Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (dupe)
A tight team-based tactical experience that’s grown more competitive and accessible over the years.
Rainbow Six Siege,Ubisoft’s longest-running multiplayer game ever, has been a part of my life for a long time. It’s changed a lot since its initial launch in 2015, and most of those changes have pushed it to become a more competitive experience (at the expense of realism). Ubisoft’s decision to make Siege an esports hit was executed at a slow but steady pace but now in 2023 it’s arrived at a point where it’s balanced enough to really deliver that.
Siege is a tactical hero-based shooter with a focus on maps and environment. The game relies on the classic 5v5 bomb scenario. Defenders need to hold position until their gas bombs detonate and attackers should defuse the bombs before time runs out. Both sides have access to a different pool of heroes (Operators), each with their dedicated loadout of weapons, gadgets, and a unique major ability.
Environment plays a key role here. Whether you’re attacking or defending, you have to learn the maps, and you need to use them to your advantage. Your strategy makes the call on your gain from the environment, including utility placements, wall reinforcements, rotation access through destructive walls, and more.
That’s where planning kicks in. If you plan smart, you can win the match using map advantage. For example, if the enemy has taken the site and is defusing the bomb, and you’re the last one standing on your team, you don’t need to necessarily kill all enemies. You can just use gadgets like Echo’s drone, Maestro’s camera, or Solis’ goggles to deny planting the defuser, or gain intel to detect enemy position and begin vertical fighting (shooting between floors thanks to the game’s all-important destructible surfaces).
Sounds play a crucial factor in Siege. Every single gadget in Siege has its own sound, and it’s important to learn those sounds, because you may’t see everything happening in the game. All maps in Siege take place in indoor spaces, which makes it hard to have visual control over the map with your eyes alone. When you know sounds, you know what is detonating, and you can make calls without leaving your position.
Learning sounds, maps, and operator counters giveSiege a long learning curve. In the early years of Siege, it was a long and frustrating process for new players to find out about all operators, but now Ubisoft uses unique guide videos for each character to explain what an operator is capable of. It was a great change that lowered the entry barrier to Siege.
As Siege doesn’t use mini-maps, callouts are super important. Playing without voice chat in Siege is futile. Intel-sharing is key, to the point that even when you die, you have access to your teammates’ drones, letting you spot enemies and update your teammates. This leads us to the importance of roles in Siege, and their ability to counter opposing operators. Not every operator can breach a reinforced wall, disable electronic devices, or spot enemy locations. Each player is in charge of a certain task, and when you lose one member, you actually lose a certain ability to counter opposing operators and interact with the map.
Every single gadget in Siege has its own sound, and it’s important to learn them.
All these details sound fantastic, but you can imagine how easily the experience would be ruined without proper balancing. Well, that was the issue with old Siege, but much of that has now been solved. Rainbow Six Siege no longer blocks your line of sight with realistic muzzle fire, corpses disappear once they fall onto the ground so no one can hide behind dead bodies, night maps were sacrificed to remove the attacker disadvantage that could get the spawn-peeked easily, and many other changes were made over time to make Siege a more balanced game–one that cares more about skill level and playing as part of a team.
If you played Siege years ago and are thinking of coming back to a similar game, then I’m sorry to tell you that the old Siege is long dead. Since Year 4 back in 2019, there have been huge changes that will be a turnoff to some, alluring to others. One thing that’s remained constant is that working as a team is as invaluable as it always was.
Something that’s always made Siege a fair experience is the fact that it doesn’t keep secrets. It tells you which surfaces are destructive and which are not, it tells you what can counter your ability, it makes you aware of your recoil pattern and how to control it. Unlike games likeCSGOorValorant, the question to every answer is available in Siege. All this means that Siege has a pretty open and safe entry point for competitive FPS enthusiasts, while still having a long learning curve.
