Jeff calling Siege a free to play game multiple times on different days is the thing that annoyed me the most so far in their GOTY discussions. I'll be the first to say that it should have a campaign, since past R6 games had good campaigns, unlike something like Battlefield, which is a great series, but its campaigns are a waste of money for the dev. I've played Siege a dozen hours or so and the game asking for money never comes up other than when looking at weapon skins and the first 3 or 4 skins (which often look the coolest) are for real money, but the other 5 to 8 skins per gun are worth points or money. Other than that I've never seen the game ask for money.

It seems like "critics" are oddly against the game, since that's the only time it's been brought here during GOTY and when I saw the Polygon and Gamespot reviews they harped on microtransactions, but most commentors who actually played the game said they were wrong. In my time with the game I have all the characters I want, cool skins, and all the attachments I want with 10k points sitting around when one character is 500 points to 1500 points. So, there is no grinding and it isn't F2P at all.

You unlock things way faster than BF4, but somewhat slower than Titanfall. In comparison to Titanfall, Evolve, Battlefront, and BF: Hardline this game is more worth the $60 price tag and its value IMO. BF4 is the only multiplayer game (screw that campaign) that has a better value on console in recent years. R6 isn't perfect and if people don't want a MP only game that's fine, but saying it's a wannabe free to play game is pretty much a lie, or comes from someone who hardly played the game. Halo 5 pushes money far more than R6, yet they allowed that to be a nominee for best multiplayer in 2015.

Siege is fantastic. Calling it a wannabe F2P game is ridiculous. Just because you can buy skins? Unlocking operators and gun attachments has been quick. There are plenty of things wrong with Siege that can be legitimately criticized. Feeling like a F2P game is simply not true. They sell XP boosters, but every game does nowadays. You can't single it out for that. The XP does nothing for you but open up ranked play. There's literally no other use for XP. Hell, even their season pass doesn't get you anything exclusive that other people can't have. You get a couple skins and unlock new operators a week early. All of the map DLC will be free. They can say they don't want a MP-only game or that they just don't enjoy the gameplay, but to act like Siege is doing anything extra offensive with microtrasactions is a flat out lie.

Siege is an amazing fps. Its one of my favorites in a while, I have all the unlocks I wanted and haven't spent a dime. The booster stuff looks insidious but it boosts a currency that is pretty much useless after a certain point. If you go through one run of the scenarios you'll have enough for 4-6 characters and thats plenty to enjoy the game. It didn't really make me mad how during deliberations no one would bat for this game because its a hard game to get in to, you can get killed really fast and have to sit and wait but I personally love those stakes. Theres plenty of problems with siege, but playing it with my friends has been a great experience.

It's probably best to just disregard everything Jeff has to say about this game. He's down on it in general, and has been for a long time. Even the Quick Look, which was ran by Austin, contained a lot of inaccurate information. I don't think anybody on staff really gives a fuck about the game and the coverage/discussions around it have reflected that.

For what it tries to do I think the game is pretty great. I havent played a search and destroy style game with so much cool destructiability. The whole cqc check your corners style really gets shaken up in a fun way when you can smash open a big hole in the wall or shoot through ceilings.

The whole rock paper scissors element with gadgets really adds to the teamwork elements. Fortifying this, jamming that, covering the weaknesses makes it a lot more interesting than "sprint till you shoot" CoD shooters.

But on topic: i think it has the awesome replayability of a lot of my favorite f2p games without any significant microtransaction options. As said above, the XP boosts really aren't necessary at all, unless you're just playing Realism Terrohunt and losing every time.

And for anyone scared to play the game for fear of getting stomped, I can assure you there are plenty of people that aren't 1337 hax pro playing at the moment. There's plenty of stuff to learn but it's not like you'll never win if you don't know the two camping spots on the map or w/e. It's dynamic enough to jump in and feel it out for a few games without feeling clueless.

Yeah I think the crew did the game a disservice with the F2P comparisons. I honeslty haven't seen a single thing in the game that pushed me to spend real money; I actually haven't even seen what their "store" page looks like to even buy shit with real money. In regards to unlocking operators its not even difficult. After doing all the situations, which takes 2 hours max, you can unlock about 5 operators.

