"XDefiant ranked is a joke": Community discusses the disparity of the new mode in Ubisoft's arena shooter

Following the introduction of Ranked Mode in XDefiant Season 1, the community has been vocal about a few severe disparities. Players have raised several issues like exploitation of spider drones, poor gun balancing, overpowered faction-specific abilities, and more. The community expects the developers to look into these matters to enhance the overall gaming experience.

In one such X post from @ProRebornYT, the user talked about the disparities in XDefiant ranked mode:

"Honestly - XDefiant ranked is a joke. Its pubs with 4v4 and a ranked system. No restrictions. Clearly rushed out. Makes me wonder if they even talked to Aches about it. Ranked is supposed to be pubs without the BS. No spider drones, no OP annoying guns, just a community/pro play-determined set of rules. I'll probably play for the rewards but there's no reason to get stressed out if they left all the noob stuff in."

One XDefiant game developer, @ACHES, disagreed with @ProRebornYT and mentioned some pros of the ranked mode. He said that players will match against “similarly skilled opponents” in the ranked mode since the casual servers feature no SBMM (Skill-based match-making) system.

Additionally, most ranked players tend to use their weapons and throwables on the battlefield, but a few spam the faction-specific abilities to ruin the overall experience for others. In light of this fiasco, ACHES explained that players in higher elos usually don’t exploit these issues and, even if they do, it’s just a part of the game.

X user @Furnaldo_, on the other hand, suggested the devs remove the spiderbots from the ranked mode and increase the number of abilities per team from one to two.

One player commenting on capping the number of abilities (Image via X)

User @iamAnder_ highlighted the poor conditioning of input-based matchmaking. They stated that being a hybrid gamer, playing with an M&K (Mouse and keyboard) is quite impossible. M&K users face a hard time competing against the controller users due to some restrictions.

They also mentioned that there should be some faction restrictions to improve the fair play in the newly introduced mode. The user said:

"As a hybrid input player, it is near impossible to compete on MnK in any ranked lobby. I have to change to controller to keep up. Additionally, playing solo will be near impossible. To your point, ranked offers very little that is different that normal pubs:"

@iamAnder_ continued:

"Maps are the same, just less players so more barren-feeling, no weapon/class set up locks where everyone performs on same weapon, all cheap factions are available to us. Ranked makes no sense. It’s just a more annoying version of pubs."

According to user @Anthonydtapia93, each ability of the factions should work differently in the ranked mode. Moreover, similar to most COD titles, the abilities must regenerate after killing a certain amount of players, making it similar to a kill streak. This will ensure that players can't exploit their overpowered abilities.

User @Xhotics provided a better solution to fix the ability exploit issue. They stated that devs must implement a ban system in ranked mode. Through this system, players can block a particular faction through a voting system. This way, the exploiters can’t spam their faction-specific overpowered abilities.

One player suggesting to introduce a ban system in XDefiant (Image via X)

---

XDefiant community discusses poor conditioning of the Ranked mode

As mentioned earlier, players have different opinions about the new XDefiant ranked mode. Most of them have expressed discontent with the current condition, while others, including ACHES (XDefiant Game Developer), think the issues gamers are raising are just a part of the game.

Some XDefiant users provided a plethora of solutions to resolve the issues. A few of these ideas even look good and can be implemented in-game. In short, developers should separate the input-based matchmaking for M&K and Controller users to keep the fair play system. Additionally, introducing a ban system can solve the faction-based ability to spam in ranked matches.

Judging from the condition, the GSK and DedSec factions look very powerful in the current patch. Hence, if they ever introduce the ban system, these two factions will most likely get the highest number of bans.

---

Check out Sportskeeda's official XDefiant page for more news, guides, and community pieces regarding Ubisoft's arena shooter.