XDefiant Weapon Mastery Camos to Require Less Grind Based on Feedback, Devs Owe Up to Mistake
In a patch earlier this week, Ubisoft San Francisco changed how fast weapon attachments were unlocked, though at the expense of weapon mastery camos now taking way longer to obtain. While Executive Producer Mark Rubin’s explanation on this chang seemed to make sense, it seems it wasn’t a popular move, as the devs will be reverting it and then some in the next title update.
This was announced via the official XDefiant Twitter account, where it also shared some of the upcoming changes incoming in the next patch.
Upcoming patch sneak peak (timing TBD):
👂Feedback on mastery changes is heard- will now take half as long to earn a rank
🐛Fix audio bug where kill confirmation is missing
🚶Fix bug where you can only move and nothing else pic.twitter.com/6jpQVLXUkd— XDefiant (@PlayXDefiant) June 21, 2024
Not only that, but Rubin went to Twitter once again to explain why these changes are being made again. While we’ve embedded the tweet, we’ve also included the entire text below to save readers from having to jump to another app just to read what was relayed.
Hey All,
We have been listening to players about the changes to progression. So, for those with a short attention span (not judging) here is the last page of the book and then I’ll go into reasoning and philosophy.
We are changing the the speed at which you rank up each level.…
— Mark Rubin (@PixelsofMark) June 21, 2024
Hey All,
We have been listening to players about the changes to progression. So, for those with a short attention span (not judging) here is the last page of the book and then I’ll go into reasoning and philosophy.
We are changing the the speed at which you rank up each level. It is going from the current number of 3000XP down to 1500XP in effect doubling the speed at which you level up. The levels that you need to get to unlock a mastery skin are staying the same but the net effect is that this will revert the change we made but keep the 14% speed increase.
This will mean that unlocking attachments will be super fast but the grind for Gold will be 14% faster than what it was before the recent patch. It also means that everyone will get a big bump in their current level.
This change will be coming very soon and as soon as I have a specific date I will let you know.
So now let’s talk about what happened and why…
Let me point out something that is very obvious; the main grind we have in game right now is Weapon Mastery. This is something we are working on and have new ways for players to grind out cool rewards coming in multiple future updates. Like for instance Ranked will be coming in Season 1. But because weapon mastery was the only grind we had, we feared that players would achieve the end of that grind too fast and that would make the skins feel less special and rewarding.
But, here is the issue. We made a change while the game is live and people had already put in effort towards progression. This was a mistake on our part and we will own that. And that is why we are actually reverting and making it technically even better than before because attachments will unlock much faster. What we should have done is keep our focus on the new grinds and challenges that we are working on. In other words keep the focus on what’s actually fun for the players.
We’ve always held that this is a player focused game and the progression change wasn’t it. So, I hope that explains the situation and I hope that everyone who plays our game realizes or remembers that this is a game for the players first.
Hope to see you all in game!
The tl;dr version is: they changed it when people had already put effort towards progression, and the game should have more stuff to grind for and whatnot instead of punishing players for playing the game too much and unlocking stuff too fast.
While the XDefiant Twitter account didn’t state when this patch will be released, Rubin confirmed that they are targeting next week for it:
Not yet. Should be early next week.
— Mark Rubin (@PixelsofMark) June 21, 2024
What Rubin said here adds to his earlier confirmation that more challenging grinds will be added to the game. As to what these will be and when they’ll be released, we have no idea just yet. Hopefully, they’ll have a plan to share about it soon. Don’t expect it to be out in Season 1’s July 2 start date, as that’s a bit too soon.
Stay connected to MP1st and the latest news by following us on Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Google News.
