Rainbow Six Siege is a first-person tactical multiplayer shooter made by Ubisoft. In this game, you play as one of many different operators with different abilities,who is tasked with either defending a hostage or a bomb, or trying to save the hostage or diffuse the bomb. The other option is to kill all of the other team to win.Their are also situations, in which you play by yourself and the game throws into a situation similar to multiplayer. And finally, their is terrorist hunt,where you and/or others fight against ai.

I first played this game right around the time when this game released on PS4, and I did not like it that much. So I left it. But two years later, and Siege suddenly got super popular. I also heard that the game is different from when I first played it. So I decided to hop onto the free weekend Siege was happening back in February 2017 and see if the game has changed. After the free weekend, I did see that Siege changed...for the worse. After the free weekend, the game made me hate it more than when I played it back in 2015.

So why the hate? Where to begin. One of the biggest problems I had with the game is its free-to-play concept. For what is now 40 USD, you get a game that should be free.Even Ubisoft knows that their game is a free-to-play game by making a cheaper 15 USD version that cuts back on some of the content. But even the main game still is littered with microtransactions. A lot of aesthetic items that can be or have to be bought with real money is all over the game. Skins for your gun, headgear, charms for your weapons, uniforms, boost packs to double your currency rates for a certain amount of time, and enough bundles of different aesthetic items to make free-to-play mobile games look generous. And none of this stuff is cheap. I recently played a casual match and a terrorist hunt at normal difficulty to see how much renown, or the primary currency, would I get. With the Terrorist Hunt, I got a measly 97 renown. But this is on the low end, so I'm guessing the amount of renown a good player would get from a normal Terrorist Hunt would be around 200 renown. On the other hand, my multiplayer match was good. I got a good score and a 10% renown boost for that match because someone else had a booster pack. At the end of that match, which we won 3-0, I got 300 renown. Terrorist Hunt took me around 10 to 20 minutes to complete, and the multiplayer match took me around 30 minutes to complete. And both of those matches are considered fast for average match times that I have played. So how much are items compared to how much you earn? The price of the most expensive skin for one gun is 7500 renown. If I continued getting 300 renown every 30 minutes, it would take me twelve and a half hours to buy that skin. The most expensive charm is 2500 renown, the most expensive universal charm(which is for all guns) is at 25,000 renown, and so on. But it only gets worse. Some of those aesthetic items can be bought with real money, ans some of those items have to be bought with real money. And again, the real-money items are not cheap. The most expensive bundle that I could find which included gold weapons, clothing, and charms for four characters was 16 USD. That is more than the starter edition of the game for skins that are worthless.

For their season pass, Siege decided to sell new characters, unlike most other multiplayer games where they sell maps. This is an interesting approach because other games, like Overwatch, give out new characters for free. Granted, Siege releases their characters at a much faster rate, but I still do not agree with the concept. Unlike maps, dlc characters can give people an advantage over others who do not have the ability to play with those new characters with new abilities, weapons, or technology. Now the argument can be made that those dlc characters can be bought for renown. But each character is 25,000 renown. At my earlier rate of renown earning, it would take forty-one and two-third hours to make enough renown to buy one character. As of now, their are 10 characters to unlock at 25,000 renown each (or for real money, but of course.) So why does Ubisoft sell people and not maps?

That comes to another point; the maps. What's wrong with the maps? They are beautiful and diverse maps... aesthetically. But structurally, they are the same thing over and over. It doesn't matter if I am shooting people in a biker bar, training facility, or a house; in the end, it's just the same thing over and over. A large building with a bunch of breaching points and places to explode for me to breach from every angle. Now having the buildings be destructible made it fun, as for you have to look at all angles before entering a room made it stressful and difficult(but in a good way.) But doing that over and over got terribly repetitive.

