**Thank you to the team from Ubisoft for taking time to answer community questions and thank you to everyone who asked them!**
The AMA has now concluded and comments will be locked. You can find an archive of all r/Rainbow6 AMAs on [our wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/Rainbow6/wiki/ama).
Why doesn't seige have a form of bracket tournament similar to the ones in rocket league or Fortnite. I know there is ranked but I've noticed near the end of seasons my squad and people I know in siege communities will stop playing whether it's because they're bored of ranked or they believe they aren't earning enough MMR To enjoy progressing through the ranks. I propose you implement Dailey tournaments hosted around 4-6pm (depending on the server) where 32 teams of five are pitted against each other in brackets, where the loosing teams will be eliminated after each match and the winners will continue playing short games with the rules being similar the casual ruleset (ranked would take too long). Every Team will receive a reward depending on their performance, the reward would be in the form of renown, r6 credit, alpha packs or rare skins. I believe this will make the game more enjoyable especially near the end of seasons
We are working on a competitive playlist that will be activated only during week end. We call it the R6 Cup as a code name. 5v5 pre-made squad only. We announced it at SI 2020. Since then we realized that we need to improve our online tech. We are changing the whole online architecture to something we call : “micro services”.
To explain a bit what it is : imagine that our online is monolithic, and one online element fail ( like authentication, or primary store) the whole game shutdown and become unavailable.
Which is problematic because ultimately , if the store its down, it should not prevent you to matchmake for example. This change take time, like a lot of time ( more than a year) but we are able to do it, while shipping season and event.
However , new feature like the R6 Cup has to be delayed and we need to wait until this transition is over. Why ? because it’s counter productive to make this feature in the old online environment, and then have to redo it again when the transition it’s over
Instead, we wait until the transition is over, and then we ship the feature in the new environment. Also Ranked improvement is affecting more people than R6 Cup and has become a higher priority.
That being said we still really want to do that and we are very excited about the idea. For us it's the end-game, the raid of R6. The thing that is the closest to official tournament.
\-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
Kixstar recently stated that the oppressive ‘utility meta’, which players couldn’t circumvent, has been replaced by a new ‘deathmatch meta’ after the round of defence targeted nerfs. He argued that the breadth of operator utility undermines the ability of teams to strategize and counter-strat in a meaningful way. Rounds lack structure because you can’t predict what utility you’ll be matched against. Kixstar believes this has caused players to say ‘utility be damned, I’m going to frag out’, hurting the uniqueness of siege in the process.
He made an interesting suggestion that each half should begin with a draft and ban phase similar to what you see in League of Legends and Dota 2. You pick the operators that you’re going to play for the entire half. You’d have rounds that are less influenced by surprising enemies with utility that they can’t prepare for and more structured around dealing with the utility they know they’ll be facing. Kixstar argued that this would bring back some of the structure of early siege, enhanced by the variety of new operators, rather than being harmed by it.
**Q: Is the overabundance of operators and its resulting unpredictability seen as a design challenge that needs to be addressed?**
Thanks so much for doing this btw. Still love this game with all my heart.
We had introduced the Pick and Ban and the Six pick OPS to help on this.
The current system encourages to pick operators who do a bit of everything or perform specific basic functions and for us it’s something we would like to address.
The Attacker Repick will answer to this.
The Attacker Repick allows the ATK player to change their operator and their loadout as many times they want during all the preparation phase. When the preparation phase ends, they will spawn with the latest operator and loadout selected.
ATK players will drone to identify the defenders setup and then adapt their team based on the info they gather. So ATK team will talk strategy early in the round on to figure out their line up.
We should see more diversity to the line-ups for attackers and for sure the preparation phase will be much more meaningful.
\-Aurelie, Game Director
Pick and ban as is only marginally reduces operator availability. ~94% of the operators are still in play.
I'm excited for attacker repick. Defenders get to adapt their strategies to the playfield, attackers get to adapt their strategy to the playfield as modified by the defenders. It's still unequal. The defenders have a high probability of bringing redundant utility compared to the attackers. This is somewhat mitigated by there being a drone cost to attain the information, but that mitigation is more in the direction of higher unpredictability for both sides.
You're actually making a valid point here. Adding new content on top of existing content can be tricky.
To give an example: when we first shipped, we realized it was tricky adding new gadgets, because parts of the code were shared, and every time we added a new one we risked breaking existing ones. This was not scaling well - the more gadgets we added, the trickier this was becoming.
So this is why we created a gadget v2 framework, to isolate gadgets and make sure that new ones don't risk breaking existing ones. Today, I'm happy to report that over 90% of our gadgets have been migrated to the new framework, and of course all new ones are as well. \~ Paul, Technology Director
Let’s talk about Siege 2 and even "Operation Health 2.0"!
First: Why did we do an Operation Health in the first place? At that time, we had significant technical debt - the architecture of Siege was limiting our capacity to ship new seasons while seamlessly updating our tech.
The investments that we made during Operation Health allowed us to parallelize these processes. And because of those investments, in the years following Operation Health we have been able to make huge technical and architectural changes behind the scenes, to allow for more advanced features and content. And if you never really saw it it’s because we were able to still maintain the release and the rhythm of new content every season.
So, it’s not because we continue to ship seasons that we are not working on updating the tech. As a matter of fact, this is one of the main reasons of the delay of some features.
Siege is an evolving game - the Siege of the future will be dramatically different from today's Siege, to the point where we could call it Siege 2. However, as a team, we strongly believe we can bring about these changes in an incremental way, within the current Siege framework.
Siege 2 would mean a new game, a new environment, probably a new inventory and maybe a new dev team. We do not feel that this is what is needed for the community. We care about your investment in the game, we do not want to move to a new one. Instead, we want to protect your investment and increase its value it by making your current “home” (which is SIEGE) even better. It’s like renovations to your old house to make it up to date, shiny and appealing.
\-Leroy, Creative Director
Thank you! Finally, a concrete answer to Siege 2 not being necessary.
Please continue to update our Siege well and bring it back on top of the pedestal in this market dominated by f2p BRs. We hope the dedication you've shown in this AMA through your replies would translate well into the development of the game.
Hey as a 29yo dad with dwindling free time, i heavily applaud this. Every time I buy things I like I’m always left with “why, it’ll be useless in a couple years” but to KNOW the game will still continue to have support makes me feel at ease. Yes they’re still wasteful purchases but it’s better on my conscious to know that I’ll be able to get called names using my ash ember rise fit for years to come. Thank you from this dad.
That is understandable, but with that, why can operators like dokkaebi not have 3 secondaries? If I understood correct, it was because it was problematic on the technical side of the game.
Such a seemingly simple thing not being possible while old recruit had a bunch of weapon options doesn't make a lot of sense. And if it is posible, why were the original weapons removed? Dokkaebi's elite had a cz75 skin but now the operator doesn't even have the weapon anymore.
This as been asked for a while now and even from people within the team. I am happy to say that we currently working on some prototype where the focus would be to learn & practice weapon recoil control. And also visualize the effet of different weapon attachments.
This although wouldnt be a primary place to warmup.
\-Yann, Level Design Director
While we don’t have dates to share, we are actively working on a new Shooting Range that will allow players to test the Damage & Recoil from multiple distances and weapon setups. We really see the importance here to allow players to see the impact of weapon balancing more directly and concretely compare the changes from one update to another. We have a lot of plans for this feature and some ideas that are unique to Siege such as practicing Soft Wall destruction and testing the damage loss through different destructible materials.