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The key to teamplay lies behind the excellent work of the design team. In the early years of Siege, Ubisoft had little control over seasonal content. Quantity trumped quality, and new operators used to be deployed with little attention to power balance. If you’re an old-timer, you probably remember the era when Lion and Ela were leading operators. Lion used to spot moving enemies with his gun ready in hand, rushing into site and dot-pinging everything that moved, while Ela’s low recoil and high fire-rate Scorpion gun was a nightmare. Then there were ACOG-equipped defenders like Bandit, who could easily get spawn kills, especially on night maps.
You never see those things in today’s Siege, because Ubisoft is now careful enough with the new deployments that every new operator who is released into the game is simultaneously launched into the esports scene as well. It speaks volumes that this year’s operators were delivered with the least amount of post-launch balance changes (except for Sens, who only received a speed boost).
Between Year 4 (2019) and Year 7 (2022), no new maps were released, but if you take a look at the operators launched in this period, most of them still have high pick rates, as they brought gadgets and abilities to the game that filled the balance gaps. During the aforementioned period, Ubisoft made enough changes in the core gameplay that it now has time to work on new maps like Emerald Plains and Nighthaven Labs and new modes such as Deathmatch while also reworking Battle Pass and the Ranked system.
Ubisoft has been fighting cheaters since Year 6, but honestly, no meaningful progress has been made.
The new Ranked system that was launched earlier this season isn’t perfect, tuning down the competitiveness of the game while letting players team up with any player at any level. Where the old system rewarded or punished you based on the relative rankings of the teams on a given match, the new system doesn’t take that into account anymore.
Instead, the higher your rank, the lower the XP rewards, which means that players quite artificially reach a kind of ranking parity that doesn’t reflect their true skill level. This means that as of Ranked 2.0, introduced in late 2022, the journey through the lower ranks is much more satisfying than through the higher ones. Combined with the much looser matchmaking, the current Siege metagame can be a little underwhelming for more experienced players.
Siege now has significant accessibility options, a streamer mode to avoid stream sniping, a new Deathmatch mode, as well as a Shooting Range to help you warm up and try out different weapon builds. Most of these things arrived only last year making it one of the game’s most ambitious years yet and showcasing the developers’ commitment to Siege.
But Rainbow Six Siege has its issues too, which show no signs of abating. Currently, the biggest threat to Siege is cheating. The game uses BattlEye anti-cheat, but that doesn’t stop cheaters. Despite all the reporting options, cheaters are still swarming in Siege, especially when you reach the higher ranks. While the community is crying for a new dedicated anti-cheat, similar to that ofWarzoneor Valorant, Ubisoft still insists on cooperating with BattlEye. The worst part is that there are a wide variety of cheats available for Siege, from wall-hacking to bot-aiming. Even consoles aren’t safe; while you won’t witness cheats on consoles, there are many players using a mouse and keyboard for an advantage over controller users (even though it’s not officially supported). Ubisoft has said it’s been fighting these problems since Year 6, but honestly, no meaningful progress has been made yet.
The Battle Pass system, isn’t great either. Introduced later in 2019, it’s certainly not worth the $10 you pay for it every season, which lasts three months. Battle Pass gives you two weeks of early access to every new seasonal operator as well as 100 tiers of rewards, but some of them can be earned by Alpha Packs that you receive for free throughout the season. Every season pass only includes one special weapon skin with certain animation, and almost no Elite skins, which are the highest-tier skins for each operator.
Unlike most free-to-play games, the Battle Pass doesn’t pay back the in-game money you spend on it. While titles likeFortniteand Warzone return the amount of in-game currency you pay for Battle Pass if you complete all the tiers, in Siege you only get back half, which is disappointing. It gets even worse when you know that Battle Pass never includes any Elite skins.
So is it worth playing Rainbow Six Siege in 2023? If you are looking for a well-balanced competitive squad shooter, it’s an incredible experience, but you need to have at least one or two companions to enjoy it. Solo queuing isn’t fun in Siege, because it’s rare that you come across a team that plays strategically enough to compete against highly communicative teams.
Siege can feel overwhelming in the beginning due to the amount of distinct operators with their myriad gadgets and abilities, but as you learn more, you’ll enjoy it more. It’s much easier to begin Siege today than it ever was. And you shouldn’t be worried about the support to come, as the game still seems to have a long future ahead.
