XDefiant Reveals New Update With Patch Notes

Ubisoft’s XDefiant had a troubled development cycle, to say the least. The free-to-play shooter was originally scheduled to launch last year, but various development difficulties pushed that launch back to May 21st. Once it was out in the wild, XDefiant performed well, clearing 1 million unique players within its first few hours on the market. Of course, that massive player count also meant that Ubisoft had several server issues it had to iron out. Thankfully, many of those issues have been addressed, and the team can now focus on new content updates, like tomorrow’s Y1S1.3 patch.

The newest XDefiant patch doesn’t technically go live until July 31st, but Ubisoft went ahead and shared its contents with fans a day early. The new patch includes several substantial tweaks, including a few ranked modes tweaks. Now, ranked matches won’t start if your game doesn’t have at least eight players. Plus, Ubisoft has dropped the “Leave” button from the map-voting screen to hopefully discourage players from dropping out. The XDefiant team has also given several weapons another pass, most notably adding several updates to shotgun balancing. 

Below, you’ll find the full patch notes for the Y1S1.3 Update. XDefiant is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/s, and PC.

XDefiant Y1S1.3 Patch Notes

Gameplay

XP Boosters will no longer count down when you’re killing time in the Practice Zone.

Increased vertical ADS sensitivity for controllers so that aiming up and down is more consistent with aiming left and right.

Game Modes

Tweaked the Ranked mode pre-game. Ranked matches now won’t start with less than 8 players. The Leave button has also been nixed from the map-voting screen to discourage players from dropping out (and Ranked matches will cancel if players manage to skedaddle during map voting).

CTF mode is now available in Ranked play.

Factions

Echelon’s Intel Suit now only reveals enemies through walls for the player wearing it. Allies will still see enemy locations on the minimap, though.

DedSec’s spiderbots were shocking target players before leaping on their faces, which wasn’t winning them fans. Now they only zap targets at the face-hugging stage of the relationship.

Weapons

The Rapid Fire Barrel and Muzzle Booster attachments were causing less recoil on some weapons (such as the ACR 6.8, and AK-47) when they were supposed to cause more recoil. That’s fixed.

Reduced the MP7’s magazine capacity from 35 to 30 and its rate of fire from 875 to 850 rounds per minute.  

Updated the old iron sights that were appearing on certain LVOA-C cosmetic skins.

It’s an extravaganza of shotgun balancing. Here’s the nitty-gritty of each weapon’s tuning:

• M870

  • Short range increased from 10m to 13m.
  • Medium range increased from 15m to 18m.
  • Sprint Out Time (sprint-to-shoot time) reduced from 250ms to 200ms.
  • Hipfire spread range reduced roughly 10 percent from 3.4-4.0 to 3.0-3.6 degrees.
  • Aim spread range reduced roughly 18 percent from 2.55-3.0 to 2.0-2.6 degrees.
  • Crouch hipfire spread range reduced from 2.89-3.4 to 2.7-3.2 degrees.
  • Crouch aim spread range reduced from 2.55-3.0 to 2.0-2.6 degrees.
  • Crouch slide, in air, and mantle hipfire spread reduced by 40 percent from 9.0-13.5 to 5.0-9.0 degrees.
  • Crouch slide, in air, and mantle aim spread range reduced from 3.4-3.4 to 2.5-3.0 degrees.

• AA-12

  • Short range increased from 7m to 10m.
  • Medium range increased from 10m to 13m.
  • Hipfire spread range reduced roughly 10 percent from 4.75-6.5 to 4.25-6.0 degrees.
  • Aim spread range reduced roughly 13 percent from 2.81-4.13 to 2.5-3.5 degrees.
  • Crouch hipfire spread range reduced from 4.04-5.53 to 3.5-5.0 degrees.
  • Crouch aim spread range reduced from 2.82-4.13 to 2.5-3.5 degrees.
  • Crouch slide, in air, and mantle hipfire spread reduced by 40 percent from 11.25-15.0 to 8.0-12.0 degrees.
  • Crouch slide, in air, and mantle aim spread range reduced from 3.75-3.75 to 3.0-3.5 degrees.  

• Double Barrel

  • Short range increased from 12m to 15m.
  • Medium range increased from 16m to 19m.
  • Reserve ammo increased from 12 to 16.
  • Crouch slide, in air, and mantle spread reduced by 40 percent from 11.13-15 to 7-11 degrees.

• Sawed-Off Shotgun

  • Reserve ammo increased from 6 to 10.
  • Sprint-to-shoot time reduced from 250ms to 150ms.
  • Crouch slide, in air, and mantle spread reduced by 40 percent, from 11.25-15.0 to 6.68-9.0 degrees.

The Pistol Grip and PEQ-15 Laser attachments for shotguns also had their spread Min/Max bonus reduced from 20 to 15 percent.

Finally, all shotgun reticle blooms (visualized by the vertical and horizontal hash marks of the HUD reticule) are now enlarged slightly while leaping.

Devices

Sticky grenades now stay put rather than disappearing if the deploying player kicks the bucket.

Miscellaneous

The cursor no longer shifts to the main display when playing on a second monitor in fullscreen mode with the “lock mouse to game window” option turned on.

Fixed an issue preventing players’ kill/death ratio from updating properly after completing matches.