When XDefiant released its major patch for Season 1, it ended up making one of its abilities — spiderbot — even more powerful. It’s led to a lot of discourse online about why it was done and if/when it should be fixed.
The conversation has gotten so loud that even executive producer Mark Rubin has taken to Twitter to address players.
In his post, Rubin explained that what players were able to do against the spiderbot when XDefiant first launched wasn’t actually supposed to be allowed. It was a bug that ultimately got fixed with Season 1, taking away a defense against them.
“[T]here was also a bug in that meleeing them was way harder than it was supposed to be,” he said. “So we wanted to keep the bug of shooting them off your own face in the game until we fixed other spiderbot issues.”
Rubin added that taking away a “important counter” was unintentional, and that it will be reverted as part of the game’s next “non-emergency patch”. The reversion will return the ability to shoot them off by shooting at your feet.
“The other changes to spiderbot will remain. i.e. longer cooldown, etc.,” he said.
You can read his full statement below:
“OK now that we’ve gotten through the patch and Ranked is now live, I want to talk about the Spiderbots.
“So when the game launched there was a bug that you could shoot down at your feet and destroy the spiderbot. This was not intended. However, there was also a bug in that meleeing them was way harder than it was supposed to be. So we wanted to keep the bug of shooting them off your own face in the game until we fixed other spiderbot issues.
“However, the bug fix got integrated into the Season 1 patch and so an important counter was removed unintentionally. We are reverting that fix in the next non-emergency patch. So you will again be able to shoot them off your own face by shooting at your feet. The other changes to spiderbot will remain. i.e. longer cooldown, etc.
“For the future, we are going to change the way spiderbot works so that there is a easier and clearer way to get them off you own face. But until then the bug where you can shoot them off your own face will remain.
“And we will continue to find other ways to balance all of the abilities over time.”
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