For decades now, FPS developers have been doing everything they can to get us to play their thrilling new objective modes. And also for decades, they've heard us reply: Cool, cool, but what about TDM?
Ubisoft free-to-play shooter XDefiant is the latest to be badgered into including boring old team deathmatch.
"One of the things players have been asking for in the two-and-a-half weeks that we've been live is a TDM mode," XDefiant executive producer Mark Rubin said in an IGN interview on Sunday. "So we'll be seeing that in a couple weeks."
I've been enjoying XDefiant, and was just thinking the other day that I wished it had team deathmatch. The casual playlists currently available are all objective modes: A Team Fortress-like escort mode and point capture variants. I don't mind them, but I never finish a round with just a handful of kills and lots of objective points and think, gee, what a great performance that was. I'm not anti-objective mode, but let's be real: I want da kills, not the most back-caps of point C.
Rubin reiterated the good TDM news on X on Sunday, and at the Ubisoft Forward showcase on Monday, we also got some details about XDefiant's first season, which launches on July 2. It'll add a new faction inspired by Rainbow Six Siege, three maps, three weapons, a capture the flag mode (another classic), and the official start of ranked play. More season one details will be revealed on July 1.
Capture the Flag is enticing: After TDM, it's probably my most-played mode in shooters.
I didn't expect to get into XDefiant at all, but I'm actually enjoying the SBMM-free lifestyle in its casual modes, where I sometimes go wild and sometimes get humbled. I was skeptical that critics of SBMM were really on to something with the claim that facing a variety of skill levels was more fun—I assumed they just wanted to stomp bad-to-mediocre players like me—but I might be coming around to it.
I wish it were on Steam, but alas, XDefiant is only available on the Ubisoft Store.
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