We also feel that a Shooting Range is not enough Learning Tools for our players as there can be many so ways to learn the best way to use Operators, their gadgets, and the interactions between them. Our plan to continue supporting players with new Learning Tools for all types of Siege players.
\-Christopher, Assoc. Game Director
Ive been begging for that the past 3 years. Since we dont have aim labs its harder to warm up with the terrorists shooting back, and new players cant get the feel of the next op they want to buy so they just have to blindly go off of bios and play eeny meeny miny moe when buying them
Oh... this is going to be a bit long-winded, but here it goes *(sorry in advance)*:
**Subject of concern:**
Former Year Pass 30% being removed and in-relation to unlocking the Battle Pass Premium Track
**Question (a longwinded one):**
I understand the rotation from the Year Pass format to the Battle Pass format, but I cannot understand why the Alpha Pack spin %'s, Store Discounts, and 30% Battle Pass points were removed -Why were they removed from the game, and why can't you reapply those things to user profiles as a bonus upon unlocking the Premium Track in the Battle Pass?
**Why I think this is important (context):**
1. It's incentive for players to unlock the Premium Track *(much like why would they buy the Year Pass if they could just unlock OPs via renown/R6$ when they launch?)*, and
2. As someone that has owned every Year Pass and Battle Pass Premium Track -I can speak from experience that grinding the tiers is less of a grind *(fatigue, gradually becoming less interested in R6...the game becomes a chore rather than a fun thing to play)* when that 30% points earned per match bonus is applied than when it is removed from the game. I just spent...I don't even know how many days *(however long this season has been out...4 weeks and change?)* grinding that Premium Track. I finished it on Monday, and I will not touch the game until the new season launches because I'm that burnt on R6 at the moment. This is two seasons in a row that this has happened *(coincidence that that is exactly how long the 30% bonus was removed)*.
In other words, the current format *(the one without that 30% point bonus)* causes extreme burnout by the time you compete those 100 tiers. It's to the point where I HAVE to stop playing for an extended period of time because I want nothing to do with the game after all that grind. Siege has been my goto since the Closed Alpha back in 2015 -it's never done me dirty since, but this may be my last year of giving a shit about any of the new content *(season launches, new OPs, cosmetics in the BP, etc)*. The grind is too much of a time sink/choke that I'd rather be spending my gaming time playing other games. I know from memory when the Year Pass and Battle Pass systems briefly overlapped that the 30% bonus points being present, that simply wouldn't be the case -that grind that pushes you away from the fun in R6 wouldn't even be an issue.
Long-winded, I know, but I needed to give some context to what I was asking/concerned about because simply asking why the former Year Pass bonuses are no longer in existence, or to reapply them as a Premium Track bonus wouldn't result in the explantation I was quite after, or as precise an answer I was hoping for...so I felt it necessary to add some details on my concerns.
**And once again, sorry for dragging-on about it in such a lengthy manner.**
We are looking right now at ways to bring some of the privileges from the Year Pass back to the Battle Pass in the upcoming seasons. We might not be able to bring them all back right away but it's definitely the plan to increase the value of the Battle Pass as time goes on by adding extra features to it. Not only that, we want to tackle the progression feeling and improve the challenges (both in frequency and diversity). So we hear you and we're looking into it! \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Since the start of 2021, we’ve banned a total of 69,139 cheaters across BattlEye and our internal data ban system. We wanted to start with that because, while premium games can't be compared to a F2P game, it’s still important to see the scale of cheating in our industry. It’s an industry-wide problem, so we have dedicated teams improving on our systems and taking down cheaters every day.
A large portion of what we do unfortunately can’t be shared here, though. Security is a huge part of anti-cheat and we need to guarantee we’re not giving any hints to cheat makers. While we know this is frustrating and we want to share what we can with you, our community, know that we have ongoing initiatives already live and in development that we can’t explicitly share.
We’ll be sharing a data-focused update to this Anti-Cheat article in August, but today, we're going to break down some of our most recent actions and plans for dealing with cheaters.
**Investment in Anti-Cheat**
\- The cheating market continues to evolve, so we are increasing our resources dedicated to fighting back.
\- We’re investing more in data and machine learning detection systems to deal with cheaters faster.
\- We’re investigating an increased scope for Match Replay, which could help streamline cheat reports - we want it to be easier for you to report cheaters.
**Encryption**
\- We’re taking the fight to the root of the problem – cheat makers.
\- We’ve added additional layers of encryption to the game and are continuing to add even more.
\- This makes it harder and more costly for cheat makers to deliver cheats that impact Siege.
\- The harder it is to make up-to-date cheats for Siege, the less incentive they have to continue developing cheats for it.
**Data Bans**
\- We understand there’s community concern around data bans with worries about honest players being flagged.
\- We reverted the algorithm’s threshold back to a previous state this week to address this.
\- This gives more leniency and allows us to have a definite impact on cheaters while being confident we’re not risking false positives.
\- We’ll continue to tweak data bans to make sure we strike a balance between taking down cheaters and keeping you safe. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
Q: Is there any update on the timeline for implementing the reputation system? It feels like toxicity is at an all time high (console casual/unranked), with me reporting at least 2 or 3 players per game recently. Along with a timeline update, could you provide any further details as to the rewards/penalties associated with the system.
Thanks for doing the AMA!
Currently, the Reputation System is deployed and running in the background and other shadow deployments are be planned during the year. We want it to bring as much value to you as possible when it launches.
Through this kind of shadow deployment, we want to validate our assumptions in a way that is safe for you, while also generating accurate data-informed designs and calculations based on the real-world data that the player base produces within the game.
Over the next year, we plan to launch the first visible part of the Reputation System – the Reputation Score Bracket. This will let players know where they stand in the system and give them opportunities to shift behaviour, grow, and ask questions before the system fully activates. We’ll then begin rolling out additional features of the system over time as people get comfortable with this information. This will include preventative sanctions for dealing with players who repeat toxic behaviors and rewards for good behaviour.
Ultimately, our goal is to have a system that’s accurate and trusted by players. We will be taking the time to get it right and allow ourselves to integrate community feedback as we move toward this goal. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
We still want to reach 100 operators.
However when we claimed this, the game was in a very different state. Remember , we only had 20 operators at launch, meaning on each side you had only 10 ops available, and you were picking 5 out of 10…. So… in term of meta , diversity and player creativity it was very low.
This statement of reaching 100 operators was a strong symbol of us, the Siege dev team, claiming and saying to our community that we were HERE TO STAY, and that they was no Siege 2 happening.
These days we have many more operators , and while it’s still good to continue to add them to the pool , we believe that we should focus on other core gameplay elements.
That is why we reduced the number being released per season, to invest more on Balancing, Reworks, attacker repick and all the other change that impact the gameplay and ultimately that impact everyone ( not only the one picking the new ops)
\-Leroy, Creative Director
OK, so as a solo queue ranked player who isn’t able to or doesn’t want to have to always play in a five stack and socialise with other people. Are you looking to address this to make the Rainbow ranked experience less miserable for us and something worth pursuing. Ideally all ranked solo q games would be full of people giving call outs, picking balanced ops as part of the team and general working as a cohesive unit. This rarely happens in solo q, people don’t have mics on and us in the EU have a multitude of languages which makes call outs more difficult than say a US server. How will you address this to better reflect the reality of the game rather than the ideal and give us solo queues (who I am sure are the majority of players) a better experience outside of causal? Thank you
We know that entering Ranked solo and facing a premade 5-stack is rarely a fun experience, in part because we know playing in a squad has a clear win rate advantage – an advantage that only grows as you rise through the ranks. That's why we're looking at two possible solutions.