Another problem was the style of gameplay. The main multiplayer mode works like this: Their is an objective(a bomb or a hostage) that the defending team is defending inside of a building. The offensive team is trying to either extract the hostage or diffuse the bomb. The other(and main way) to win is to kill the other team. When you die, you stay dead until the next round, and each rounds have the two teams switching from offense to defense. The game is set up to be a strategic game, but their is one problem with that. Their is only one objective. Only having one objective means you do not need any strategy. It ends up with the defending team putting traps and barriers in the same room as the objective and the offensive team blowing it all up. Unlike this game, a game like Counter Strike: Global Offensive shows that you need at least two objectives that are far apart to have strategy. Having two objectives at far distances splits the defending team to two different areas, where they have to strategize on where to go, while the offensive team has to decide what they think will be the lesser defended area. On top of that, if the offending team took over one of the objectives, then the defending team and the offending essentially switch sides, where the offending team has to defend what they just captured and the defending team has to take it back. It's this back-and-forth strategy that shows in CSGO and not in Siege. And yes, I know that some maps have two objectives. But the two objectives are so close to each other that it doesn't really matter which objective you're defending, because you can just go into the next room and see the other objective.

One final complaint that I will say are the intermission times. After each round, the game goes into a loadout screen that allows you to choose a new character and loadout. Those intermissions will last 30 seconds. That is a pretty good amount of time that cuts into a single match at least three times.

Their is one thing that I can say about this game that is great though, and that is the character cut scene. each character has their own cut scene that is very enjoyable to watch. they are stylish and describes what that character is like. But I find it rather sad that the best quality of this game that I can find for me personally is something that you don't even play.

Despite good cut scenes and destructible maps, I found this game to be a terrible strategy game with no map variability, big cuts from playing the game( intermissions and waiting to play the next round if you died,) and filled to the brim with microtransactions. I know that not everyone will agree with my stance on the game, but I did have all of these thoughts on my mind since I bought this game back when it first came out and I have been wanting to say these things about this game. But if you are looking for a strategic multiplayer shooter game to play, then Rainbow Six Siege is not the place to look.

I love this game so much right now. Bought the complete game for 15 dollars on Amazon at Christmas. I think I have over 70 hours in it already.

The game came with plenty of characters, and I can unlock a DLC character every two weeks or so, which I think is a great alternative to buying the DLC.

Other than some tedious matchmaking times, I have had nothing but a good experience. I like how expensive the cosmetic stuff is. It prevents people from constantly having dumb skins on there gun, or stupid outfits.

Not sure if I agree with you about the lack of strategy due to maps and objective placements. I play with a group of three other people, and we're constantly trying new things, and discovering different ways to defend or approach an objective.

I do wish though, that there were perhaps a couple more game modes, and maybe the defenders not being allowed outside at all.

While it's true that in casual mode, the maps seem to favour one or two objectives, there are something like 5 possible objective points on most of the maps; playing a ranked game, your team gets to vote on where they want to set up.

I would disagree with your statement about the map similarity. There is a pretty solid variety in the maps, and how you approach or defend them. The Plane is a thin narrow space, the house is tight and cramped, with extremely destructible walls, the mansion has an open central courtyard and limited roof access, etc. The farmhouse has angles where the defenders can take shots at the attackers' flanks, while they are still outside and prepping to breach.

The difference in strategy between Hostage Mode and Defuser Mode is significant. Fuze can and does kill the hostage often, if the player is careless, resulting in a loss for the attacking team.

The choice of who to defend with, who to assault with, does matter and does change quite a bit, depending on the combination of objective, map and spawn location. In the basement of the training house, one of the characters is extremely useful at preventing breaching, while on the upper floor, he's barely used.

I think I'd be way more into this game if the maps were procedurally generated or randomized beyond objective placement. I have zero interest in learning maps in FPS, but I dig the tactical "breach and clear" style of combat Siege promises. I probably won't be going back to Siege because it's starting to feel like a game of who knows the corners better.

The problem is that Siege is really built on map knowledge. Success in multiplayer comes from knowing all of the weird angles/holes you can make and out-thinking your opponents. I kind of like that aspect too as it means the game doesn't come down to a question of who can pre-fire first and, in high-ranked multiplayer, people come up with some truly nasty tactics.

That being said, I sure as shit wouldn't want to play Siege on console just as I wouldn't want to play any tactical shooter on console. I would go so far as to say that playing on PS4 completely dilutes the experience as the game slows down to a crawl and precision angles are no longer viable.

