For shooter fans looking for a new multiplayer shooter to binge on or those looking for an alternative to their yearly Call of Duty fix, Ubisoft might have just the thing, and it’s the upcoming fast-paced, arena shooter XDefiant.

MP1st recently had a chance to talk to the XDefiant dev team during a media session for the game’s closed beta that’s on-going now. The devs who answered our questions include Associate Game Director Scott Crisostomo and former pro player and now game dev Patrick “ACHES” Price.

• Related Reading: XDefiant Post-Launch Support: New Season Every 3 Months, and Here’s What’s to Expect

MP1st: I don’t think it’s a secret that XDefiant is targeting the Call of Duty crowd. Does the studio think there’s room for a tight, 6v6 multiplayer game that’s not battle royale? I mean, most shooters these days are going after bigger, more players and whatnot since some think that’s what gamers want. 

Scott Crisostomo: We really wanted a fast-paced arena shooter style game. We really like the 6v6 environment. It has a lot of flexibility with that. We can make sure that our environments fit well for that and our game modes fit for that number of players in those environments.

MP1st: What’s the post-launch outline looking so far? Can we expect the traditional Battle Pass and each season coming with a new map and the like? 

Scott Crisostomo: We mainly want to be talking about our close beta right now, but we will, I can say we will be having battle passes,  in our seasons in the future.

MP1st: We’ve seen other Ubisoft properties make their way into the game’s factions, has the studio considered maybe looking at other non-Ubisoft IPs to include as a faction? 

Scott Crisostomo: I can’t really comment about that right now. I can just comment about what’s in the close beta, the four factions.

MP1st: Given the current gaming landscape, what are the dev team’s plans to make XDefiant stand out from the long list of free-to-play games out there right now?

Patrick Price: Something that’s really important is the fact that this isn’t just a one and done title. This is a title that we plan to support long term and continuously add new content into the game. And I think that’s a core pillar for our title in general, is that this is something that’s gonna be supported for a long time.

Fans coming in will know that this is something that has a long-lasting aspect, whereas a lot of other titles are released and then they’re onto a new project. But, we want to focus on supporting this as long as we can.

MP1st: XDefiant has been cooking for quite some time, was it a case of being announced too soon or did the game’s vision change midway the development?

Scott Crisostomo: This game really came together when we had Mark Rubin join our team. If you don’t know who he is, he’s been a longtime producer on a really popular first-person game and so he came on board.

He really had a vision as Patrick Price just mentioned. He really wanted a product that we could keep evolving based on players’ feedback. We only wanted to make sure that we did this game justice and we did it right, and which is why we had all these things we call these insider sessions where we allowed players to kind of.see the game early rather than waiting for it. Like a pretty polished demo. Players got to see it early, they got to get feedback early and they got to see us make changes and improvements based on their feedback. This is just an ongoing process because we want this game to be great.

MP1st: Does the dev team have plans to integrate a bigger “Ground War”-like mode? 10v10 matches might be too chaotic or fun…

Scott Crisostomo: We are 6v6. I don’t want to comment on what we have for the future at this time.

We want anything that we do to be a surprise for the players. So right now we’re just going to be focusing on the Close Beta 6v6

MP1st: What specific gameplay features and/or mechanics are in XDefiant are suited for competitive play?

Patrick Price: With our factions, I think there’s a really nice team cohesion to all of our factions and kind of think about a matrix of how all these factions interact with one another. There’s a lot of counter play involved in that and I think that’s at the height of competitiveness, coming up with a strategy to defeat your opponents with, with more than just getting a kill.

I think our gunplay is topnotch. I think in any competitive title you want gunplay. that feels good to the core. We’ve had some internal testing with pro players from other titles and something that they all really like is our movement and how that kind of interacts in our  game.

Something that makes our gunplay experience just feel very rewarding when you get kills.

MP1st: Will the game run on full dedicated servers?

Ubisoft: No comment.

MP1st: How is the studio looking to combat cheaters and the regular cadence of release of programs that allow players to cheat? Is the studio also looking to block XIM users on consoles?

Scott Crisostomo: Cheating is a big problem with a lot of games, a lot of competitive games, and it’s something we’re taking very seriously. We can’t discuss exactly what it is, but just be assured that this is an issue that we’re constantly thinking about, and the various ways that we can combat cheaters in our game because we know that this will affect experience for everybody.

MP1st: Has the dev team borrowed or sought the advice of Rainbow Six Siege dev team given that its longevity is quite impressive, and how they seemingly managed to satisfy the player base enough that there’s still a healthy amount of people playing it even after eight years?

Scott Crisostomo: We do collaborate. A lot of our various studios, Not so much about our under the code mechanics and stuff like that.

But mainly for, since we’re even bringing in these different factions from all over, the Ubisoft universe, We wanted to make sure that we kind of did these characters, these factions, justice, and were in kind of lines with what players expect from those games. And so not so much technical, but we do consult and collaborate with all of our other CEOs.

MP1st: How often do you plan on doing balancing changes?

Patrick Price: We haven’t shied away from our insider sessions is how actively we have been making changes. We had all of the insider sessions last year in 2022 and, I think our players did see that, week to week or month to month.

We were actively trying to make changes. Keeping all of our factions as balanced as possible is a top priority for us. That conversation is constantly evolving. Especially as we go on, post-launch and things like that. I would say it’s a top priority that all of our factions have to play the role that we’re aiming for them too.

XDefiant has no firm release date just yet but is confirmed to be playable on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC. You can read up about the launch content available to players right here.