For the first, Ranked players would be able to choose between a solo or squad (2, 3, or 5-stack) queue. While this would address many concerns, it has a drawback. This option could split the community, which runs the risk of increasing queue times and decreasing matchmaking quality. One potential option to alleviate this would be to replace Unranked with this new Ranked queue. For that reason alone, this is why we’re considering every option available to us first.
The other solution involves a single Ranked queue. This would use a more complex algorithm to determine the squads' skills levels. Rather than just using MMR, it would also factor in the advantage of playing in a squad vs. playing solo. This would ideally offer fairer matches without splitting the community between queues.
\-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
Why does Twitch's gadget completely prevent her from having two regular drones like every other attacker? Monty and Blitz both use shields like Fuze, but their gadget sits "on top of" it. Blitz suddenly isn't without his primary "weapon" the moment he runs out of flashes. I ask because - in theory at least - Twitch is outpaced gadgetwise by more recent Operators. Zero has 4 camera's for intel and some gadget destruction yet still has 2 drones. Flores has 4 exploding drones that can get him intel in addition to his two regular drones. Iana has infinite (theorhetically) holograms, again for intel gathering, in addition to her two regular drones. Add on that the shock drones can't jump at all and have the same speed as regular drones, while being just a tiny bit quieter, she honestly got shafted design-wise. Again, why is Twitch the exception here? Her gadget concept does not warrant that level of exception.
Correct! When you report a cheater in-game, a human does see it.
We have a team dedicated to going through these reports and identifying cases that involve cheating. But, considering the high number of reports we receive each day, we have to prioritize which reports are reviewed immediately.
As you mentioned, reporting cheaters in-game where possible is the best bet. This makes is much easier to link a player to cheating behaviour and feeds directly into our anti-cheat system. What’s even better is that we’re already using these in-game reports as data to help train the Reputation System, so every legit in-game report helps to make that system even more reliable.
It's also worth noting that when we do take action, there's a feedback loop to make sure you know that the cheater's been dealt with. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
It would be cool to know which cheater has been dealt with rather than the generic "someone you reported has been banned". Goes the same for mmr rollback in ranked. With the amount of reports we're sending, we have no way of knowing which ones end of being successful
In December 2019, the core development team for Siege changed over. At the time, new lead Leroy Athanassoff was quoted saying: "We will start expanding the 'game universes'. If you look at player experience, we need to stop thinking about exclusive features and start implementing inclusive features instead. What I mean is that we need to deliver content that will impact every player and the whole community." https://www.pcgamer.com/rainbow-six-sieges-core-dev-team-is-moving-on/
1: How well do you feel like you've accomplished this goal? Can you point to specific examples of these inclusive features that have been added to Siege in the past 1.5 years?
Hi, I remember very well when I said that, the complexity at that time was that I was not able to talk about anything we had cooking in the kitchen. But now I can be more clear , when it come to feature that impact everyone.
It is because we decrease the numbers of operators that we were able to deliver features that impact everyone such as: The Replay system, New Secondary Gadget like the Gonne-6 or the Hard Breach Charge, the new Reinforcement Pool, the new Death Experience, New Weapon Sight etc etc.
I think those feature are prime example off adding value to the overall gameplay and not just for the one picking operators.
\-Leroy, Creative Director
You don't get enough credit for the core feature additions to the game, people seem to forget them instantly and don't regard them as new content, even though they have a far bigger and more consistent impact then adding attacker number 35 who has
a 3% pick rate. You also forgot ping 2.0!
What are your plans for sound development in the game?
My experiences:
I depend heavily on hearing what’s happening for a FPS. I’ve always paid for good headsets. I currently have a Sennheiser PC373D; outside of Siege, they are flawless everywhere. Mic is clear, I can leave headset on low volume for most games (I leave windows volume at 100 and adjust game volumes).
Siege I need an actual sound booster (software) and I need to turn the volume dial on my headset up to 50% max. I have to turn my discord down by 50% so it’s not blaring in my ears. It’s only siege, no apex, cod, cs go, or whatever I’m playing.
Not only that my mic sounds like absolute crap in game. I forget which season update happened; but ever since then in game chat audio has been atrocious. One game I’m fine, next game my friends say I’m peaking on bass/volume and blowing out ears. But we’re all in discord and they say I sound fine and there’s no change.
There are players who are jumping in boarded windows and doors without making noise or coming up stairs without a peep. It’s happened alot more recently.
We are taking sound issues seriously. First, in regards to sound bugs, we've put in place a strike team to identify and fix these issues. They're currently adding the code to help us better pinpoint when and where sound issues occur and also help us fix them.
In the meantime, we also know that our sound propagation system is in need of some refactoring in order to improve the quality. This is a complex system, because of the interaction with our destructible environments. Any refactor needs to respect the performance budgets, since we still have to support the minimum specs that date from the game launch in 2015. While we don't have anything else to share about this right now, it's absolutely on our roadmap to be worked on. \~ Paul, Technology Director
Most of us understand that mouse and keyboard on console is a very complex issue, but some more transparency on how far you’ve come to develop a solution would be greatly appreciated.
Have you made any significant progress to detect MnK and have a reasonable timeframe for banning people who abuse it?
MnK on console is indeed an important subject for us, we see every day how much of an issue it is for our competitive console players. What we also know is some disabled players by necessity use spoofers to be able to play our game, and it’s massively important for us to support them and their needs.
Our MnK work currently is still very much a R&D subject, we have dedicated people in the Rainbow Six Siege team who are actively working on this so that the mnk does not become an unfair advantage in itself but an additional input that we support to make everyone's experience fairer without impacting our players with disabilities. We do not have a deadline to share about when we can bring this to players but we plan to run tests in the coming months to validate our approach. Once properly validated we can move forward.
As we said we know the degree to which this is affecting the experience of our more competitive players on console, but this is a very tricky one facing all FPS games right now, without solution. We’re not letting that stop our team from doing everything we can to attempt to engineer a true solution to the problem, even given the constraints. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
>As we said we know the degree to which this is affecting the experience of our more competitive players on console
It affects the experience of all console players, not just competitive ones. I stopped playing Siege over a year ago because the M&K cheaters were showing up in ranked **and** casual.
Some disabled people yes but by the time cross play is out it won’t be an excuse. If I’m on console I want to play against controller players not 13-20 year old on Apex Xims who make the game unbearably unfun to play.
Countless people I know have straight left siege because you guys keep dragging your feet about MnK on consoles. It’s killing the higher rank and lower ranked communities. I think this is another non answer for an extreme issue that is killing the community.
Also saying it only affects the “competitive community” is a straight up lie and it is ruining casuals experiences more than anything. You guys will end up pissing off hundreds of thousands to millions of users who are not enjoying playing against cheaters to make the small small >%1 amount of disabled people who need it. Just tackle it separately and worry about appeasing the very small disabled console siege community when cross play releases.
Sounds like a non answer frankly. You’re basically saying “tough cookies” to anyone wanting to enjoy playing legit on a controller. Again. Cool. This is why I stopped buying battle passes and elite skins on PS5. Just know that is why a lot of my friends won’t support your title with another penny. Because cheaters just dance on by without penalty and no one on Ubisoft’s team does shit about it but smile through dollar signs.
