casual playlist, so you're always playing some kind of objective game, either escorting a robot across the map or holding objectives in various configurations. Like with everything in XDefiant, it's not spectacular, but it works. It was all right. It wasn't great, but it was fine. That's pretty much XDefiant overall. It feels like a game I've already played several times before, and it's not doing anything to try and stand out besides the no matchmaking, which is kind of insane because it's a Ubisoft All-Star shooter more or less. If they did take the time to build around the factions a little bit more and lean into them, it could not only be good but it would even familiarize people with more Ubisoft franchises who could just come in knowing about one or not even knowing about any of them. Done right, this is a brilliant advertisement for all of Ubisoft's games, but it's not quite there.
Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) Discussion
Also, the no skill-based matchmaking stuff I don't think it's that incredible of a selling point. It doesn't make this game an easygoing experience free of the annoying tryhard players of Call of Duty. There are plenty of sweat lords here. Just as many people are sliding, bunny-hopping, and twitching around here as you'd see in any other arena shooter. The promise of no skill-based matchmaking doesn't seem to suddenly make this a casual paradise or anything. If anything, the game is more difficult for super casual players because of the less aggressive auto-aim. I think it's an improvement. The auto-aim in games like The Finals and CoD is a little out of control. If anyone knows me, I love The Finals, but if there's one criticism, it's probably that. I think XDefiant is kind of responding to the criticisms of those games because, on the controller, you do have to aim if you want to hit something in this game. At close range, the auto-aim is pretty sticky, but at medium and long ranges, you're practically on your own. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but compared to these other games with really forgiving auto-aim, it feels like night and day, even if it's not necessarily you being on your own. But the game runs well and feels smooth to play outside the net code issues, which it should because it doesn't just play a lot like Black Ops 2, it looks a lot like it too. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. I think the art style and general colorful aesthetic do make the game look pretty nice at times, but this isn't a system-melting visual tour de force. It's a free-to-play multiplayer shooter that Ubisoft wants on as many devices as possible, so at least it runs well.
Monetization
But speaking of free-to-play, what do the microtransactions look like? Well, honestly, they could be worse. Ubisoft promised the microtransactions were going to be cosmetic only, and I think that's mostly true, at least from what I've seen. There's also these stupid experience boosters that are in a lot of free-to-play games, so that's the one ding on that. But man, if you tried to use one of these things when the game launched, you might as well flush it down the digital toilet. There's a preseason battle pass, which—what else do I need to say about that? It's your usual battle pass crap: skins, emotes, and other worthless junk you can grind for if you want it. Most of the stuff you'd want is unlocked separately from the battle pass, including the DedSec faction if you're willing to grind for it. For me, it's not the worst monetization I've ever seen. It's pretty standard at this point. This doesn't make free-to-play monetization good or anything, but there's nothing super egregious here. And at this point, you can play the game pretty smoothly without spending any money.
Overall Impressions
So, XDefiant is not a bad alternative to Call of Duty. You can leave this thing installed on your system, and it doesn't take up half your hard drive, which is an automatic plus. But I just don't think it does enough to make itself stand out. There's no real hook here, no big standout game mode or interesting feature that makes somebody stand up and take notice. When the most exciting thing that people can say about this game is that there's no skill-based matchmaking, that's not something that's going to grab a casual audience. Do you think casual players are talking about matchmaking types? Not generally, no, they aren't. For the people who care about stuff like that, yeah, XDefiant's fun, but it's derivative. And I don't mean it in the Palworld way, where even though you can tell where everything came from and why they included it, it doesn't do something that feels different. Palworld did, despite being very derivative, and there's a reason why everybody played it. I don't see that happening here. Also, Ubisoft is pretty famous for giving up on games. You might hope that this game becomes a Rainbow Six Siege, but that game kind of started with a unique hook and went from there. XDefiant just doesn't. It's old-school Cod, and you can still play a lot of those games now, and there are still better ones than this.
Conclusion
Also, for all the talk about no skill-based matchmaking, there is still skill-based matchmaking. The welcome playlist has it, and I'm not mad about it or anything. It's just kind of funny because that's the whole thing they're selling this game on. You get what I'm saying. It's one of those games where it's very, very middling, and I feel like I don't have a lot of negative to say about it, but I am not excited to play more of it. That's all for today. Leave us a comment, and let us know what you think. And as always, we thank you very much for reading this blog. I'm Zaid Ikram. We'll see you next time right here on Speed Tool.
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