XDefiant Executive Producer Mark Rubin has confirmed Search and Destroy will come to the game, which has players both excited and concerned.
Search and Destroy is a classic FPS mode with two teams facing off, one defending a bombsite or two and the other attacking them hoping to plant a bomb. The big twist is that players only have one life per round, so each death matters.
How this will work out in XDefiant has not been revealed, as the game has yet to launch a mode featuring limited lives. The only mode that comes close to SnD in the Ubisoft title is Escort, which delays respawns for the defending team but doesn’t limit the number of deaths per round.
So far, players only have a social media post from Rubin to go off of, which merely confirms the mode is in the works.
The lack of concrete information has players speculating what Search and Destroy will look like in XDefiant, and some worry about how each class’ abilities could ruin the experience.
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In a Reddit thread discussing the mode’s announcement, players outlined how some abilities would completely break how Search and Destroy is meant to function.
“SnD with Intel suits and spider bots that lead you straight to enemies sounds like an amazing time lol,” one user said.
Others theorized that Faction abilities could be disabled for a short time at the start of each round to stop certain classes from abusing their utility. Another idea is to make players earn their abilities like kill streaks instead of having them available for no cost like in every other mode.
So far, Ubisoft has kept its cards close to the vest when it comes to new features in XDefiant, so players will have to wait to see how the developers implement Search and Destroy.