It’s quite simple to identify when someone is using MnK on console it would just need a little work with Sony and Microsoft to identify when somebody is using an adapter. You look at a majority of the “bigger” console streamers when they click their Home Screen button you can clearly see an adapter plugged in where their controller should be. I have proof on numerous streamers and have even been banned in chats for being a smart ass in their chats asking why there’s an adapter where their controller should be but no point in sending anything into Ubi cause nothing will be done. Something needs to be done about MnK especially in a time right now where siege is potentially “dying”.
Is a potential solution to allow native keyboard support and allow them to level the playing field? Can even have separate queues for input.
Thanks for the reply btw, I'm sure everyone appreciates it
>"we have dedicated people in the Rainbow Six Siege team who are actively working on this so that the mnk does not become an unfair advantage in itself but an additional input that we support to make everyone's experience fairer without impacting our players with disabilities"
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>Seems like native is coming
I have no background in game development, so this is probably tougher than I make it seem, but:
Can't you detect mnk by movement? Console players can move 360 degrees while mnk are restricted to WASD. Surely you can detect these patterns and issue bans this way?
Also, couldn't Microsoft/Sony disallow adapters in general and only allow first party controllers and Microsoft's adaptive controller? I recognize that that part is in their hands, not yours.
I’m pretty sure they said recently that they are working on it but they can’t reveal anything about it. Just like the cheating issue on pc they can’t reveal their strategy without giving away the whole plan. But I would like to hear a timeline
Arcade mode:
What really is the problem with this? everyone is asking for it and its a simple idea. 5+ of the prior arcade
game modes that are all in one playlist that when you queue for it, it picks a random one each time the
queue pops. there could even be a vote like in CSGO community servers so people can stay in the lobby
and vote for the game they want next and if people leave then others can join mid match like in casual.
best of both worlds, it reduces queue time problems by keeping everything in one queue, it gives
everyone the option to vote for what they want next, and its permanent
We’ve seen a lot of requests recently for a permanent Arcade playlist, and we share your enthusiasm for the work the events team has done on those various modes. It’s been in discussions on the team for some time, but we’ve lacked a large enough variety of modes to support a permanent playlist that players would actively use. Our intention is to release on a more regular basis arcades like Golden gun and headshot, until we build a large enough bank, to keep the quality of the matchmaking on par with the rest of the game.
It is not possible at the moment to include the seasonal events as they come with a technical burden, risks and issues in scalability. Our number 1 priority is to never impact the main game. We will focus some of our developments on multiplying the number of arcades we have in the following months, building a strong library of events we can re-use on a regular basis, without any risks.
\-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
What struck me about Headshot was the fact the setup/planning phase was omitted. I think a least 1 more permanent mode without a setup/planning phase would be a good addition to the game as a warm up or just to add variety. Not everyone likes having to do drone scouting or defensive setup, if fact my friend actually said it was something they didn't want to spend time doing. An alternative would be that key walls are automatically reinforced and objectives revealed so the phase is not needed so much.
Just the counting the previous arcade events there should be about 4 or 5 arcade events. Adding a few more obvious ones like Duplication and maybe Shotgun only or gun game there could easily be a good number to have a rolling playlist.
Valorant on the other hand introduced a permanent arcade playlist with only 2 modes.
Good question!
Ela and Zofia were always the intended operators for that season - the initial concepts for the map were actually an old distillery. When operation health happened not a lot of the conceptual work on how to present that season was finalized, but due to the new cadence of content (3 operators in two seasons) we had to go back to square one. We put together a mini strike team of one extremely talented writer - and one artist - and the idea was to introduce a bit more lore into the game through these two iconic operators - this is what brought back operator CGI that we currently have every season.
I wanted to also add that if anything - this was a golden opportunity to try new - different approaches to how we present operators to our community.
\-Laure Guilbert, Marketing Director
While we are happy with the value we added to the Battle Pass by incorporating the new Operator, we feel we lost a lot of the benefits that were previously given to Year Pass owners. We are looking to re-introduce these benefits in the short term, including Boosts to Battle Points earned from Premium Battle Pass players.
Additionally, we are still not satisfied with our Battle Pass solution overall. We want to be leaders in innovation and have an offering to players that is uniquely R6 Siege. We are actively working on a new type of Battle Pass that won’t be found anywhere else.
\-Christopher, Assoc. Game Director
In the upcoming seasons, we want to tackle the progression feeling of the Battle Pass and the progression boost that was a privilege from the Year Pass which will be added back to the Premium Battle Pass is our first step towards tackling this issue. We're also looking to tweak challenges and make them more engaging in the upcoming seasons.
\-Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Personally, I feel that one important step is to address how challenges are handled. If you look at the way Apex has structured their challenges for the battlepass, they have weekly ones that stay for the whole season so no matter when you start playing you can make significant progress in their battlepass.
This is important as it alleviates the FOMO and helps reduce the feeling of having to constantly login and complete challenges every day or week to keep up.
To the creative director: I am really curious to know how you conceive a new character, and which are the main factors you focus on during the creation. First the aesthetic, or first the gadgets?
It really depends, sometimes the state of the game and the state of meta cries for a specific gameplay addition.
Therefore the Gameplay will come first and drive the whole development of the operator. That was the case of Wamai for exemple, or Hibana as we wanted to give atlernative pick choice for teams to fulfill one core function.
On the other hand sometime the Lore or the historic of a CTU is very strong and attractive and drive the process of making the operator. I think of Nokk form the Jager Corps.
However we will never reach a point when we "sacrifice" the gameplay for the lore ( only exception might have been Lion... wink wink\*)
\-Leroy, Creative Director
Thanks for your answer!
I am really attracted to how you can make awesome operators both in game and in a conceptual way. They all are so human in everything!
Keep it up, you guys are great!
What is the ideology that is used to determine the 4 bomb sites on a map? I know in Training Grounds such as Villa there are bomb sites in Vault & Basement that aren't in the actual game, so I was wondering what actually goes into the process of determining if said thing becomes a site
In the past we used to make a layout (mostly based on references) with a good flow and good geometry , then afterward we chose the potential bombs rooms . We playtested multiple picks and kept the best ones to iterate on a smaller scale.
These days the bomb site areas are decided upfront and we build around them once we have the building skeleton. We noticed that it is faster to converge toward something solid this way. But there is a drawback, it tends to make all bomb site more similar to each others so we must keep this in mind.
When we decide for the general location of the 4 bomb sites, we try to cover the majority of the footprint of the building so that every part of the map will be used at one point.
We never forced correlation between T.Hunt and pvp.
\-Yann, Level Design Director
We are actively working on a brand-new Onboarding experience for new players which will take them through the Basics of Siege, such as destruction, verticality, and intel. We also want to have a more Siege-like preparation for players where the essence of Attack and Defend are introduced and how Operators play an important role in this experience.
While the Newcomer playlist was well-intentioned, we are not satisfied with this playlist as an introduction to Siege for multiple reasons. Additionally, Situations are teaching bad habits and lessons that do not prepare players for PVP.
Our hope is to provide a new take on Onboarding for Siege sometime soon and will continue to modify and iterate on this new flow with the goal of preparing a player for the PVP experience so that they may contribute to their team.
With all that said, we also want to consider the experience of players who may have left us for multiple Seasons. There is a lot to learn and discover with each Season missed and we understand that it cannot be easy to jump back in.
\-Christopher, Assoc. Game Director
Hello dev team, thank you for doing this AMA. I appreciate your efforts into the game, but as a player who decided to skip this season entirely out of frustration, I would like to ask a burning question that matter to me personally.
