An overview of XDefiant’s recent update (Y1S1.2 Patch Notes)

Bryson Maddock

Bryson Maddock

Need a quick overview of everything included in XDefiant’s most recent update?

Nothing beats when a game is transparent about its Patch Notes, letting fans know exactly what to expect with recent updates. XDefiant, the newest craze in competitive gaming, just released its newest update, giving gamers an overview of the Y1S1.2 Patch Notes.

Here is everything included in the game's recent Patch Notes, which were posted via Ubisoft's website.

Explaining XDefiant's Y1S1.2 Patch Notes

XDefiant's recent Patch Notes listed quite a few changes within the game, including a lot of weapon balancing. Aside from weapons, though, the game also received a few changes to gameplay, Factions, maps and more.

Here is everything you need to know about XDefiant's recent update.

Weapon changes

The game saw quite a bit of weapon changes in the Y1S1.2 update. Here is everything XDefiant included in its Patch Notes regarding weapon balances:

  • M4A1 short-range damage increased from 17 to 18.
  • MDR short-range damage increased from 17 to 19.
  • MP5A2 medium-range damage increased from 13 to 14. Its headshot-damage multiplier increased from 1.35x to 1.4x.
  • The MP5A2's short range increased from 16m to 18m. Its medium range increased from 25m to 27m.
  • MDR ADS speed improved from 300ms to 250ms.
  • M44 Sprint Out Time (sprint-to-shoot time) increased from 350ms to 400ms.
  • TAC-50 Sprint Out Time increased from 600ms to 625ms.
  • L115 sprint-shoot time increased from 550ms to 575ms.
  • The sniper rifles (M44, TAC-50, and L115) got a small increase in spread when shooting from the hip (as opposed to aiming via the optics).

These new changes are meant to help make the game more enjoyable, preventing any weapons from being too overpowered. Hopefully, an update as such will stick and the game will not have to tweak any of these guns any further.

The game also improved the visual presentation of tracer fire and ammo-case ejection, adjusted how the aiming system detects player input and fixed a glitch that allowed players to fire automatically upon respawning if they jammed on the Fire and Sprint buttons while dying.

Gameplay changes

Gameplay changes in the recent update are much smaller than all the weapon changes, but there are still a few that deserve recognition.

  • Fixed a delay in reloading, swapping weapons, or deploying devices caused by players rapidly tapping the Fire and Ability buttons.
  • Players who took advantage of a speed hack will now find themselves locked in place, which is the opposite of what they were going for.

Map changes

Via Ubisoft's website, the game claims to have fixed a weird issue letting players exit a Times Square spawn zone early by jumping off a picture frame.

Faction changes

Each Faction in XDefiant offers various characters for competitors to play as. Each has their own unique abilities that are special to each Faction.

Included in the Y1S1.2 Patch Notes, XDefiant made a bunch of changes to Factions. Some of these changes have to do with abilities while some simply have to do with name changes.

All Faction changes in the Y1S1.2 update (Via Ubisoft's website):

  • After coming to an agreement with pharmaceutical company GSK, the Team Rainbow faction will hereafter be known as GS-Kommando. Feel free to continue calling them Grenzschutzkommando as a handy time saver.
  • Fixed an issue where DedSec's Spiderbots were ignoring victims previously targeted by the deploying player. Now they'll spiderhug faces new and old with equal enthusiasm.
  • Players can once again shoot DedSec Spiderbots off their own faces. Not sure why; everybody loves Spiderbots.
  • Tuned the functionality of Echelon's Intel Suit. Now it pulses every four seconds instead of every three. Enemies remain highlighted for 1 second instead of 2.7 seconds, so everybody pay attention. 
  • Some abilities such as Firebomb, the Digital Ghillie Suit, and BioVida Boost weren't always activating or occasionally stopped working. That's fixed.

Game Mode changes

Alongside having quite a few Faction changes, XDefiant also slightly improved Game Modes in the new update.

  • Updated the Playlist screen to show all the available game modes.
  • Added menu text clarifying that the Bronze rank unlocks at the first victory.
  • Fixed an issue that was displaying the little padlock icon on Ranked Rewards despite players earning them fair and square. 

Additional changes

While many of the other changes in the Y1S1.2 XDefiant update, the game also included a bunch of miscellaneous changes in their Patch Notes. These changes range from small audio fixes to crash fixes and more.

All additional changes in the Y1S1.2 XDefiant update:

  • Graphical and audio fixes.
  • Corrected the Killscreen HP value (from one to zero) of players who killed other players post-mortem (via a well-placed proximity mine, incendiary rounds, or similarly persistent offensive strategies).
  • Previously, players with pings greater than 150ms were kept waiting an un-fun amount of time in matchmaking. We've improved the matchmaking parameters so their ping is assessed more frequently, which should greatly reduce matchmaking wait times. Also, players of any ping quality can now instantly jump into the Practice Zone, where they can take out their ping frustrations in a healthy and constructive way.
  • Crash fixes.

Stay tuned to esports.gg for more XDefiant and esports news.