It's fine that they don't really groove with the game, but I think they really misrepresented it with the F2P stuff. Especially, like the TC said, when compared to games like Halo 5 or Battlefront which blatently push their respective card bullshit and DLC(on the main menu in battlefront's case).

I have only played this game in the first beta (where I did not have good experience, exacerbated by the complete idiocy of Ubisoft to not include a goddamn uninstaller with it) so my experience with the game is very limited.

That being said, if the part about the full party boosting is true then I would really like to see how some of you would defend it. Using social/peer pressure in that way is downright disgusting. Whether or not players are actually engaging in it or not. (By all accounts, I've heard the player base is very helpful and friendly.)

Other games using horrible F2P game mechanics to suck more money out of players doesn't excuse this game of anything. Don't forget that GB even had "Real Money Card Packs/One-Time Use Items" 'winning' the "PLEASE STOP" category this year.

As for Jeff calling it F2P I think that also referred to the game's polish in general.

What peer pressure? That's a scenario that Jeff made up. A bunch of random guys on XBL or PSN are going to yell at you to a buy booster pack so they'll get another 10% boost? If someone has friends that dumb then they need new ones. Renown (the point system) doesn't even matter after 2 or 3 weeks with the game. The game has no major grinding. Him saying F2P seemed to be aimed at the microtransactions. The game looks fine and plays better than most shooters.

I'm not going to raise a tizzy over it, but i don't really subscribe to the argument that multiplayer-only games somehow have less value than other games. people rarely make the same argument about single player games (unless there's a real paucity of content). and i'm not a big multiplayer guy but i can totally see how people can put tens/hundreds of hours into a MP game and get their money's worth many times over. i had the same feelings about titanfall and evolve, but i guess a lot of unnecessary poo-pooing about the same stuff buried that one fast too. you can't force people to spend their money (except in destiny, i guess).

I think anyone who has actually played the game knows Jeff was talking out of his ass in the GOTY discussions.

The boosters only get you renown, which as far as I can tell basically becomes a completely useless currency after you play like 20 hours. I've played about 18 hours of online play with friends, and it's been the best MP shooter I've played since I first got into CS:GO. I already have unlocked all but 3 of the operators, which is the only thing you really need renown for - and I only tend to play 2 or 3 different ones on attack/defense anyway, so I had unlocked the ones I actually use by less than 10 hours in. After you get all the operators the currency is only used for attachments which are super cheap. I've already kitted out the classes I play fully too.

On top of that, all future maps and operators will be freely available to anyone, the season pass is just early access and skins.

The part where it's a multiplayer only first person shooter should've been enough for you to realise that no one at GB would care or really give it the time of day.

If it was F2P I might actually try it.

But betting $50-60 on a game that will most likely have a dead community in three months? No thanks.

Sixty euros for a MP only game is too much in my opinion. And having some skins that can only be bought for real money after you paid those sixty euros are cheap. But saying that the boosting thing makes people pressure each other into boosting is bullshit and asinine.

I think the F2P comparison was more to do with the actual quality of the product, I could be wrong however. The problem with Giantbomb being such a small group of people is that not all bases are covered when it comes to liking different types of games and genres. It's fine that the guys don't like certain games but when miss information is spread or things are not given their property due then it can become a problem. That's kind of what I'm hoping from any new hires at Giantbomb in the potential future - staff with tastes unlike or somewhat different from the others, to represent a wider audience of video game players.

Seeing some of the experiences here make me feel like they were off base about how important microtransactions are.

But I do trust Jeff's opinion on the feel of a shooter and he did not seem to enjoy how this one felt.

@crysack: @assumedkilla: Again, it's not whether people actively do it. The problem is the developers putting a system in there which promotes it.