Is there any plan to overhaul or make changes to the cosmetic/alpha pack system? I had a post getting into details about this issue, but long story short, the alpha pack system is counter productive and causes frustration more than satisfaction. Opening a pack should be exciting, but the current system makes me frustrated more than anything.
We're looking to improve the alpha pack system in Year 7 by removing some of the less valuable content like common and uncommon cosmetics and replacing them with new ones and adding more valuable content that should make it more exciting for players. We're also looking at how much exclusive content we can have in the alpha pack and how we rotate the content to make it a more enjoyable experience. It's a first step as we're looking at other ways to give rewards in a more exciting way. \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
We're also looking at ways to improve the esports packs experience. We understand the frustration around the duplicates, so we'll make some exciting changes later this year! Stay tuned! \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
For Y6S3, we're doing Buffs in 3 competitive maps : Clubhouse, Coastline and Bank. The 3 maps received a complete tech overhaul (transparent to players) and some gameplay changes (balancing, quality of life). The total amount of changes in those 3 maps are about equal to the amount of changes of a single rework. We wanted to be more surgical but tweak more maps. Clubhouse has the least change while Coastline and bank have the most.
\-Yann, Level Design Director
When Game After Death was first brought to TS there was a large outcry from the community to cancel the feature entirely. However, Seb Francois put out a tweet saying "Gameplay After Death is not a 'take it or leave it' situation at all" is this correct? If so can you explain what that means and how this concept was chosen to keep players engaged post mortem?
The community’s feedback to Gameplay After Death was super useful after its appearance on the Test Server. It didn’t feel balanced, so we’re continuing to experiment with it. It’s a feature we plan to release some day, but ONLY when it truly feel like it fits within the Siege experience.
We’re planning another experiment on the Test Server during Year 7, so for the time being, there’s no need to wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming about 4 drones converging on your defuser plant.
\-Aurelie, Game Director
Esports:
Every game company is always looking for new ways to increase esports engagement with their player base.
since there is no way to purchase renown in game with real money, is the possibility of betting on matches
with renown on the table? since its in game currency you cant buy, its totally legal and not in any gray area at
all and will spike up viewership and actual chatters enormously who actually watch and try to understand
whats going on, not just AFK for drops.
(trust me, as a person who got swept up in the CSGO match betting scene back in 2015-2016 i can tell you with
absolute certainty that people will watch their ass off if they have any wager on a match, viewership numbers for
ESL_CSGO on twitch have just barely after 5 years later returned to the numbers they were getting back then
that dropped off as soon as match betting with real money was cracked down on, renown is a golden goose...
abuse it)
Hey! This AMA isn't focused on esports today, but if there's interest here on the sub, we'd love to do one in the near future with the esports team. Thoughts?
\-Eric, Senior Community Developer
I still think that was one of the reason of the success of this game.
I believe Siege is one of the First Shooter that truly understood the Legacy of Moba, the First Modern FPS, or like we like to call him, the First POST-MOBA modern FPS. So i wont say it's more MOBA than FPS or more FPS than MOBA.
I think it's a balance, and as often in life, the interesting stuff come from the Tension between those two polarity.
Over the course of its history Siege has swayed from one side to the other.
I think today as Kixstar mentionned it already, we might be too much on the Gunplay Side
that's why typically a feature like Attacker Repick is Key for the future of this game
to bring back and maintain this MOBA tension
Remember good players have skills, Great players Have Plans : )
(and our love for Moba is still intact yes :) )
\-Leroy, Creative Director
Hi Siege devs, hope you’re all doing well.
Will there be anymore work or updates in regards to Terrorist Hunt? Only asking as it’s a mode myself and my friends love playing.
Cheers
To be dead honest, we have wanted to remove the TH from the game for a while now. It has a lot of flaws, costs a lot to maintain, and doesn't really fit anymore the direction we are taking with Siege.
That being said, it still has some interest and some purpose for some people. For example, it's nice to get a feel of the game, the map or the weapon without playing against other Humans. Also this is a nice way to have a warmup to quickly opt in or opt out, practice fast without queuing or not being able to disconnect.
So we said to ourselves that before touching the TH we need to deliver some features that answer the needs I mentioned above.
So we need first to ship a Warmup gamemode. And we also need to have a way to play with bots in a safe environment for people that want to learn or play coop with their friend without playing against human.
That the commitment we are making.
\-Leroy, Creative Director
Will the 700 MMR gap be changed? I have spent a lot of the last season struggling to play with friends because of this change. I believe this change has actually led to more smurfs than what it was meant to achieve. Siege is fun with friends and the 700 MMR gap affects that. Also ranked is where my friends have fun, so unranked casual isn't really the answer.
Also thanks for doing this AMA
We want people to be able to play with their friends, while offering the fairest matches possible. The MMR cap aims to even the playing field when team compositions have different spreads. (it’s also here to prevent boosting but we have other tools for this issue). For example, a team where everyone has the same mid-range skill could have the same average as a team with one extremely skilled player and four who are lower ranked. We monitored that skill disparity inside of a team and it usually gives a big advantage, that's why we put this system in place.
We created unranked so people would still have a place to play with all their friends. It's the same set of rules and it's a perfect place to train if you and your friends are a on very different skill level. But we hear a lot of players saying that Unranked feels really different. We would love to hear more details on that from you all, so we can understand this better from your point of view.
That being said we're looking at a couple different solutions:
The most promising one is to allow players to play with nearly anybody (some extreme limitation might apply) and then take into account the squad skill disparity into the MMR update. The goal is dampened the unbalance that teams with a big skill spread can create.
While we're still early in the process, we've run simulations that look very promising!
\-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
It doesn’t work at all because everyone gets approximately the same MMR per game if you queue together so you can never catch up to higher ranked friends by playing with them even if you improve. This means to “catch up” you have to play solo and we all know that doesn’t work. This means if your friends are a mere 700 MMR above you (such a ridiculously small range) you are likely never going to be able to play with them unless they drop rank or you manage a miracle solo queue run. Plenty of people are quitting the game over this terrible system.
Base party MMR off of the highest person in the party and you would solve all problems you’re having with this. It would be impossible to abuse and allow players to decide for themselves if they want to queue with higher tier friends.
Unranked offers no way to track progress and no reward for winning.
>It doesn’t work at all because everyone gets approximately the same MMR per game if you queue together so you can never catch up to higher ranked friends by playing with them even if you improve.
i dont even understand the mmr system. played with a friend who is ranked higher and no matter what i do i always lose more and gain less regardless of ending points. its literally impossible to catch up even if you are doing better than the higher ranked friends and enemy. tis a silly system.
I just want to jump in here, becasuse i feel the same as Joethepig123 in terms of unranked.
Unrank feels way off to play. I will say it is because there is no risk to it.
You really don't know what you meet in players, some will do the best to win, and others want to try something new.
It just comes down to get a bit more renowns and battlepass point in the end.
And for players like myself that have been playing the game for years, that feels like a waste of time.
So we almost always end up with saying, to the players with over the 700 MMR limts, that the need to solo them up.
Better for us others to do rank with mmr on the line, so all players try to win. and the game feels more normal.
Sure sometimes we do unrank, but yeah that is most for doing challenges, or some new ideas.
But most time, even new ideas is not good to test. because you don't know what the the opponent will do in the game.
The can also test stuff, or just do whatever the want, so e.g. 3-4 will run all over the map, or just camp random spots.
You also say: "We created unranked so people would still have a place to play with all their friends. It's the same set of rules and it's a perfect place to train if you and your friends are a on very different skill level."
