Search & Destroy is coming to XDefiant, but fans are worried

Search & Destroy is one of Call of Duty‘s most popular and iconic game modes, and we now know that it’ll be arriving in XDefiant too. Interestingly, despite being such a fan-favorite mode among CoD fans, XDefiant players have voiced concerns about its arrival.

The news that Search & Destroy would be added to XDefiant was confirmed by the game’s executive producer Mark Rubin on June 5, telling a fan that “It’s coming,” in response to a tweet begging for its inclusion. Unsurprisingly this got a lot of people excited, but some voiced concerns about how the game’s abilities could affect the mode for the worse.

“[Search & Destroy] with broken abilities will be horrible [and] unbalanced so no thanks,” wrote Necrosczzz, while According-Music7506 suggested: “They need to disable abilities for like the first minute of the game or something in SnD, or rushing would just land you with a spider on your face, or the whole team pre-aiming you because of an intel suit.”

S_Squar3d agreed, saying: “Definitely excited for SnD but the abilities for it will need [to be] tweaked. Everyone being able to use their ability every round will be an issue.”

Still, not everyone is against the idea, and they believe that XDefiant’s Search & Destroy mode will be a faster-paced version of the mode which could make it more fun and discourage camping out in spots.

As for the idea of abilities in Search & Destroy, Black Ops 3 and 4 both featured them, and SnD played perfectly fine. The key was, however, that you started off with no available ability and had to earn it through the match, and often you only got to use it once. This created great moments where you could completely change a round without having to deal with them every single time.

For me, that would be the ideal way to use abilities in the mode—you get them once per match, and when you use them is up to you. This would encourage players to think about when to use them and create opportunities for teamwork. We’ll see what Ubisoft does when the mode releases, however, we don’t have a release date just yet.