I have to agree with most the people here who have played the game a lot. I've played it a lot, terrorist hunt is great with friends, especially since the 2015's releases of Halo and Gears didn't have their horde modes for whatever stupid reason. I've played it for over 25 hours and there is no peer pressure of "OMG, you have to buy a booster if you want to play with us". The idea that boosting as a party is nefarious is simply a "what if situation" that Jeff pulled out of his ass. I've never seen it or heard of it. Odds are, people are going to stick with the same 3 to 5 operators and you can get enough points in the first hour of the game (by doing the training/situations and watching the tutorial vid) to buy 3 or 4 operators. The game is not unlock or points driven at all. Halo 5 somewhat ruined Warzone by wanting people to spend money yet they nominated that game lol.

Jeff has been pretty off base for a while I feel. He was kind of a downer on almost every game during GOTY discussions. A drag to listen to sometimes.

@cheetoman: Jeff just have very specific tastes which is kind of unusual in the world of video game coverage. He also does not hesitate to be very frank about the games or even genres he doesn't care for either. Especially during GotY discussions. Like implying Splatoon is only a good shooter this year because it was a weak year for shooters.

When it comes to game reviewers/critics you need to understand what their own preferences are and work from there. Going to Jeff Gerstmann for team-based competitive multiplayer shooters is a fool's errand.

As someone who has played both Siege (about 20 hours so far) and multiple free-to-play FPS games (including Ghost Recon Phantoms), I feel safe in saying that...Siege feels like it's a wannabe F2P game.

Also, Siege gets boring after about 20 hours. I can't pinpoint what it is. It just doesn't...I don't know, it doesn't excite me anymore. Maybe it's that whole thing where the problem with team-based objective multiplayer games is that you have to rely on people to actually do well also...and how few actually do well.

I agree that Jeff's opinions are his own and just that: opinions.

However, the peer pressure thing is also purely subjective and was blown out of proportion during GOTY. From the perspective of someone who will never buy that season pass or a booster, I kinda like that I get a small boost by playing with people who are willing to put more money in. It benefits me and I feel no guilt about not paying more after already buying a $60 game that I'm having fun with. But again, that's just, like, my opinion, man.

People shouldn't give this game a pass. It should have been free or on the budget side. Not $60 + microtransactions. It sounds like the game itself is pretty good, but people should not be forgiving the downright disgusting nature of it just because of that. Even if you don't have to engage with the microtransactions to play, you did just pay full price for a game that's asking for more money but gives you less features than other games in the series. You can enjoy the game but disagree with the marketing nature behind it. This game is very clearly following a free-to-play business model but charging full price for it, and whether or not you actually have to buy into the microtransactions to enjoy it, I would rather not let these publishers think they can get away with it.

Everything you just said is wrong. Did you actually read the posts of anyone who has played it?

Sometimes i feel jeff just comes up with insane criticisms for games just because they dont fit in with his highly specfic tastes(essentially inventing things just because they arent exactly the way they ought to be in his mind) lol maybe thats harsh i dunno

Retail games shouldn't have microtransactions in them. Get that bullshit out of here.

Just play the games you want to play and don't let people's opinions get you in a tiff.

@bollard: I did. Where was I factually wrong?

It's a $60 game that follows nearly the exact same model as most free to play games yet strips out the single-player elements of other games in the series. You can play Heroes of the Storm without ever paying a cent and unlock every single character using gold obtained from playing the game, but there's a $60 difference of entry there. I feel like that's a big deal that shouldn't be given a pass.

Jeff's assumptions are actually more spot on than people realize:

First off, I own the game and have been playing it off and on since it came out, my opinion is not unfounded.

Classes instead of character creation is a huge misstep designed around the idea of keeping the balance for competitive purposes. This is a major step down from the character creators in Vegas 1 and 2 (which featured competitive play). This model of keeping classes balanced reeks of F2P games like Team Fortress and DOTA.

Those asshole players he theorized about? Totally out there. I was accosted on the first day the game came out for being a "noob" because I hadn't played the Beta. The insanity of the internet lives on, and people in certain games were obsessed with maximizing their score. I left those games because I didn't want to get wrapped up in the boosters.