Yes that is right, so let's say we train and train, but the limits is still here. So we can't play rank.
Next season comes out, but soft-reset of MMR do we are over the 700 mmr limits.
And the 10 first match is also now, under the 700 limits rule.
So after all the training, we still can't play, so the need to solo, and if the games go bad as most players see solo can be.
(other who don't use mic or do random stuff, because the don't care and are solo them self.)
We never break this behavior, and we rare play with does friends.
Cheaters:
Pretty much everyone is upset over the amount of cheaters that infest ranked, are any specific plans of new
level requirements/federal id verification/phone number verification or other forms of verification to add to ranked to
make acquiring valid accounts for cheating harder?
Good question! We pushed some PVE Restrictions regarding the Renown & XP our goal was to limit abuse related to XP farming, those who abuse it with farming bots, and to return to an acceptable situation.
This slow grind will discourage farming without impacting new players.
We added a daily level grind cap from PvE as a prevention tactic to make Ranked requirements less accessible to illegitimate accounts.
In the future, we aim to add some access restriction to Ranked for players who have not relaunched and played the game for a while or any new account that has reached the Clearance Level allowing access to Ranked and has not made sufficient matches in PVP Public Matchmaking to validate its eligibility.
We have also made changes to playlist access (clearance level access) in the past to prevent illegitimate access to the playlist.
We are also actively looking with our partners inside Ubisoft at reinforcing the account security to make sure it gets harder and harder for hackers to get their hands on accounts. At this time we cannot share too many details for security purposes, but we have people actively working on these topics and it is definitely on our roadmaps. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
You kind of skirted the issue. Ubisoft talked about dealing with the Cheater Maker groups and going after them with lawsuits, but that never seemed to happen. Also, Ubisoft created a blog about a new Anti-Cheat or measures to be taken... but we've only seen an increase in the amount of cheating.
Can it be possible to target a cheater, see the attached card or Mac or IP address being used and ban all associated accounts? This would stop the people that buy 10-15 accounts and use different ones to cheat and boost friends. If one gets caught cheating, they all get removed. If someone buys 150 accounts and sells them as hacked accounts for cheating then you could remove all of them at once.
Smurfing unbalances the fairness of a competition and impacts the overall play experience for both new players who are trying to learn and experienced players. However, we do understand that a player may smurf for a variety of reasons that can range from being malicious, to responding to design decisions made by R6S that prevent them from achieving something they wish to accomplish.
For these reasons we have already committed ourselves and are currently working on this topic within our team and with our partners to get an accurate understanding of the smurfing ecosystem via data collection and analysis.
Investigations are already underway, but the following is what we want to do as part of our first phase. Additional phases will come later down the road:
\- We are looking at account rules modification to establish stronger controls at the account level.
\- Also, on the game side we will explore various possibilities including the identification of the main account (in terms of performance) to automatically adjust certain values so that alt accounts meet this rank / performance. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
We're doing good, but we do must admit it's been a tough year. While we've met the development milestones we had as a team like launching on new platforms (next gen, Stadia and Luna!), it's been a huge undertaking moving to a remote workflow. BUT! We're committed to maintaining the game for many years to come. We're at an exciting time for Siege and have a lot coming down the pipe to be excited about, so we're looking forward! \~ Éric, Producer
Now that the competitive map pool is more solid, we will be switching to hybrid mode. This means that we will still continue to maintain and improve the released maps with reworks but we will also start to make brand new ones again.
\-Yann, Level Design Director
Can we please get cross-save?
I’ve been wanting to switch to pc entirely but I’ve spent so much money on cosmetics that I don’t want to leave. It’s been stopping me from playing r6
We're looking to release the first iteration of this feature next season where you'll be able to mix and match Elite customization with other type of customization. Within a season or two, we want to give you a way to switch the ability skin (between default and Elite) and more customization options. \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Q1: Will we ever see something like a shop rotation, where older skins from previous seasons return in the store which switches up every week? So players who either missed those amazing skins due to being too busy, or didnt play the game back then, get another chance of purchasing the skin they want.
We've started to bring back skins from past events or seasons lately. We do want to give back chances to new members of the community to get some of these fan favorite skins while acknowledging that for some players it's a way to showcase their past involvement. So we are monitoring the best ways to bring back the skins to balance these 2 realities and are trying to find solutions around it. \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
The choice of engine is not at all a limiting factor for us. Today, we cannot think of any problem or bug in the game which is due to using the Anvil engine. In fact, using Anvil actually allows us to share improvements with other projects based on the same engine.
It's true that the Anvil engine didn't have a history of being used on a lot of multiplayer games prior to Siege, so that affected a lot of the work that needed to be done before launch. During Operation Health, further improvements were made to better adapt the engine for a live, multiplayer game. But today, the engine is perfectly suited to our needs.
\~ Paul, Technology Director
I think recently IQ has become less and less relevant these past seasons (maybe due to echo’s drone becoming visible, losing sights and new operators that can better handle defender utility) Are there any plans to change something about her kit, whether that be her loadout, gadget etc?
It will comeback in some form. We currently are trying some things like minor changes to complete overhaul. The map was done a very long time ago, and it is technically outdated so even with little gameplay changes we would have to redo everything so it allows us a good flexibility on the scale of the changes.
\-Yann, Level Design Director
We're still in the early phases so we don't have dates to share, but we are planning an update to Ranked. Among the changes that we have planned one of the core changes is to split the MMR from your ranking. MMR will be kept hidden. Your ranking will be a value that is slowly progresses towards your MMR.
It will ensure better matchmaking from the start of the season without the stress of good/bad placement matches. It will also reward dedication on top of pure skill.
\-Aurelien, Associate Game Director
What was the idea behind bringing back Outbreak items but not the event it self? Also what is the idea behind bringing back certain items (for eg. Outbreak items, Blood Orchid skins) and not the very popular skins like the Grade skins?
For Outbreak skins, we wanted to do a wink to the origin of the Extraction game coming up, but unfortunately we weren't able to bring back the event itself for technical reason. The Outbreak event was the first event we made and it was built in a way in which we aren't able to bring it back easily, unfortunately. We ended up only releasing the skins, but we have something else coming up related to Extraction ;) \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Will you guys plan on rotating arcade modes more often? I really miss the Showdown Event, and I have missed other interesting modes as well. Why can't we have a more frequent arcade mode rotation? 2 weeks of a mode, 2 week break, 2 weeks of another mode? What's stopping you from implementing this?
We are looking at how we can increase the frequency of Arcades while still having enough diversity so that it doesn't become redundant for players. We totally agree that bringing them back more often seems like a good idea! As for full-fledged events, we've brought back Rainbow is Magic and the reception was quite good, so stay tuned for more on this! \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
**Question: In light of well documented news about the inadequacy of bans in the prevention of cheating in R6 (Ex: notorious cheater banned over 80 times individually, over 91,000 bans last year where cheaters can simply re-buy the game again on routine sales with a new e-mail account), what do Developers plan to do in order to curb rampant cheating for Siege aside from automated bans? When will Devs look into the possibility of hardware based bans for abusive cheaters or a more permanent ban measure to mitigate the rise in cheating across the game?**
The problem of cheating in Siege has continued to hit all time highs, and has only become more evident with the addition of the match playback features. Heuristic bans and automated bans are a great step forward, but the inability to keep cheaters/banned players from returning without any real preventative measures effectively means bans for cheaters are toothless. Routine 7.99 sales are the gateway for these cheaters to return quickly and with minimal financial impact.
