Met my wife on TC Rainbow Six: Vegas back in 2007! Excited to see this new project. In recent years, one of our favorite shooters was Modern Warfare. It brought us back to the COD franchise. Ever since they ruined the game with Cold War we have been looking for a new game. We dove into Division 2, and have enjoyed the awesome community. We are looking forward to BF 2042, but we have been worried that it would otherwise be a dry landscape. Then here comes XDefiant. Like water in the desert! And with Mark Rubin and Jason Shroeder at the helm, it looks like we are in good hands. Thrilled to be a part of the community that will inevitably galvanize around this game.
RS6: V seems like ages ago! What fun though. That's how it all started for us isn't it ☺️. Now watching our kids play RS6: V2 is such a trip. Just to clarify what you mentioned about Modern Warfare, it brought us back to COD for 2 reasons. One, the gunplay was phenomenal. Hearing Mark Rubin talk about XDefiants gunplay being of utmost importance is terrific. But Mark left Infinity Ward in 2015 and I don't believe he had a hand in the latest Modern Warfare. Hopefully, he has a direct line to whoever was responsible for MW gunplay being so fluid, so detailed. It is glaringly obviously with Cold War that the genius was not shared with Treyarch. The 2nd reason was crossplay. Loving our PS5s, but being able to play with the homies that won't put down their Xboxes was pure gold. My concern for the XDefiant community is that it the game won't be as detail rich as the Division 2 has been, which really brought together a strong group of helpful folks. Build templates, strategies, so much variety. Just don't think that's what they are going for with XDefiant. Might be fun for a quick, pick up and play. Light and fun.Originally Posted by InfamousMike3 Go to original post
Gunplay is great, and should absolutely be a major part of the game. But as someone who very much enjoys battlefield control and manipulation, tools like flashbangs, smoke grenades, or even knockdown or slow effects can be a big part of the overall game play being fun. I've been playing Tom Clancy games since Ghost Recon Future Soldier when I transitioned from playing an obscene amount of Call Of Duty and Battlefield and found a great breath of fresh air. The community was more willing to work together to complete objectives rather than lone wolfing everything, and the combat was synergistic based on the tools you had.
My hope is this being a F2P, they can strike a proper balance and don't go the way of Ghost Recon Phantoms(another F2P PvP shooter than didn't end well) and make the model too easily pay to win. Having played Apex Legends with my brother recently(I actually don't like the game much but I love my brother and he is infatuated with it) I can say that their microtransaction model and being Free to play is one of the few things that keeps me playing still beyond my brother, since I don't feel like I'm ever at a disadvantage. There is more to be said, but my hope is good things for the game!
I hope for a good community, after the game is settled and know what it wants to be and at whom it is aimed. But right now I don't think it will last very long, because there is a lack of guidance of what the game wants to be (judging from the trailer and gameplay only). Old people like me, growing up with the OG Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon Games, will feel disgusted by the usage of the Tom Clancy's nametag. CoD-player will play CoD like FIFA-players will always stick to FIFA. Mixing Overwatch and CoD BO4 into the game will also not help it, gaining traction. And just putting all the art assets from The Division on top will also not help to hold players. They need to know what they want to do and judging from trailer and gameplay, they don't know yet. For Tom Clancy's fans it is a another slap in the face, for CoD-guys it is to gimmicky (like BO4 was), for Overwatch players it might not be deep enough. So, ... we will see. I really hope for a good game, a healthy community and a good long term support. But from what I saw I have serious doubt to get any of this... hopefully the Beta (or Tests or whatever) will make sure it will be a decent game. A good start e.g. are the numbers of maps already in the game - more than the last 3 CoDs shipped with ... so there is hope to get something out of it ;-)
I would like to see the game thrive for the creators who have put in the hard work to create it , timing for release will be critical and going up against the likes of Battlefield and COD will be a tough sell but with the right marketing and maybe some big named streamers pushing it (Shroud, DrDisrespect) it could work out wo be a hit for the gamers , from what I take from the trailer it will be a fun game to play as long as we don't see poor gear balance like we have in the PvP in Division 2 , also been F2P having a sophisticated Anti-Cheat will be absolutely mandatory , just look at Warzone which hit 500,000 bans the other month since release....
