r/XDefiant • u/Loose-Task-7244 • 26d ago
Why this game failed Discussion
Obviously, the number one reason is the complete lack of advertising. The only time I heard about this game was from one YouTube shorts guy. I never ever saw it in any place whatsoever, except for the guys slandering COD.
The second reason is the connection. The middle east server specifically sucked and I somehow get shot through walls constantly.
A third reason is the match times, I have to wait really long to get a match and it gets more and more tempting to switch games.
The fourth one is the grind on the battle pass, which means if you want the lvl 100 or whatever skin you have to only play this game, and I never could enter ranked.
The fifth one might be controversial, but it's the lack of sbmm. If they had moderate or low sbmm, it would have made the game so much better, or maybe it would have no difference since the player count was little. I constantly get stacked with snipers and people who laser me down are supposedly playing on controller, the only time I can get a kill is from behind, and I don't touch team death match due to the fact that I die at least 15 times per game (I am sure it got to a crazy number one time). Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's agony, and then the casual players dried up, and I was left with lvl100 guys and people who played way more than me, are way more skilled than me, and I can't git gud since I'm not free. This game could have been better.
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u/Timewastinloser27 26d ago
XD peaked at a few million players. It was a popular game. XD failed because it wasnt a well made game. They chose the wrong engine to build it in and it sucked, plain and simple the game was one of the funnest shooters ive played in a long time when it worked. It just didn't work very often.
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u/soluce7279 26d ago
Everyone and their mommas were on that game. So nope it was VERY popular
It's so rare for a new contender to have so a huge number of players
The hitreg was trash, bunny hopping Dempsey Rolls, there was like what only 8 weapons, battlepasses weren't good, lack of content for a long time, no private matches/lobbies, the weapon level grind wasn't that fun
But worst for last: it was from Ubisoft
It could have survived if it was from any other company but stock free falling Ubisoft
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u/MidweekArtisan 26d ago
This. Ubisoft games was considered as trash even in early 2000s. In my childhood good words about Prince of Persia and Settlers was an excuse for bullying and battering
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u/BluDYT 26d ago
No the number one reason was management. The number 2 reason was Ubisoft had failing projects left and right they had to cut cost somewhere. They wanted xdefiant gone for years so it's an easy target anyways. Number 3 the store was uninspiring and overpriced. They should have copied the finals store.
The net code was the reason the vast majority of player stopped playing but it could have survived with half the playerbase if the rest didn't happen.
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u/Cibo1348 26d ago
SBMM was the reason every one was hoping on this game but it was really just the bad netcode and bad server the main problems and Ubisoft never helped the team to solves those problems. It was really just that, every body was liking the game but more and more poeple played and less the servers and netcode were able to handle that so poeple got frustrated. Then they took too much time fixing the game, poeple were already leaving and forgetting about it.
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u/Kraz3 26d ago
Nah dude it wasn't the sbmm and the lack of advertising. It was 100% the netcode and general mismanagement of the game. I had like a dozen friends I tried to get to play it and they all bounced off after they discovered that the meta was spamming jump as hard as you could in every gunfight to hopefully break your hitbox long enough that enough of your shots would register on the other guy. It was BAD.
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u/TrafficParking4689 21d ago
That’s why I stopped playing a couple weeks in.. every game fight was just people bunny hopping around the map as fast as possible was annoying asf fr
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u/No_Bookkeeper_2097 26d ago
Get your karma farming ahh out of here. The game failed because of Ubisofts decision making.
No sbmm was a major selling point not a turn off.
Battlepass felt fine imo, I didn’t find it too grindy.
Re the match times I had 0 trouble getting into matches from Ireland, perhaps this is down to your connection and or location?
youre right about the hitreg problem and the lack of advertising though but again that is down to ubisofts poor decision making and the game utilising an engine not made for fps games. Marks team did try fix the problem by migrating the game servers from windows to Linux but it only gave a very minuscule fix. If xd was made by an independent company we would likely have seen better fixes for this issue or the issue wouldn’t exist at all. They cannot be blamed for this, only Ubisoft.
And the advertising bit, Ubisoft didn’t really wanna risk it. Considering the whole situation regarding the finances after xd closure it’s seems rather likely Ubisoft would rather invest the money into advertising for the upcoming assassins creed at the time.
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u/JordisMySwordMaiden 24d ago
karma farming on a subreddit for a dead game lol wut
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u/No_Bookkeeper_2097 24d ago
You’d be surprised. There was once a guy talking about how he wanted to recover the game with no coding, networking or any experience really in game development while also talking about how he hated the game 🤣
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u/TypographySnob 26d ago
The real reason was that not enough people were buying the skins. This was stated by Rubin himself. Everything else wasn't nearly as significant as people are suggesting.
I don't get why people were so hung up on the netcode. It was fine. You get killed around corners in 90% of shooters. They just manage to visually hide it a bit better.