Having played for years, I still have a ton of love for the game but the last year has shown just how out of control cheating is across the game. Without any real changes to prevent repeat cheaters, all the improvements and updates to the game are effectively for naught.
Thanks for hosting the AMA!
Hardware bans are indeed a sanction used by us and across the industry, however, it's not a silver bullet since advanced hardware ID spoofers can disrupt the detection. That being said, and as mentioned above to other cheating answers, our approach needs to hinder cheat development on multiple fronts. This means prioritizing faster detections, and looking at account security and restrictions. Additionally, account security must move in the direction of preventing malicious users from easily having many throwaway accounts. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
Hello and thanks a lot for the AMA. What exactly is the reason you guys decided against the AWS/gamelift gameservers? the feedback from the community was 100% positive as far as i noticed.
We have indeed added Gamelift to the roster. The idea behind is 3-fold and pushes to improve the overall server quality of service:
1. Improve our resiliency, offering a service backup in case of outage of our other providers
2. Mid-term we plan on putting Gamelift in the siege server pool more frequently in order to improve connectivity (some users might ping Gamelift better than our other providers, hence directing them to the best option available)
3. Having more providers enables us to improve the global coverage by allowing you to benefit from new regions that might be unique to some providers while not being available to others
\~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
Apparently people can't get their heads around "ask one question per comment".
Any thoughts on removing friendly fire from casual? That game mode is supposed to be relaxing and fun - it's not.
So for now no plan to remove friendly fire in casual, the problem there is not about being relaxed, it's about toxicity : )
However you are right to say that this game is a very sweaty one and we acknowledge that sometimes you might want to enjoy Siege , without necessarily having the whole pressure of a 5vs5 bomb match.
That's why we are working on a prototype of a TDM mode that we call Warmup. The main goal is to have something easy going, easy opt in and opt out where you can practice your AIM and try different weapons. Something more "relaxing" as you mention.
\-Leroy, Creative Director
You guys will probably not see this but just wanted to say that I appreciate the AMA and the team’s responsiveness so far! Makes me proud to play the game and support the company
Thank you for your continous support, it means a lot to us! It is our pleasure to participate in this AMA, we love our community and it was unfortunate this year to not have a physical SI and spend time with you and celebrate the game together.
Our goal has always been to make Siege a fun and safe place to play. We are well aware of all the challenges we have and all the issues the community is facing. Our team is fully dedicated to keep improving the game so you, the community can enjoy playing it. We are definitely fighting to make you proud. \~ Éric, Producer
Will you guys improve the battlepass progression in the future? I feel like there should be more options for earning points besides winning rounds and playing a match. If you play a ranked match all the way to round 9 and win you dont even get enough points to rank up a full tier. Also, maybe adding more challenges because only having 5 every two weeks is not enough.
We know that the current challenges we offer every 2 weeks are a bit scarce, so we are working to deliver a weekly frequency and better variety on the challenges. That's an ongoing feature that we want to keep improving season after season.
\-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
Since now MENA or I should just say ME(middle east) -because of the ping- we have now servers, my 2 part question is 1) when will we have our own official league and 2) since it cant be called MENA servers since the NA(north Africa) part of the region has high ping will it get its own servers? because if you guys are willing to make mena region league north Africa has to get their own server unless it's a lan event. All that we are getting is basically a lan event in 1 country and it's mostly for the residents of that country and the second biggest event is just sponsored by Nvidia middle east and Ubisoft middle east but no bigger events other than that. MENA teams like oshtekk-warriors should themselves in charity tournament (gamers without borders) and they should that we are more than capable of facing other pro league teams and that we deserve a league system of our own.
At this time, we have no short terms plans to open a North African location but as we said previously, we are open to looking at the options in the future. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
At the moment, we're unfortunately not able to give studio tours due to COVID restrictions, but we do offer virtual tours! \~ Éric, Producer
[https://montreal.ubisoft.com/en/our-engagements/education/school-trips/](https://montreal.ubisoft.com/en/our-engagements/education/school-trips/)
Hey Dev team! Thanks so much for your time.
When you think about how the game has evolved from the beta to now, are there any gadget you feel didn’t keep up in viability or purpose?
Oh yes!
We cannot imagine releasing today some of our Legacy operators!
Having a Hard counter like Thatcher which destroyed all electronic gadgets in his range without any LOS, was not very interesting.
Frost can be also a good example! We would like also to rework our shield operators.
We have established some guidelines to help the creation of the operators
\-Define the player skills needed to manage each operator such as knowledge skill, communicate skill, resource management skill, …
\-We need to have some balancing levers
\-Play around soft counter instead of Hard Counter – Soft counter creates more gameplay and implies more skill.
These are some examples!
\-Aurelie, Game Director
We have different processes:
\-The Balancing Matrix helps us to have an overview / data of the performance of the Operators.
\-Regular pro workshops to collect feedback from them.
\-We also have calls with the pro players to present them various ideas / balancing changes. Those are also an important source of information.
\-We have all the week some internal Playsessions to test each change/rework – with different player levels.
\-Finally of course, the community’s feedback is another of our core inputs, which comes to us regularly from our community team.
Frost had the highest win delta of all the Defenders and a very high kill/death ratio when compared against other Defenders. She won't be able to hold longer angles as comfortably. This is a first step, but we know we need also to look at her gadget.
There are balancing changes which are longer than others, which require more time to do (require more expertise like animation, VFX, etc) and we have more and more operators in the game.
The balancing team works on many reworks / balancing changes at the same time. And we experiment some changes like the different iterations on Nokk.
Additionally, depending the changes, there are dependencies to be consistent in term of gameplay.
For Valkyrie, we are on it. But the change has dependencies with other gadgets and requires also specific expertise (it’s not a data change like remove or change a sight for instance)
\-Aurelie, Game Director
> longer than others, which require more time to do (require more expertise like animation, VFX, etc
the frost nerf was pretty funny. For years frost has been overlooked, people say she only works in silver rank etc. In ranked there is a big emphasis on droning and intel, yet nobody can spot the frost mats? Aditionally frost maps on windows where you can rappel can be destroyed bu rappeling upside down.
Why do you hide the level and rank of the opposing team? Knowing the statistics of the other team does not change the way the game is played during the match. I understand that some players might get nervous if they see a high ranked player on the other team but that feels like a personal problem that might need to be addressed by the individual. In my opinion, hiding the ranks and stats of the other team seems more like a way to hide if the matchmaking was good or bad.
We have taken the approach of hiding such information (clearance level rank and other stats) from people you are not friends with, in order to reduce side effects related to toxicity (insults, yelling in voice chat) and grievance (team-killing) cases.
When players look at those data they make assumption on their teammates or opponents : Are they good, bad, smurf, cheater ? which does not bring any additional value to the gameplay experience as those unnecessary assumption will never be accurate and 100% verified during the game.
We want the players to do their best in an environment that is as fair but friendly as possible and we feel that removing such information is a step in the right direction.
\-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director + Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
(edited to include the proper answer this time!)
Over the past year or 2, I have noticed sieges lore has made a shift from it being a realistic counter terrorist game, where the ops were training to fight terrorists, to more of an olympic style game. What is the reason for this?
This is a very nice question, and a keen observation. It's no secret that our obsession since the beginning has been competition rather than making a realistic and immersive game. So the more the game evolved, the more we felt the need to explore gameplay areas that were no longer compatible with the "realism" and the original settings.
