The so called Call of Duty killer has been killed.
XDefiant was touted by Ubisoft as their response to Call of Duty, the dominant first person shooter franchise for several decades. Many have tried but all have failed to take down the gaming giant. There have, of course, been popular contenders that have never gone away including the Halo franchise, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor, but Call of Duty always comes out on top. When XDefiant was announced, many were ecstatic to see another company, especially a gaming giant, try and beat Call of Duty at its own game.
Where did it all go wrong?
XDefiant was not a bad game. It wasn’t an amazing game, but it wasn’t a bad game either. I have a solid fifty or so hours in the game and I usually enjoyed it. The gunplay was pretty solid, the different game types brought a diverse experience to each match, and the ability system was fun to use. However, there were some issues that I believe caused the game to be unable to retain a playerbase.
The first of these issues were problems with the game play that simply did not get fixed quick enough. My biggest issue with the game was bunny hopping. Every operator was able to leap at least five feet into the air over and over again making them very difficult to shoot. If another player had mastered this tactic, they would always kill those who didn’t. It took months for this issue to be addressed, and it was still a problem even after they made it much harder to do successfully by adding a lot of weapon sway after the first two jumps. Personally, I think jumping just shouldn’t be in the majority of first person multiplayer shooters.
The next problem with the game play was how slow it took to level up anything. Leveling up your player, weapon, and battle pass levels took forever. It took so long that, in my fifty hours of playing, I only got one gun up to the maximum level. There also was very little reward for leveling up guns. Every gun unlocked the exact same attachments and camos, for the most part, in the exact same order. This made the leveling system fairly boring unless you paid for the battle pass. That brings me to my next issue.
The game was free. Companies need to stop doing this. Not every game is going to achieve Fortnite level success from a free to play format and a battle pass. Fortnite was released as a free to play game because it was marketed to children that don’t have any money. The optional battle pass that can be purchased costs less than the average game nowadays, so making the game free to play, then betting on kids begging their parents for the battle pass or stealing their mom’s credit card to buy it, was a financially smart move for their target audience. XDefiant’s target audience was not children. Their target audience was adults that already played Call of Duty and were frustrated with it to the point of looking for a new option.
Adults have money. Adults can purchase a full priced game. Adults are perfectly willing to purchase a game at full price, but the game has to be worth the price tag. If XDefiant was priced at seventy dollars, would it have been worth it? Absolutely not. If it was priced at forty dollars, would it have been worth it? Yes. It seems as if many gaming companies have forgotten that spending one’s hard earned money then makes them invested in the game even if it feels obligatory at times. Even if they priced the game at forty dollars, significantly less than the industry standard, it would have been far more profitable.
XDefiant’s battle pass was only seven dollars. That’s it. Why didn’t more people buy it, then? All things considered, it adds almost nothing to the experience. Do I really care that much about seeing the hands of my operator be a different color or have different gloves while I’m focusing on shooting enemies? Not really. Do I care about the way my gun looks? Sometimes, but I care much more if I’ve completed a task to achieve that cosmetic look like a particular challenge. Do I care about a little charm on the side of my gun or an emblem? Not much, especially when they’re all boring. I imagine many other players felt the same.
XDefiant is one more example of the free to play model failing. Many players would rather pay for a great game than get an okay game for free. Hopefully, Ubisoft will learn their lesson.
Did you enjoy XDefiant? What do you think killed it? Let me know!