XDefiant Y1S1.0 adds the GSK faction and finally boosts battle pass progression

We’re finally hitting the release of Season 1 in XDefiant, and the patch notes suggest that this will be a meaningful update that makes the game feel a lot more enjoyable to play while expanding its roster of factions to offer even more to choose from.

While a new faction is exciting, the best part about the game’s Y1S1.0 update is that it lowers the XP threshold for battle pass tiers. If you played during the preseason, you know that it took about three or four wins to complete one rank, which killed the fun for me and many others. I don’t know the exact ratio between wins and battle pass tiers yet, but based on the tuned win XP bonuses, we should be quickly smashing through them.

XDefiant‘s new faction is pulled from Rainbow Six Siege

As you can see in the official patch notes for XDefiant season 1, pretty much every end-of-match bonus has been doubled to improve player stickiness. I know I suffered from this and would play one match at a time because I was so disheartened by the rewards, so I hope this feels better.

Of course, the biggest new addition with season 1 is the GSK faction. These elite soldiers are part of Germany’s Border Protection Command and are pulled directly from Rainbow Six Siege. Here, though, they’re not balanced for either attacking or defending; they’ve mastered both and could make for some interesting new tactics in matches.

Alongside this new faction, Echelon, The Phantoms, and DedSec have had a bit of rebalancing. Echelon’s incredibly overpowered Intel Suit has an added 10 seconds on its cooldown for a total of 40 seconds. As someone who has died far too many times to these invisible soldiers, this is fantastic news.

The Phantoms’ Mag Barrier has seen the same tweak to make it a bit easier to combat, and the faction’s AEGIS now takes damage from EMP grenades. Overall, it just makes them less imposing as enemies when you load into a match.

DedSec’s Spiderbot also has a longer cooldown but has been changed so that if multiple players unleash them, they shouldn’t aim for the same target. It’ll be interesting to see how this impacts the game because I never really saw too many Spiderbots in matches, but that could now change if they’re more efficient.

XDefiant also sees the introduction of Clubhouse, a new map, and Capture the Flag mode. I’m quite excited to try this classic game mode in such a modern shooter to see how the speed of each faction makes it feel. In addition, we’ve got a few new weapons in the game with season 1, including the L115 Sniper Rifle, LVOA-C Rifle, and the Sawed-Off Shotgun.

We won’t fully know the impact of the weapon changes until players have had time to mess around with their loadouts for a while. The only other change of note is for flash grenades, those tiny explosives that would blind you for what felt like a full minute in the preseason. Ubisoft admits they were way too intense, so I’m expecting something way less harmful to the retinas that don’t make me put the controller down and reach for my sunglasses.

Season 1 for XDefiant is setting the standard for the type of content that should be coming over the next year or so. Players will judge the game based on this update, so it needs to be good enough to make them want to stick around.