XDefiant Q&A – Executive Producer Talks About Nailing Controls, Adding Input-Based Matchmaking

Following the unsuccessful attempts in the Battle Royale first-person shooter genre with Hyper Scape, Ubisoft has now turned its attention to fast-paced arcade shooters with the upcoming XDefiant.

The game held a successful Closed Beta test a couple of months ago. At the Ubisoft Forward event aired earlier this week, Executive Producer Mark Rubin from Ubisoft San Francisco went on stage to say that XDefiant would launch later in the Summer.

However, an Open Session across all platforms will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X between June 21st and 23rd. This new build of the game will feature the improved netcode and controller tuning made by the developers after the last Closed Beta.

Rubin also discussed what the live service would be like. There’ll be a six-week pre-Season, followed by four Seasons during the first year of service. Each Season will add a new faction, three new weapons, and three new maps to the game.

Shortly after the end of Ubisoft Forward, Mark Rubin was available for a one-on-one interview to discuss XDefiant’s present and future. You can find the whole transcript below.

XDefiant has been in beta testing for quite a while. What are the main pillars of feedback that you’ve gotten from the community on this title?

Early on, the main things were what we call the three Cs: controls, character, and camera. So it’s about getting the controls feeling good, getting the controls feeling right. That has been the number one pillar that we have been working on. To us, the absolutely most important thing was that any arcade shooter person should be able to pick up a controller or a mouse and keyboard and feel right at home. That was super important. We haven’t made a first-person shooter in this engine before, so it was very important to get that right. And I think Closed Beta, for the most part, nailed them. We did have a bug with DualSense controllers, they were a bit broken in a way, but that will be fixed in the new test next week.

But yeah, that’s been the biggest pillar to take away was getting that right. After that, it’s really about sort of the gameplay speed and experience. A lot of what we’ve been doing over the timeframe of the insider sessions and all the testing is figuring out, getting the right speed, getting the right TTK, the time to kill. Like, getting all that just tuned in really well. Again, looking at the feedback we got from Closed Beta, it feels like we’ve nailed that well, too.

In terms of controls, how do you keep controller players on par with those using a keyboard and mouse in XDefiant?

Well, what we do or we will be doing when we launch is input-based matchmaking. If you’re on a controller, you’re going to play against other controller players. It doesn’t matter what platform you’re on. You could be on PC. You could be on PS5, Xbox, doesn’t matter, but controllers will play against controllers. Mouse and keyboard guys, even on a console which we want to add support for later, and they’ll match make with other players with mouse and keyboard.

That’s part one. There’s always this great war within the FPS genre. It’s like, which is cheating, right? Controller players feel that mouse and keyboard players are cheating because they can just put the mouse cursor on the heads and click buttons, and then the mouse and keyboard players are all like ‘Aim Assist!’, right? That’s the argument. We’ve done, I think, a really good job of, I think surprising a lot of people, of finding a good balance there.

All of our beta tests are mixed. As I said, input-based matchmaking is coming to XDefiant for launch, but in our tests, we’re mixing them together. We’re finding that no one’s floating to the top. That’s part one. Part two is, on Aim Assist, one of the things that’s been a hot topic in the community… And again, we are always listening to the community, even when it’s not about our game.  There has been a lot of stuff around Aim Assist on Call of Duty in particular, but other shooters, too, of how much Aim Assist there is and how it’s almost aiming for you.

I’ll be honest. What we decided was, we’re going with a very light, minimal amount of Aim Assist compared to games like Call of Duty. I think you’ll find that the two are more on par now. They have strengths like, give me a sniper rifle, Okay, mouse and keyboard is a little bit stronger with that. But close in, with an SMG, a controller is a little bit stronger, so they have their strengths and weaknesses, but we hope that they are pretty balanced. But we also hope that they don’t have to necessarily worry about it because they’re going to be matchmade with their same input.

Rainbow Six Siege has some technology to detect if someone is trying to mask using a keyboard and mouse as a controller. Are you guys using any of that technology in XDefiant?

Not their specific technology. It’s a different engine, but we do have our own sort of version. It is not as robust as theirs, mainly because we don’t have to. Their particular setup is a little different. They don’t have Aim Assist on controllers, so a mouse and keyboard person in a controller match, it’s like a shark in a pool of kids. It’s not necessarily fair. So, their thing is more like an anti-cheat in a way.

