XDefiant is the most promising competitor to Call of Duty alongside The Finals. In one respect, however, it deliberately takes a different approach

It’s an up and down game with XDefiant While many skeptics initially only smiled wearily at Ubisoft’s CoD competitor, the multiplayer shooter developed into a real hot potato in the latest betas: fast movement, great maps, handy gunplay – many CoD veterans cheered XDefiant from all sides.

Then the big drop in October 2023: XDefiant would be postponed indefinitely, major problems had surfaced during the beta.

But now – at the beginning of January 2024 – the next high is looming: XDefiant is starting the new year with some pretty interesting news.

No SBMM in XDefiant?

XDefiant’s Executive Producer Mark Rubin has already reported back on January 3, 2024 (with an update on the state of the shooter).

According to Rubin, development is progressing rapidly, the biggest netcode problem from the last beta has already been fixed, the new cross-play party system is in its final stages and, and, and.

The most exciting information can be found in the small print: XDefiant is doing away with the controversial SBMM of a Call of Duty – at least in regular multiplayer. Translated literally by Mark Rubin:

No SBMM in normal playlists. We have a welcome playlist for newcomers under level 25 with an SBMM, but all other playlists will not have it. Ranked mode, however, will have SBMM

Mark Rubin, Executive Producer of XDefiant

Will have SBMM?

– Conversión Momentánea (@Introcex) January 3, 2024

What does SBMM mean? Skill-based matchmaking is one of the biggest bones of contention in the shooter community.

The idea is to let equally good players compete with and against each other on the basis of various parameters in order to create lobbies that are as fair and less frustrating as possible

In practice, SBMM that is too strict leads to tediously uniform games, poor connections or dubious mixes of matchmaking and profit-making, as Call of Duty has been accused of for several years.

XDefiant is blowing the horn of many critics who would also like to see a separation between casual playlists without SBMM and ranked playlists with SBMM in Call of Duty. XDefiant does just that

Battlefield 2042, for example, shows that multiplayer shooters can also work without overly strict SBMM, where the games sort together a fairly balanced range between professional and beginner lobbies.

According to Rubin, 2024 should be a good year for XDefiant, although he did not comment further on the specific release of the Free2Play shooter. We will of course keep you up to date on this. That’s what we get paid for

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