I'll agree that the microtransactions are bullshit, especially for anyone like me who bought the game originally at full price. However it's possible to unlock a good number of operatives simply by completing the tutorial missions, and as you mention here, the other unlocks are mostly aesthetic. The exception is the DLC characters, which are all hugely overpriced and have much more interesting special equipment, which is a form of the bullshit "pay to win" structure that I will agree deserves your disdain.

Despite that, the default operatives are still an extremely viable option, and there is the potential to purchase those DLC characters with ingame currency (though it would take you dozens of hours of playing before you could afford them).

I think that Siege is one of the best multiplayer shooters available right now. It doesn't excuse their shitty pricing structure, but it means I'm going to play it anyway.

Bummer that you didn't enjoy your time with it. IMO it's easily the best and most unique shooter this gen. You complaints about the maps are weird and I don't agree with them at all. Especially when compared to other shooters on the market like Overwatch where the maps are hilariously basic and pretty meaningless. Siege has some of the most dynamic maps.

While I agree that the DLC operatives are over priced, a lot of the original operators are still perfectly viable and the 8 dlc operators from the first season are part of the gold edition of the game which is fairly cheap now.

I don't really have a problem with the cosmetics. I've put hundreds of hours into siege and have never paid for their currency or skins. Most of them are ugly anyways. If they want to charge money so your dude can have a stupid fighter pilot helmet so what? Doesn't affect the gameplay

Bummer that you didn't enjoy the game, this has been my absolute favorite game the last year. Though I do think this game has a huge learning curve, I didn't start really learning details about maps and strategies until I hit level 60 or something, and it's only getting worse with every map they add, learning the maps is very important. It helps having a player more experienced show some things or telling you what to do in certain situations. So far I've put about 300 hours into the game.

I disagree with a lot of the things you say about why the game is bad, because trust me there are a ton of things to complain about that I wish Ubisoft would fix. You focus a giant paragraph complaining about the renown system, when it really is not that big of an issue at all. I have unlocked every single operator and attachment for the guns without spending anymore money other than the base game and the year 2 season pass. Every other operator I bought with renown alone. And even if I hadn't bought the season pass i have 60k renown right now so I could have bought the new operators anyway. you could also ignore the DLC operators, one of my friends does that, he just plays 5 or 6 specific operators.

You complain about the cosmetic items being "expensive" renown wise... Really, after all these years are we still complaining about this? They add nothing, its just a skin, save your renown for it if you really want it or just ignore it entirely if you'd rather spend your renown on a new operator.

The maps are diverse, there are maps that have more of a focus on destroying floors and there are map that have a focus on hatches and walls. There are maps where almost everything is destructible and there are maps with only a couple destructible walls. Almost every map has its own unique thing.

Your argument about the defending team barricading in the objective and the attacking team blowing up the barricades completely ignores roaming, which is a huge thing in Siege. Where a character on the defensive side roams around the map flanking attackers. Generally you only want 2-3 people in or near the objective.

Also I don't think you can compare CS:GO and Siege, sure they share certain elements but they are completely different games.

Hope you give this game one more chance, maybe find some friends to play with, communication and information is key in the game, so getting on voice chat with friends really helps. Also playing with headphones is important, sound in this game is so essential, being able to hear the footsteps of the opponents really helps to knowing where they are.

I agree with pretty much everything you've said in this post. Terrorist hunt is boring, compared to rainbow six vegas 2, because the defend objectives are just so dull. The microtransactions make the game a marathon to unlock new operators. The maps are fine. I don't have as much of a problem with them as the other things.

I kind of had the general impression that this game was nothing special and was being forgotten.

But then whenever I've recently check Steam's player stats I see it's often in the top 20 games being played. That made me realise that it was doing *something* right.

I completely agree with you in that their micro transaction model sucks, and it definitely feels like it should be free to play.

However, that doesn't detract too much from the fact that it's one of the best online FPS's at the moment. (At least on the PC, I own it on PS4 as well and the community there is pretty shitty compared to PC.)

Also, it seems like the version you bought affects the price of new operators. For example, I bought the cheapest (£10?) version on steam, and then separately the S1 pass. Now I think I have all the S1 dlc operators, but unlocking base characters is in the 25,000's.

On PS4 I bought the gold edition which gave me all S1 operators but the cost of base operators is 500 to 2000 renown. Not too sure how that all works.