Padding out content with cosmetics is classic F2P fashion. While the game plays well, it can't hold my interest past an hour at a time. My group keeps tripping over the same maps over and over again. The game gets around this by moving the objectives, but you start to figure out possible locations really quick.

This game is fun, but is not worth 60 dollars. The best thing they have going for them is the promise of free maps and classes, but I would have had an easier time creating my own character. I love cooperative games, but this isn't on my top ten for the year.

You literally can't pay real money to unlock operators. It's nothing like a moba. I unlocked all the operators in less than 20 hours of gameplay. In LoL it took me 100 hours to unlock 5. The rate currency is awarded is in no way gimped to force you to buy boosters. You have too much of the in game currency. The only thing you have to spend money on is some skins, which is completely fine, buying cosmetics is a cool option. In COD you have to wait to unlock the gun you want, well here you have to wait to unlock different special abilities. It's literally the same progression as every multiplayer shooter since COD4 introduced RPG mechanics to shooters.

Most of your complaints are objective, just because you feel it isn't worth $60, doesn't mean it isn't good value to someone who would pay $60 to play COD multiplayer only every year.

I have also been playing a chunk of this game and Ill echo what other people have said. First off the game is great! It's been the most fun multiplayer FPS in a while for me. The microtransaction stuff in it is totally optional and I never felt the need to engage with it at all. I have been unlocking new operators as a steady clip and at no point felt the progression is scaled to make you buy the boosters.

Also selling multiplayer games for full price is not some new thing, Do people not remember every battlefield game up to and including 2142 had no real single player element?

I feel like Jeff and his ilk were being facetious with the whole peer pressure thing and people have run with that on both sides of the argument.

Whether it's worth $60 or not is very subjective. I'd pay $60 for it before Hardline, Battlefront, Evolve, Halo 5, Black Ops III, or Titanfall. Having characters does not make F2P. Go play a game that has a typical/crappy F2P model like Warframe if you want to see what's that like. In Warframe they make you choose between the 3 lamest characters in the game as well as lamest weapons then you have to find parts around the universe, which takes a while and once you find find all the parts you have to wait hours or days for a weapon or character to be built - that's hours/days in our time like a crappy mobile game, not in-game time... or you can just give the game money and buy weapons/characters easily.

"Typical F2P" means it punishes you for not giving the game money, which R6 never does. It unlocks pretty much the same as COD or Titanfall. Gears, Halo, AC, and other games have paid cosmetics, I don't see the big deal here. This game would be hard to design and less balanced if anyone could do anything. If it was a team of Sledges vs a team of Castles that fundamentally changes the game, level design, balance, etc. This thread really isn't about "is the game good or not", but is it "fair to call it a F2P", I think a reasonable person would say no.

Yeah i don't agree with Jeff's statement.

Eventhough the game was priced at 50$-60$ the game was lacking in comparison to COD:BO3 multiplayer alone. On top of this Ubi Soft went in and threw microtransactions that looks like a template of an F2P to sweeten the deal... On their side.

So, yeah Rainbow Six Siege can't be an F2P wanna be since it's already asking for a full retail price!

The game has 2 modes and like 5 maps, the fact that anything in this game is locked behind a paywall is absurd.

This game is lacking content in a way that no other $60 full retail game has ever been in my experience. The fact that they then incentivize you to buy the renown boosters by making new characters exponentially more expensive is gross

This game makes an absolutely horrendous first impression. I haven't played more than a couple hours, but those first couple have been not good at all. Bad bad not good.

In a game where multiplayer is the absolute draw, the meat AND the potatoes AND THE BEER, to lock you out of being a decent competitive force by holding classes back from you is insane. You can't even touch the multiplayer without getting screamed at before grinding a bunch of shitty, repetitive, frustrating single-player content and it sucks the goddamn life out of the game. My brother and I eventually unlocked a couple offense and defense classes, and even then, we were getting all sorts of fucked up because of the team-play required in that game which isn't taught through the single-player content at all.

