XDefiant’s latest update addresses weapon and Faction balancing and a few glitches, including the troublesome Spiderbot issue that made it impossible for players to shoot them off their faces.

Spiderbots are an incredibly strong Faction ability because the robots latch on to an enemy’s face and makes it impossible to see. The only way to counter Spiderbots is to aim down and shoot them off your face.

However, something went wrong in the Season 1 update on July 2, as the ability no longer targeted enemies who had just been attacked by a Spiderbot and players were no longer able to shoot the robots off themselves. Ubisoft promised a fix and delivered in the most recent update.

In addition, the update also addresses speed boosts which plagued lobbies and made it possible for players who abused the exploit to rack up 70-plus kill games. Let’s jump right into the official patch notes.

XDefiant July 16 patch notes

Ubisoft

The full patch notes can be found below:

Gameplay

• 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.

Factions

• 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.

Maps

• Fixed a weird issue letting players exit a Times Square spawn zone early by jumping off a picture frame.

Game Modes

• 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. 

Weapons

• Tuned various weapons for gameplay balance. Here are the spec changes for your records:
  • 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).
• Improved the visual presentation of tracer fire and ammo-case ejection so both depart more accurately from their respective weapon. 
• Adjusted how the aiming system detects player input so that recoil recovery returns to center rather than being thrown off by unintended player jitters in the heat of combat.
• Fixed a glitch that allowed players to fire automatically upon respawning if they jammed on the Fire and Sprint buttons while dying.

Audio

• Graphical and audio fixes, various.

Miscellaneous

• 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, various.