'Personal best KD at 0.23': XDefiant is handing out participation trophies to players who suck

XDefiant is starting to pick up steam post its shaky launch (that was littered with the expected matchmaking issues), with many players finding solace in an FPS that more closely resembles what Call of Duty was back in the day. Some players, however, have found it to be a little less welcoming than they would have hoped.

A couple of people posted their end-of-match screens on r/XDefiant, and it's not very forgiving. Player Vince_- glumly says, "Thanks for making me feel special," accompanied by an image that shows "ran around" next to his character instead of the usual Kill/Death ratio. And everyone has agreed that this is absolutely hilarious.

Most people have felt the psychological damage post-game when you have to stare at a particularly brutal K/D alongside teammates who were most certainly carrying you. At these moments, I try to soothe the burn by convincing myself that no one else is looking at my score anyway, and that it doesn't matter all that much. But these new shame stickers in XDefiant are pretty hard to miss.

This has also propelled others to share the brutal participation awards they received: "I saw one where a guy had 'blocked damage 10324'," one player says. Other phrases include "showed up", "personal best KD at 0.23", "tried", and "moral support". Honestly, if I ever got one of these, I think I'd take it as a sign that I should probably log off for the night, but shout out to the people who keep pushing on, that's mental fortitude at its finest.

While XDefiant is definitely not as polished as its FPS counterparts yet (I find the hit reg to be particularly frustrating), it's still very much early days for Ubisoft's new game, so there's a lot of space to grow and time for problems to be addressed. It also helps that the system requirements are monstrously low and that Ubisoft decided to do away with SBMM in its casual playlists: "I think the intra-lobby team balancing and lobby persistence are great features within an overall non-SBMM matchmaking architecture," one player says in a Reddit thread. "It really does feel like the FPS experience of old."

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Elie is a news writer with an unhealthy love of horror games—even though their greatest fear is being chased. When they're not screaming or hiding, there's a good chance you'll find them testing their metal in metroidvanias or just admiring their Pokemon TCG collection. Elie has previously worked at TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer and studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries – spending their free time filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path.