XDefiant has an anti-movement spam feature that could solve MW2’s snaking issue

Since the launch of its closed beta last week, XDefiant has wasted little time signaling that the game is looking to cater to those who’ve missed the “traditional” Call of Duty experience.

The XDefiant development team includes the expertise of ex-Infinity Ward executive producer Mark Rubin and former CoD world champion Patrick “ACHES” Price. On April 12, the XDefiant beta was kicked off with a showmatch that included ACHES and nine other retired CoD pros. From no skill-based matchmaking to pre-game map voting and an old-school mini-map, the upcoming arena shooter features a plethora of design choices that many in the CoD community have been calling for in recent years.

Days into the XDefiant beta, it appears players have now also discovered an underlying feature that may be a solution to one of the most hotly debated movement exploits in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2—”snaking.” By rapidly changing head levels in MW2, players can abuse pieces of cover to peek at enemies with little consequence.

And yesterday, ACHES addressed a Twitter clip posted by a player who noticed that in XDefiant, rapidly crouching or jumping progressively causes your gun to sway while aiming down sights.

“This is currently by design,” ACHES said. “The reason for this is to stop egregious spam behavior.”

While the user who posted the clip originally shared it to raise concerns about how the move could limit the skill gap of XDefiant, particularly in the ability to take longer fights while jumping or sliding, ACHES dove deeper to emphasize that the dev team is hoping to protect the ability for players to use advanced movement.

“This sway penalty is not caused by sliding, only Jump & Crouch,” ACHES said. “Penalty will last a maximum of 1.5s unless you continue to jump/crouch within quick succession. Currently the penalty starts very minor, and gets worse over time if you continue to spam either input until you hit the maximum penalty.”

ACHES went on to mention that this feature is still a work in progress, with the devs aiming to find a “sweet spot” for the penalty.

“The goal is simple, prevent abusive play while still maintaining a fun and fluid aspect of gameplay that we all love: movement,” ACHES said.

Although XDefiant does not feature the ability to go prone, it’s not hard to imagine that this type of penalty would limit players’ ability to “snake” in MW2. Whether it’s with a similar sway penalty or something related to crouch fatigue, it seems it’s becoming more clear that there are several directions that CoD’s makers could take to address the issue.