For XDefiant, we’re just input matchmaking. We allow for the inputs to mix under certain situations. For example, if you’re in a remote region and we can’t get you a good ping match, we will mix your inputs if necessary. If you party up, I can be using mouse and keyboard and you can be using a controller, and we can still party up. We can play and we’ll get into matches normally. What we’ll do is we’ll prioritise mouse and keyboard matches but it’ll still be mixed. We’re trying to do our best to answer all those questions with the best mature answer we can. I say that because the fights can get pretty immature at times. I think trying to keep it as rational and mature as possible, that has been our best bet.

With XDefiant, do you have support for some of the DualSense-specific features, whether it’s the haptic feedback or the adaptive triggers?

Not yet. Since you mentioned the haptic stuff, that’s something that we want to do, but it’s on the roadmap to do a little bit later after launch. This is a live game. We’re not making a game, shipping it, and then going off to work on something else. This is similar in a way to Rainbow Six Siege. They’re going on year eight, right? For us, it’s that same mentality, we want to have a long life for the game. We have a lot of features that we’ve already scheduled far past launch that are not necessary for a launch. But I think our quality of life improvements throughout the game and throughout the life of the project will, again, keep XDefiant fresh and new feeling and adding new features and adding new stuff on a pretty continual basis to hopefully have a game that lasts a long time.

Speaking of longevity, support for Hyper Scape only lasted about three seasons. The title itself lasted somewhere between 18 to 24 months. What assurances do you have for the fans that XDefiant will see a longer cycle than that?

I don’t really know anything about Hyper Scape’s launch. I’m actually kind of new to Ubisoft, too. I came in just to start this game, so I actually don’t know the things that Hyper Scape had to go through or went through. I think what we’ve done, to answer that question without referring to Hyper Scape, a lot of what we’ve done is all of those 28 tests for two years now. People have been playing this game for years. A lot of that is to build up that knowledge of how we engage our players over a long period. The truth is, if they come, the game will be great. If nobody comes, then yeah, then the game won’t last. But I think, as hopefully you’ve seen from the Closed Beta, the responses, and the feedback, we have a really positive momentum in the community.

I’m feeling really good about our opportunity to have a robust long-term replacement for people who want an arcade shooter.

If players have a Ubisoft Connect account, can they carry over their progression from one platform to the other when playing XDefiant?

Yes!

I did want to circle back on the DualSense question. If a player wants to use that same controller on PC, when you implement those features for the PlayStation 5 version with the adapted triggers, will the PC version also support those features?

It’s a good question. I honestly don’t know. That’s the honest answer.

Something I wanted to note is that players aren’t necessarily getting matchmade with PC players, and console players aren’t necessarily getting matchmade with console players. It’s a very complex system where we input match make.

Also, since it’s a first-party requirement, console players can turn off crossplay if they want to.We open it and say, Ok, you can do whatever you want. We’re going to matchmake you based on input, so it doesn’t matter if you are playing on PC or PS5, it’ll be fair. But you can turn off the crossplay if you want to.

Would your team be open to developing a mobile client for XDefiant in the future?

I can’t talk about it. Would we be open? I mean, if the game is popular, why not?

Fortnite took a few years to get there, but they pretty much have cross-progression across just about every platform, including mobile consoles and PC.

Yeah. Trust me, I’m envious of what they’ve done. They’ve done an amazing job with their platform. Can we do that? I don’t know. That’s a good question.

Do we follow the Fortnite route, or do we follow the Call of Duty route? I don’t know which way we would go.

Do you have plans in the future for collaboration content with other Ubisoft titles for XDefiant?

That’s the whole point of the game. The point of the game is to be Smash Brothers of FPS but with Ubisoft IPs. So any Ubisoft title has an opportunity to get into this game and I think you’ll start seeing that once the game launches and once we start putting out some content.

Sometimes it will be in a faction, sometimes, it will just be in a map. Maybe sometimes it’ll be skins or cosmetics. But somehow, almost every, if not every Ubisoft IP will make it into the game.

I would love to see Rayman represented as a player character, but getting rid of those elbow hitboxes might make it a little unbalanced for tournaments. 

*Laughs* If we had a special mode with everybody’s a Rayman, maybe that works.

Alright. When are you planning to launch XDefiant?

The honest answer is, as we’ve kind of said to the community on the lower levels, when the game is ready, we will ship. That’s why during the Ubisoft Forward presentation I said we’re planning on launching this Summer. When exactly depends honestly on next week. If next week’s open beta goes well, then that becomes sooner. If there’s stuff that we find that we’re like, no, we need to fix these things, then it’s going to be a little bit longer. It’s the best thing for the players. Everybody wants a date. I get it. Trust me, all I get on Twitter is constantly ‘When’s it coming out?’

They want to know when they have to take time off work.

I feel that pain. I totally understand it. But yeah, we’re gonna ship when it’s ready.

Thank you for your time.