XDefiant Ranked Play: Rewards, divisions, modes, & how it works

XDefiant’s Ranked Play mode is finally upon us with seven divisions to grind through, a Top 500 leaderboard for bragging rights, alongside a range of exclusive cosmetic rewards. Here’s the full rundown.

Following on from a brief Pre-Season period, XDefiant Season 1 is now in focus. While powerful new weapons, flashy characters, and of course, a Battle Pass all top the bill, Season 1 also marks the debut of the game’s Ranked Mode.

The most hardcore FPS players are able to jump into the 4v4 playlist, sweating it out in a more competitive environment than casual play. In doing so, you can climb the ranks, unlock exclusive rewards, and even push for a spot among the Top 500 best players in the world.

So before you jump in, here’s the full rundown on how XDefiant’s Ranked Mode works.

Contents:

• How Ranked works
• Ranked Mode divisions
• Game types
• Ranked Mode rewards

How XDefiant’s Ranked Mode works

Ranked Mode in XDefiant serves as the competitive counterpart to casual play. It’s here where wins truly matter and so does your performance.

By playing well, racking up kills, damage, objective time, and most importantly, victories, you’ll be gradually improving your Skill Rating. The higher your Skill Rating, the tougher the matches. There are seven divisions in total, ranging from Bronze all the way up to Legends, more on that below.

Teams are able to queue together as full squads of four up to the Diamond rank. This is possible so long as no individual player has a Skill Rating 15 levels outside of the squad’s average. When you reach Diamond, you’re only able to queue alone or as part of a Duo.

XDefiant Ranked Mode divisions

XDefiant’s Ranked Mode offers up seven distinct tiers. Each has 10 levels to progress through in order to advance through to the next division.

The full breakdown is as follows:

• Bronze
• Silver
• Gold
• Ruby
• Emerald
• Diamond
• Legends

While reaching the Legends division is no small feat in its own right, the grind doesn’t stop there. XDefiant’s Ranked Mode also boasts a Top 500 leaderboard, encouraging the very best players in the world to continue improving their Skill Rating.

For Season 1, this Top 500 leaderboard isn’t visible in-game, only through occasional developer blog posts.

XDefiant Ranked Mode game types

Four game types were playable in XDefiant’s Ranked mode at launch, with one more joining the mix at the end of July, 2024. They are as follows:

• Occupy
• Domination
• Zone Control
• Escort
• Capture The Flag

While Escort functions exactly the same as in casual play, the other three modes have some slight rule changes to make them more viable in a competitive setting.

With Occupy, zones no longer rotate in a randomized order. In Ranked Play, zones rotate in a predetermined pattern, meaning your team can get two steps ahead and plan around the next zone if you’re wise enough.

With Domination, the game time has been extended somewhat. Teams now have five minutes on each side before swapping over. This is to help avoid any discourse about favorable sides of any given map.

Last but not least, Zone Control lets defenders rewind capture progress to the nearest quarter of the circle. If the attacking team is to capture a chunk of the objective, they’re really going to have to earn it.

It’s worth mentioning that newly arriving mode Capture The Flag (CTF) also joined Ranked Mode a few weeks after its arrival in casual playlists. Furthermore, with Bomb, XDefiant’s answer to Call of Duty’s Search and Destroy game mode, arriving in Season 1, there’s no doubt that mode will join the Ranked mix when all the kinks have been ironed out.

All exclusive XDefiant Season 1 Ranked Mode rewards

With each Season, XDefiant’s Ranked Mode is set to offer up a batch of exclusive rewards. These cosmetics won’t be unlockable in any other way, nor will they be purchaseable.

For Season 1, while a number of character and weapon skins, all stemming from the Paintball cosmetic line, are available at various ranks, one sits atop them all. If you finish Season 1 in the Top 500, you’ll nab an exclusive weapon skin with a color-changing effect applied to really stand out in your future lobbies.

Below is the full list of Ranked rewards in XDefiant Season 1:

• Paintballer Gloss rare player card – Bronze
• Paintballer rare Seleste skin – Silver
• Paintballer rare M4A1 skin – Gold
• Paintballer rare Green skin – Ruby
• Paintballer rare L115 skin – Emerald
• Paintballer rare Kaptan skin – Diamond
• Paintballer epic MP7 skin – Legends

Ranked mode went live on July 3 but with each new season comes a raft of new exclusive rewards. We’ll be sure to update you here with each passing season.