Jumped in on a free weekend to play with a few mates that had the game since new, the unlock system and DLC methods made me forget about buying it in part and really wanted to like it but the slog to get on even terms with my friends was too much.

I miss the early games on the pc, download someones map and share it with a friend and just go on terroist hunts all night, can think of a few maps we played for months and wasnt a price on those just good old player made content.

@burt: On PC, you got the starter edition, which is cheaper, but even more aggressive on microtransactions. In that one, base operators cost a lot more than the full game. So when you got the ps4 edition, you saw the price of the base characters at the normal price.

Rainbow Six Siege is one of the best multiplayer FPSs of the past decade.

The maximum time a casual match with 4 minute rounds, 30 second intermission and 45 second prep phase can last is about half an hour. That's with the match going into overtime and every round ending in a time out, so I'm confuzzled about your estimated length for a 3-0 match. My average time per match is about 13 minutes. You can unlock the base operators very quickly and most of them stand head and shoulders above the DLC operators in terms of utility and power. Over the course of a season you can easily rack up the 50k renown required to unlock the next DLC operators. As long as you, you know, actually play the game.

The strategy in Siege goes beyond just "rush plant B". It's a game of angles and positioning, teamwork and information is key. Use your drones, if you walk into an undroned room, you might as well have dived on a grenade at spawn.

You can't employ Counter Strike or CoD game mode design in a game with destructible maps that are this compact and layered.

Game modes don't depend on the map, they're random. You can change your matchmaking setting to only allow for Bomb, if you wish. In ranked the defending side decides which objectives to defend at the start of every round and you can't pick the same site as the one you won in previously, so teams have to cycle through sites and have strategies for each.

There's plenty of strategy here, comparisons to Counter Strike just make me laugh.

Siege is great u crazy. Unlock system is fair too, love the free DLC.

I like Siege but I agree with this post entirely. I like the game despite of all this but that is why I stopped playing it as well.

Sounds to me that you have 2 major issues with the game: microtransactions and grinding to get good at the game.

Microtransactions do suck, I'll give you that. No matter which game does it, us players end up losing by spending our hard-earned money on half-made games. That's an industry trend right now and it'll take something huge to change that. With that being said, I don't think Siege is a "pay to win" kind of game. If you dig stuff like having skins for every gun or new headgear/uniforms for every operator, then you will have a problem, since all of them are fairly expensive in terms of renown (game's currency), meaning you're gonna have to play a lot to get renown that will be spent very fast. The things that matter though, like the original operators and gun attachments, are cheap and fast to get, and like someone mentioned, you can stick to a few operators, since not all of them might/will fit your playstyle. Paying 25k renown for each of the dlc operators was a problem for me, so I ended up paying $20 to unlock them all at once. But considering I payed $25 for the base game, it means I've invested $45 for a game that has given me around 250 hours of fun, so I do consider it a game worthy of the money spent.

Bottom line is, microtransactions do not break the game. Sure, they unlock things faster than playing the game normally, but if you stick with buying things with renown only, you'll get what's necessary to enjoy the game (base operators and attachments) in a fair amount of time. Buying stuff doesn't give anyone an unfair advantage, it all comes down to knowing the maps and getting good at the game.

Grinding, on the other hand, is what this game is all about.

The only way you get to be good at this game is playing the maps over and over and over again until you get to know them like the palm of your hand. A room might have multiple entry points with very different ways to exploit them depending on the operator you're using, and given that there are about 15 maps and the map selection is randomized every match, you will have to play A LOT to get good at the game by knowing each of the maps and getting the hang of the guns and abilities used by each operator. I see how this could be a problem for some people, since the game does have a learning curve that goes beyond just mastering the game mechanics. But seriously, what multiplayer shooter does not require some grinding to get good at it?

In my case, I have not had issues with grinding because there's always something to learn. Not every operator might be a good fit for every map, so you have to vary your selection from time to time until you find the best operator for a given situation. Different breaching tactics require different defensive tactics as well, so you have to be prepared for teams that take their time and teams that like to rush the objective. And, of course, you have to be super strategic and cautious each and every time, since you never know where a roamer might be waiting to get a surprise kill. All of these elements are combined in a great way, because even when the game mechanics are the same, your strategy won't always be the same and you have to be prepared for anything. This gives an adrenaline rush that has made me addicted to this game, as psychological warfare goes into play in tense situations, like being outnumbered by the enemy or 1v1 situations where you don't know how the opponent will approach you.