There's a fantastic game under there. My brother has been loving it since those first few hours. But me? No. It sucked. I didn't enjoy a single second of time I spent with that game, from the bot-driven solo stuff to getting shrieked at by a bunch of online fucks. I won't ever go back to it, and I certainly won't buy my own copy to suffer through those awful opening hours again.

Jeff is known to really like fast paced shooters, which this game is not. This is a tactical game, not exactly hardcare, but not a game where you are running and gunning fools. It's not exactly surprising Jeff didn't enjoy the feel.

You're just making stuff up, I'm not sure if you're trolling or what; it has 10 very different maps (unlike Battlefront) and over 6 game modes (unlike Evolve and Titanfall) with free maps in the future. They don't push buying booster packs at all and it's totally optional. A decent player who puts some time in the game (around 6 hours a week) will have enough points for all the operators in 3 weeks or so. Really, there's no need to unlock everyone, since people will gravitate towards their playstyle. For example, I haven no intention in playing as a guy with a shield.

I have no problem with people not liking the game, I think it's more of "the tallest midget" than some awesome, great game since most other multiplayer shooters this gen have been duds, but it does seem as if people like to make stuff up about this game, which your post is a highlight of.

I think a lot of people who played Rainbow Six for a short amount of time have the negative experience where they are first told they need to unlock characters before going multiplayer, and having to lock your guy in before someone else takes it. Ending up as the recruit is a bummer. And because there are attackers and defenders, you need to buy multiple characters per side and make sure you're quick on the trigger.

Sure, that progression is trivial once you played for a good week and unlocked most of the characters, but if you're reviewing a game in a few days, it's a bummer.

Especially for a 60$ game. And if the game is fun enough to play after you unlocked all characters, why does the game need the progression hook at all?

Dota has 100+ characters for free and it keeps people compelled because the gameplay is good. Rainbow Six Siege doesn't need this character unlock system if the gameplay is good enough. Locking characters at the start pisses more people off than it brings enjoyment.

The staff are dead wrong on loads of things, and I heartily concur that this is definitely one of them. It's just the basic kind of prejudice towards paramilitary shooters you gotta expect from this crowd

That's completely false. The Recruit class is the most versatile and customizable class in the game and it's the DEFAULT class. The screaming at you component is a complete case by case scenario, that's just an unfortunate set of people you came across. I experienced the polar opposite in which it was the first game in a long time where I jumped into a public game that people worked together to achieve a common goal.

Also expecting a singleplayer game to teach you how to play with other people over the internet is just bananas no game has ever done this.

Personally I 3 stared every single player mission within literally less than 90 minutes which was enough points to buy me 7 operators and almost afford an 8th. Then I "watched" the tutorial videos aka opened and skiped them for more free currency and got my 8th character. Then within an hour of playing with my buddies I had unlocked 2 more characters. At this point I had 5 attackers and 5 defenders making it literally impossible for me to play a recruit.

If you completely skip the EXTREMELY easy tutorials (which give no more renown for harder difficulties and take like 3-5 minutes each on the easiest) and don't watch the 3 videos for free points or buy all 10 attackers and no defenders then yeah you will be stuck playing recruit a lot. On attack Recruit has almost 0 penalty to play (you literally only get 1 less camera bot thing) and on defense the worst penalty is having only 1 wall fortification which in all honesty my team rarely ever uses all 10 we get in the first place because fortifying every wall is not always the best situation.

As for real money each gun has like 8 skins and like 2 or 3 of them are money only. YOU CAN NOT BUY OPERATORS OR WEAPON ATTACHMENTS. You can literally ONLY pay money for skins (some of which are actually renown only). So if a game is f2p trash because you want to paint your gun with some retarded plaid pattern then I don't really know what to say. Most of my friends who played a bit more than me had every operator in game as well as all the attachments they wanted within the first week and are now banking more renown than the "dlc" characters could ever cost.

Did I mention that all dlc is totally free? That is 8 new characters and at least 4 new maps with each character having brand new guns as they belong to new CTUs. Also as far as people being assholes, its an online game if your going to say "people might be mean to you" as a con then you have to be truthful and list that as a con for every online game ever made and that will ever be made as long as there is any form of chatting. (Even if you can't chat people find ways.)

