XDefiant to implement fix for slow mastery ranks, which will soon take ‘half as long’

The XDefiant player complaints about a recent change to weapon mastery leveling were heard loud and clear.

Ubisoft confirmed today that it will be hastening the weapon mastery level grind after making it more of a slog in a recent update, and it will now take half as long to earn a mastery rank while grinding toward camos like Bronze, Silver, and Gold for specific weapons.

“Earlier this week, we made the mastery system unlock at higher levels making it take longer to unlock mastery skins,” Ubisoft said in a post on Twitter/X. “We heard the feedback—weapon XP will now go twice as fast.”

With the upcoming change, ranks for primary weapons will now take just 1,500 XP as opposed to 3,000 XP, while secondary weapons will take just 500 XP instead of 1,000. The change will come in an upcoming patch that has no current launch date.

“Let me point out something that is very obvious; the main grind we have in game right now is Weapon Mastery,” XDefiant director Mark Rubin said on Twitter/X. “This is something we are working on and have new ways for players to grind out cool rewards coming in multiple future updates. Like for instance Ranked will be coming in Season 1. But because weapon mastery was the only grind we had, we feared that players would achieve the end of that grind too fast and that would make the skins feel less special and rewarding.”

Rubin went on to say that making a change while the game was live after people had already put in effort toward progression “was a mistake on our part and we will own that.”

“We’ve always held that this is a player-focused game and the progression change wasn’t it,” Rubin said. “So, I hope that explains the situation and I hope that everyone who plays our game realizes or remembers that this is a game for the players first.”

XDefiant’s season one begins on July 2, adding new weapons, maps, and a Rainbow Six-themed faction.