I know it's hard for you to give the game a third chance, but maybe approaching the game in a different way will make you enjoy it.

Yea, this is one of the reasons I fell off the game the last few months. Every new map is a challenge and thats what makes the game so great. I still don't even know my way around the ice boat too well and that was the first dlc map. Knowing the map is the most important aspect of the game, especially when a round can be decided by a single bullet hole in a wall. You can play a map 50 times and each time would be different because the variety in operators alone and all the variables you need to account that change from round to round

The map design is incredible and the game looks really amazing in places, it feels like a throwback to some of the older Rainbow Six games which had fantastic multiplayer maps

This article is inaccurate and honestly bs. probably written by someone who doesn't play rainbow six siege cause if you cant see it's potential.

grinding to buy new operators makes you better and micro transactions affect only aesthetic features like guns and outfits as such only those who have that luxury go for it and all those stuff can be unlocked in alpha packs if you are lucks as such even if you don't use real currency you can always have nice skin and outfits if that pleases you, please review this article , new players check these articles before playing a game and this article is inaccurate and deceiving.

@harry13: to be fair this post is almost a year old. I wouldnt get too upset about it.

@harry13: just an FYI this is not an official article, it is a users blog post. I doubt it will deter any new players

Also as an avid siege fan I can say that the original poster is still correct a year later about the microtransaction system being complete bullshit.

I like the time I put into Seige but it will never be a game I take seriously or care that much about being good at which seems at odds with the vast majority of people that play it. And is also why I probably won't be returning to it.

I had a good time with my friend setting up strategies and when we executed right it felt really good but when you fail not only does it feel bad but your teammates will let you know how bad you should feel. that was my experience anyway. I think it's a good game but if you ask me the people that are into it take it way too seriously. I hate to put it this way but the people that play it put me off way more than the game actually does.

The game should be free and have the same business model as something like Paladins: when the game is free, you can earn characters or spend $20 to get all current/future characters, and cosmetics cost money. Siege is a fun and well made game with a bad and annoying business model.

This is weird to see come back to this article (probably my most hated blog, this or the ready player one blog). I actually thought this was older than that, but I digress. I came back to the game for a third time, and I would say that my experiences with specific aspects have changed a bit, but my overall experience hasn't been better. When I went back (granted, for not that much time), my experience was just dull. Back when I played CSGO, I remember feeling an adrenaline rush whenever I pulled off a crazy move (four kills, having the odds stacked against me, etc.) When I went back, the first round of the first match I played (granted, this is casual but I am as casual as you can get in Siege), I got four kills. I ended match with a flawless victory, seven kills, and no deaths. The second match I played was similar with six kills, high kill-per-match ratio, flawless victory, and only one death. I truly feel like that should've been the turning point for me. Those are the high adrenaline moments that I loved to have in CSGO, even if things didn't play out the way I like. I felt nothing but boredom when playing these matches. I wasn't forcing myself to be bored to keep my opinions the same on the game, I was totally open to this game sweeping me off of my feet, and it just didn't.

Still, I don't want to be a debbie downer. I think that the actions the team behind this game are making are alright. Adding in the co-op mode has no negatives to it, other than it being a timed event, They have been constantly updating the game and improving the experience for those who enjoy the game, and more. Still, their are some missteps made. I personally think the starter edition should be free-to-play, and recently the developers tried to bring the price back up to $60 while giving you very little, instead of dropping the price lower as it should be doing considering this game is over two years old (not to say they haven't been dropping the price).

Honestly, I haven't gone back to read this article and I probably won't. Their are mistakes I have made in this article that (like my math for earning currency (I cleared that up in the next entry about the game)) that are wrong and their are mistakes (like my title, which I just changed) that aren't necessarily wrong but I wish I worded differently. As for the article, I forgot what I talked about specifically and I can't say for sure if I still think about those aspects in that way, but I can still say that my overall experience with the game is still not great.

@harry13: What about buying characters with the secondary currency or boosters packs to increase your earning rate for the primary currency?