I saw a AGDQ speedrun of Splatoon and was surprised it had a decent single player mode, with boss fights and everything. While that game is multiplayer focused as well. Why can't other companies do this the way Nintendo does?

But I agree with most people here; when you look at the potential hours of entertainment you get out of these multiplayer games the price is absolutely justified. Battlefront lacks content as well, but I had my fair share of fun with it, same goes for vanilla Destiny. Both games could've been a whole lot better, but getting more then 30 hours of fun out of it is more than I get out of most single player focused games.

Those 10 dollars/euro's per hour I spent on The Order 1886 for instance... damn

I see your point, but the expectation from a modern military shooter is a metric fuckton more than what people would expect from Splatoon. They would've been far better off to have just reduced the price to $40 or simply have more multiplayer content.

The problem with Siege isn't the lack of single player it's the lack of multiplayer. It simply doesn't match up to other products on the market in terms of a content and features to price ratio. Ubisoft is a company that is capable of competing with the other big boys who develop large shooters. If they want people to look at their product in a positive light they need to equalize or better what's currently available. If they don't want to do that by adding singleplayer content they needed to have added more multiplayer content or reduced the price to make up for it.

The expectation that a shooter must have both singleplayer and multiplayer modes otherwise it's not worthwhile is dumb. However a multiplayer only game needs to have MORE multiplayer features and content than comparable games that have singleplayer.

Siege does not and that is where it fails. Also Uplay.

That's still highly debatable. The margins on the boosters are so insignificant that there is virtually no incentive to bother with the 'cooperative boosting' mechanic. In the grand scheme of F2P mechanics being introduced into full price games, R6: Siege's is one of the least objectionable. One might equally argue that DotA 2's compendium point boosting, which uses similar mechanics, is more egregious that Siege's - and yet DotA is typically held up as the gold standard of F2P games.

Regarding the Renown (in-game currency) boosters, I have never, in all the matches I have played, encountered anyone pressuring me to get a booster. As others have stated, Ubi really does not give you much incentive to use these if you are even a moderately decent player.

After completing all of the Situations and "watching" the Tutorials, I had enough to buy around 6 operators. After less than 1 week of playing about 2-3 hours per day, I was able to unlock all of the operators. I have also unlocked most of the weapon attachments, and currently have about 5k+ Renown "in the bank". I have not purchased any of the weapon skins.

Sounds like the same thing with MGSV post release patches, the crew came up with crazy doomsday scenarios that didn't seem to mirror reality. That said, not really into a full priced game with multiplayer only, and heavy on micro-transactions.

Well, like most people have said in here - it's not "heavy on micro-transactions". Some of the weapon skins are for cash, but that's about it. Certain game critics have blown the issue up for no reason. It's closer to Gears of War Judgement, as in having some paid weapon skins. It doesn't affect gameplay, unlike Halo 5 and its Warzone or Mass Effect 3/Battlefield 4 and their lottery packs.

The game isn't heavy on microtransactions. It's not perfect and may not be worth a full game price but to call it f2p is such a disservice. It's my favourite FPS since COD MW2. As other's have mentioned, the renown becomes pointless FAST. The worst thing is you can pay for boosters which quickly become pointless. There is no pressure to purchase them or anything else for that matter. It's a 5 star game for me, as someone who isn't bothered that there's no campaign.

I've played 70+ hours at this point and will keep going. It's quite upsetting to see people agree with the staff just because it's the staff of GB. I know an opinion can't really be wrong but Jeff is pushing it very, very close!

its funny how jeff criticizes R6s micro-transactions yet seemed okay with the WAYYY worse ones in advanced warfare(the paying for a DICEROLL for a much much better weapon in multiplayer) i felt i was forced to pay for the dicerolls to remain competitive in that game whereas rainbow i never even felt the need to spend any money.(i am not the only one to think this about AW people on PC who go 39-7 a game feel the elite variants were way overpowered as well).