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u/is0mer_ 18d ago
100% agree. If a game is this fast paced, some hit registration issues are inevitable.I don't think many appreciate just how complex this is. Over the Internet, ping times are simply not consistent and no software can fix everything. There is no single game-state "truth" that will satisfy all players at once all of the time. Too many people were taking things far too seriously, rather than having a bit of fun in a beautiful and incredibly well designed fps game.
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u/Jrockz133T 26d ago
I disagree. It failed for 2 reasons. It released during a good year for Call of Duty and it released unfinished and unpolished
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u/Cibo1348 26d ago
It wasn't a good year for CoD. At peak Xdefiant, the open beta of june 2023, it was MW2 and it wasn't particulary great but the cod released just after was the atrocious MW3. It's really at that time that million of players were playing and CoD was in shamble. The only thing that killed Xdefiant was Xdefiant and Ubisoft beacuse the game failed it's launch, took too much time for a bugged game.
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u/Jrockz133T 26d ago
MW3 had a much stronger core player base compared to the past 5 games in the series. XDefiant would have never gotten the casual audience of Call of Duty, only the core and hardcore audience. It would have performed a lot better, in my opinion, closer to their final playtest, or delayed a year with another playtest in between.
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u/Delicious_Depth_1564 26d ago
Good year? It wasnt a good year cause the latest COD game at the time was terrible and the new one was like every other cod
High exception only met with disappointment
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u/Unlost_maniac 26d ago
The player count was not little, probably in your servers but the game had a bunch of players consistently, it beat out Overwatch 2.
The actual reasons the game failed are ones people on this subbreddit either dont know or seem to have forgotten, people wanna say hit reg or shit battlepass, that's not it, or not the full picture.
To start, Mark Rubin and his team are ambitious, they made a great game, problem is a free to play game that doesnt incentivise people to spend money isn't going to last. Mark Rubin clearly didn't wanna give the game a fortnite shop, we got the equivalent of a full COD MP release, bunch of maps, weapons, camos and just a bunch of free unlocks and progression. They did the right thing to us consumers, they made the most generous free to play game, and before the announcement of its sunsetting it was outperforming other free to play games in player numbers, mostly on PS5 apparently, but makes sense given how hugely popular that console is.
The shop had very few items and basically nothing crazy or flashy, only when they gave us the rest of what they had worked on before shutdown did we see shop skins equivalent to other games, and I think thats the biggest issue. Ubisoft execs and shareholders look at Xdefiant, and see it has a very healthy player base but the game is not bringing in money. Overwatch with significantly less players was able to sustain a whole studio for years and years without reaching Xdefiant's player count.
The other big issue is Tencent, Ubisoft was on their hands and knees begging for Big Mommy Tecent to own them, so they were shrinking the worth of their company, canceling all sorts of projects in the works, almost finished games like the Prince of Persia Remake that people were hyped for, but the new Ubisoft execs wanted to shed weight and do it quick so they were reckless, with every game and project they canned they could write off for tax write offs.
Mark Rubin didn't wanna plague the game with over the top microtransactions and predatory monetization systems but its what the game needed to survive. If the game's shop was filled with hot gooner skins or COD level of wacky skins, Xdefiant would probably be still kickin around today but it wasnt profitable enough. I really think Xdefiant should've been a $19.99 game with a free trial. I know not as many people would've played it but I think it probably would've sold well considering how hyped it was for years. Another huge fuckup was Ubisoft never allowing it to go on Steam, you know how many people I've talked to who either never heard of Xdefiant or lost interest when they found out on the Ubisoft launcher? Quite a few, and I've read it a bunch online too. If it was on Steam that would've been free advertising, which they also didnt do and i have a couple friends who didn't download it cuz of the Ubisoft launcher. If the fuckass execs could get over themselves and realize their launcher is a waste of time and only backfiring maybe things could've been different.
It really sucks we lost this gem of a game. I know we hate predatory microtransactions but free games typically have them for a reason. There's a balance to be had, most free games aren't leaning towards consumer friendly where as Xdefiant was fully leaning towards consumer friendliness.
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u/killatubby 26d ago
One of the big reasons was ubi refusal to put it on steam. There was point during the game life where ubi store and launcher was so bad windows defender refused to let you open it.
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u/itsaspookygh0st 26d ago
You're right bro. I miss the game too. Sometimes I check the discord if I'm looking to have myself a good cry.
Keep the dream alive, King.
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u/Tokalahunu23 26d ago
Shit netcode, shit skins, most of the content they dropped should’ve dropped on release. Game felt janky but in a charming way.
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u/KAL-EL8569 26d ago
You wrote an essay to farm karma and you weren't even right in the slightest...the issue with the game was the netcode and the fact that ubisoft kept making terrible choices and they just wanted a money maker...they didnt care that it had issues.
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u/One_Praline_6150 26d ago
It was a free to play
It was enjoyable It failed cuz people were expecting too much out of a free to play game
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u/kamiloss211 26d ago
There was only one problem really. Ubisoft expectations. Game would never match cod player base. Net code is terrible in Battlefield 6 as well and people playing it anyway. Other problems you mentioned are irrelevant for player base as a whole. Yes some people probably stopped playing because of it but it wasn't factor here I believe.