Sometimes I wonder if we're too quick to judge a game based on another game like it. I played CoD MW 1-3, and Black ops 2 pretty heavily and enjoyed them for what they were in the day. I don't really WANT to go back to another CoD style game in my older age however. I also don't feel like they're doing any harm to Tom Clancy's franchise at all. Playable classes seem to be very loosely based on factions from other games, but definitely not steeped in the same kind of depth of lore we expect from Ghost Recon or Splinter Cell. I never cared for Division(either of them) and never played R6: Siege(I've played through story on R6: Vegas a couple times ages ago) so I honestly only know Echelon and Wolves as factions.
I hope this game doesn't fall by the wayside because so many are quick to stack it up against other similar games. Gun play is great, but I've found a lot of fun in competitive games where I can mess with physics a little bit. Things like push backs, pull ins, breakable objects, hazards and trick shots(ricochet bullets/throwing knives, throw back uncooked frags) could really separate the game from all of the white knuckle competitiveness that drives me personally away from the others.
If Ubisoft really wants to separate from the rest, they need to own their own dynamic and I feel like getting creative with combat tools is something the Tom Clancy franchise could get behind. I mean, Breakpoint is all about how the tools of war are ever changing and designed specifically to give as much advantage as possible. It's tricky though. I don't know what level of competitive Ubi wants. Are they vying for a new world level esport competitive shooter? Or are they just aiming for their own thing?
Their design philosophy will tell us pretty quickly whether it's a passion project they're putting together to have some fun with the Tom Clancy franchise, or if it's just a hopeful cash cow. I'll throw it out there now though, another cash cow is likely to flop entirely. Give the game community the passions of the designers who are obviously invested in the game to some degree.
The only gripe I have from footage is the color schemes are a little too out there. I get the whole Punk art style, but contrast is important in a shooter. It's a tricky problem though. Too dark and earthy and it may be too grungy. I'll have to see more than a 3 minute video to really come to a conclusion on this one!
Speaking of building a community, I already fleshed out the wiki for the game ( https://xdefiant.fandom.com/ ). Hopefully when we get a media/fan kit, we can get some of the Defiant art added onto it and some weapon stats.
I have setup a Facebook group for XDefiant for any members from the Oceania region (Australia / New Zealand etc) : https://www.facebook.com/groups/363997475195483
Personally, I don't see why 'Legacy Ubisoft Gamers' would build a community around a game that goes out of it's way to express how irrelevant they are to modern Ubisoft. This game is literally about being 'XDefiant' about what the Tom Clancy brand used to entail.
There's nothing wrong with enjoying games like this, but it's chasing the demographics of Overwatch, Call of Duty, Valorant et al - note Rainbow Six: Vegas. The use of familiar factions from other Tom Clancy games is a cheap trick to try and port some of those fans over. It didn't work with Elite Squad, which is why they're shutting that down only a year after release.
Again, not saying there's anything wrong with enjoying this game - it might turn out to be a great class based F2P arcade shooter - but to say that 'Legacy Ubisoft Gamers' should be building the community has some fallacies.
Once we can all get our hands on this game, we'll be able to truly understand what it is. Sure, you can make assumptions and good guesses based on the released footage, but how well it plays and how the mechanics function and work together in the overall eco-system of the game, can only be judged by experiencing it first hand. I'm taking a wait and see aproach for this title and will take an unbiased view.
I think it has a lot of potential to fill a niche gap in the current hero shooter landscape, and it would be a shame to see this opportunity go to waste. Let's hope the gameplay is as fun as they claimed it to be. At least that's what I'm hoping.
If the game proves its worth, there will be a community for it, I'm sure of that.