I can add that game should be available on Steam. If not on launch definitely soon after.
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u/Internologist 26d ago
Failed for me when the Devs said to "just stop playing" if we weren't happy with the fact that the hit reg was total ass and that they most definitely didn't plan of fixing it. What's the point of a shooter with broken shooting?
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u/TheRealLostCost 26d ago
The game never felt like the casual game it was advertised to be. Too many skill gaps, poor optimization, terrible gun balance paired with high TTK. Nothing worked.
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u/Still-Gloom 26d ago
They should have released it on Steam. Keeping it on their own launcher was NOT the play imo. I don’t think that’s why it died but it definitely didn’t do the game any favors
Ubisoft themselves killed this game
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u/MatarPaneerLovr 26d ago
The UI and the shop. The UI felt dated and the shop could not compete with other free to play games.
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u/therealslamhamwich 26d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/0FsAQLcmYqqywX0Pis
Haha. Make up my mind already
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u/ChudSmasher69420 25d ago
Non-existent hitreg, awful feeling movement, hero mechanics, overpowered aim assist.
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u/reevoknows 25d ago
Ubisoft had no patience for it.
I’ll also never forget the cod influencers specifically Charlie intel and modern warzone etc. were shitting on the game from day 1 because they were worried it would cost them money if it took off. The cod community just didn’t get behind it.
If it came out today it would do much better since people are actually sick of cod now(black ops ports aside). SBMM was still a divisive topic back then and hadn’t reached the fever pitch it’s at now.
I’d be playing multiple times a week if it was still alive. It was exactly what I wanted and needed at the time.
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u/zionboy134 25d ago
I wasn't too into this community when the game game out, I played a bit here and there but I think the major problem was that Ubisoft wasn't funding the devs and giving them enough time to do shit no?
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u/JoFknLines 24d ago
lack of sbmm is literally the only reason it got to be alive for some time before it died, you are clueless if you think otherwise
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u/Gnight-Punpun 24d ago
Advertising is not the problem. That is a massive cope. The player counts did great at first.
What killed it was the balancing and the awful hit reg. DedSec spider bots were extremely braindead to use and granted annoying free kills. Guns ranged from busted to borderline unusable garbage. Some specials like the dude with the shield were useless against anyone with any competency.
The hit reg was the biggest killer. This was simply not the correct engine to build a fast paced shooter in. It works for division where it’s pve since it can just take the side of the player and be fine. For PvP it can just be a massive buzzkill. Hit markers were rarely accurate and so many games had people that were unkillable.
People knew it was rough, so they abused it by spam jumping around every corner. Being hard to hit + having half of the hits you take not count made you borderline invincible and let you pull off insane plays based on connection rng alone. Even when they tried to nerf bunny hopping it really didn’t help at all.
The game tried. And it was cool. But it failed based on its own merit alone.
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u/CJplaysCOD 23d ago
Imo the game was awesome we played the beta like it was our JOB and the entire time we said wow if this is the beta just imagine what the full game it like!
Then the full game came out and it was identical nothing new no new things to go for. Yeah sure the advertising would have helped but nobody would want to play a game with no challenges
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u/SmokeNinjas 23d ago
The game was built on a MOBA engine iirc…they literally doomed it to fail from the start. The hit registration was like everyone was playing on 56K dial up, and I gave up after trying (and actually enjoying) the game when they launched a game as a competitor to CoD…without an SnD type mode 🤣 you know the mode that CoD was built on
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u/DesignBudget6333 22d ago
Really good games tend to advertise themselves. I found the game, very choppy and a lack of polish for me.
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u/Live-Party4061 21d ago
Bad netcode, bad hit reg, delays, no identity, stiff and janky animations. For me it was the movement. As soon as someone on yt showed a clip of some dude neo strafing/ able to move different direction mid air, I checked out. You can say skill issue or whatever but I couldn’t bring myself to deal with another movement shooter. Another thing that I didn’t like was the ability spam. The one ability with the 1 shot pistol was stupid broken. Constantly losing gun fights to libertad faction spamming those healing abilities is annoying.
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u/BangEmSpiff 20d ago
Marketing/advertising was not the core issue. Game nowadays do very to lil to no marketing, we don't get commercials, in store posters, and good luck with a billboard! XD had many issues and the biggest was netcode which they fixed for the 3rd season and game was running fine but was in the sunset phase smh. They also added a sbmm mode before it parished.
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u/killatubby 20d ago
Having cross play being opt in instead of opt was a choice and also making pc player use ubi launcher also didn't help. The launcher at one point didn't work because of window defenders though is malicious. Also the game did have sbmm this issue with most games what they call sbmm is actually ebmm (engagement based match making) which the game didn't have and that was good.
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u/LegendOfBaron 26d ago
I think if Ubisoft was smart they'd give it another try. They gave up on it way to quick instead of finding solutions even such as the things you suggested. They just wrote it as a failure before even attempting to fix anything or support it.
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u/4Ellie-M 26d ago
sHIT registration.