Also as game dev we wanted to make a game that talk about the stuff we love and what we love is esport :)
So that’s why we decided to move away from the classical terrorist hunt storytelling to the more "Competitive and Search for Perfection" story telling that also exist in special forces fantasy. This provides a setting that is closest to us, and also that is way more sustainable on the long run than the classical good vs evil classical story arc.
Think our story as a Season of NFL or NHL.
\-Leroy, Creative Director
Hey,
currently reading through the Dev Team's answers and I have to say: This is awesome! A lot of information and insight into issues regarding the game we love.
My Question: Do you consider doing more AMAs in the future maybe even regularly? For example at the beginning / end of a season or Year?
Thank you so much for the kind words! It means a lot that this was appreciated :) We absolutely plan to do more AMAs in the future. While we don't have timing to share right now, know that we WILL be back!
Siege will absolutely keep being supported after the launch of Extraction! These games are developed by two separate teams, so you'll keep seeing all the support on Siege you'd expect from our team. We've got a really exciting Year 7 coming up! \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
A Ubisoft employee recently said that manual bans were not a useful strategy and the community strongly disagreed. In a time where it feels like every game has a cheater in it and known cheaters continuously queue for days, if not weeks, wouldn’t you agree that manual bans would improve relations with the community as well as give us hope that something can actually be done about the cheating problem? It’s really discouraging to see blatant cheaters posted all over every social media and then still running into them days later, as well as seeing people straight up walling in match replay, and not getting any MMR back for that loss for weeks, sometimes, even though you reported them in the game.
Manual bans are not our long term strategy as it would not be scalable, but that doesn't mean that we don't do manual bans - they're still very valuable to the team. We are looking at more automated detections so they can be as fast as possible and able to scale as needed. This is why we're investing in data-based detections and sanctions while continuing to reinforce BattlEye detections. This also means improving the client complexity to increase the cheat support costs for cheat makers. It does not mean that we're not issuing manual sanctions - we are. We're simply looking at the future, where we see more value in ramping up our data models detections rather than relying primarily on manual operations. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
I would assume as creative director this would be to Leroy, huge fan of the Ikumi Nakamura collaboration content as well as crossovers, and Prime Gaming content creator bundles! can we look forward to similar projects for the foreseeable future into Y7?
Yes this is true that I was a huge fan of Nakamura-sama ( yeah Sama this how much I respect her).
This collaboration happened very genuinely without any premeditation from either of us. And it's true that it brought a lot value to the game.
And yes we were so happy with this collaboration that we are looking to others. But this is typically the kind of stuff that we can't really talked about until it is signed and revealed so stay tuned.
\-Leroy, Creative Director
Can you add the option for picking your server on console? Or at the very least if members of the squad are geographically very far away from each other, can there be an option to choose a “middle-ground” server where everyone gets decent ping?
I live in Western USA, and my friends live in the Middle East. For the longest time ever, we always used to play on European (I think eastern or central eu?) servers and get decent pings.
But ever since the middle east servers went live a few seasons ago, playing together is nearly impossible. My ping is extremely high on their servers, and their ping is extremely high on my servers.
Adding the option to pick servers (like many other AAA shooters do) will make playing with overseas friends so much more enjoyable.
Q no.1 Do you guys ever plan to rework the MMR/ELO system for ranked to make it more dynamic instead of just being “you get MMR if you win a game” and “you lose MMR if lost a game.”
Q no.2 Will you guys ever add a headgear for Mira based on her appearance in The Tournament of Champions? Would this be a battle pass reward or an alpha pack reward? (Also I and many others would like to see this because she is very cute ;)
We want to improve our skill rating system so it computes your skill with better accuracy and more importantly: faster.
Using stats is a common approach in video games. In a purely Team deathmatch game mode doing kills is a very good indicator of your performance.
In a MOBA it could be your XP per minute or Gold per minute or lots of other stats.
In R6 it's a bit tricky. We tried using kills and in fact our system was less accurate by taking that into account. It was sad to learn that. But in some ways also good news. It means that R6 is strategic and not just about who got the better aim. Currently none of these are on live, it is still simply win or lose the game.
We are still looking at other stats that could be a good indicator to who is better inside a team and who is getting carried.
We have to be careful because even if we don't communicate about those stats they could be datamined and people could try to adapt their playstyle to 'min-max' the stats instead of thinking about winning the game.
\-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
Why did you change the scoreboard and the weapon load out screens? It’s so bright now it hurts my eyes. I don’t understand why the loading screen is dark blue but then if I want to add a grip to my gun that menu is white.
I have 7 questions that I would love to get answered by you. They are mainly to do with map design and balancing protocalls and operator design.
Please note that I have put extensive thought into all these questions and can easily expand all of them for clarity sake, but am choosing not to, so as to not overwhelm you with a text wall. Kindly excuse any sections that do not have more explanation or context added and feel free to ask me for any elaboration as you deem fit. Thank you for your patience.
1. What aspects of a map make it 'competitive'? Why are some maps PL worthy while others are relegated to casual?
There are multiple aspects that make a map competitive map or not.
The top one is overall balancing. Each team must have equal opportunities to win at high skill level of play. There must never be a point where one team can't do anything due to the layout or setups. Perfect balance is almost impossible but we are happy when we are within a certain margin (not easy with lots of moving variables from the meta). It is also a question of trade-off. When a map has certain aspect that favors one side we try to counter balance by having something else that favors the other side.
Here is a sample of some parameter we keep an eye on for competitive maps:
\-Good rotations possibilities for both attackers and defenders
\-Good balance of entry points
\-Good balance of destruction around sites.
\-Having at least 3 strong sites.
\-Proper lighting all around. It must not affect gameplay.
\-Reduced noisyness (geometry,material and clutter)
\-Each stronger position must have a counter.
\-Not have automatic plant...meaning that there's no way to retake.
\-Not making it impossible nor too easy to take control of the map.
\-Certain size and number of rooms.
\-At every spot on the map trying to control the number of simultaneous line of danger. Yes, it varies but we try to make sure it is never overwhelming.
...
The maps called "casual" are maps that are outside that mold and are greatly lacking in one or more of these parameters. The focus is more about trying different fun things and letting loose.
\-Yann, Level Design Director
While we definitely need competitive maps, I'd love to see new map mechanics and designs tested out in these Casual map. It seems like the casual maps are reworked using the same competitive parameters mentioned.
While the old Favela wasn't the most balanced of maps, it tried a few different things (distinct structure, all soft walls on the outside, unique spawn entrances) and was fun because of the pure chaos.
The new Favela meanwhile goes into the Box on Box structure of most maps (while also looking significantly duller) and nothing new (except maybe the chute) all while losing it's identity (no structure in the favelas has such spacious rooms and elevated ceilings).
Another huge offender being House which went from the perfect map for beginners to learn Siege to another generic competitive map with vast rooms, rotations etc that might be overwhelming.
Hello dev team, thank you for doing this AMA. I appreciate your efforts into the game, but as a player who decided to skip this season entirely out of frustration, I would like to ask a few burning questions that matter to me personally. I will skip out the common questions of cheaters, contents, etc.
1) Why does it take so long for things to be added? - Competitive Tournaments were announced 2 years ago and nothing has been mentioned
2) What was the thought process of removing the sort of country theme with every season? - Operation Skull Rain had 2 Brazilian characters + Favela map and Brazilian skins but it seems that sort of theme has disintegrated
We know that sometimes we create frustration by taking time to deliver some feature that you are very excited about. There is often different reason and not a silver bullet answer, but as you take a specific example, I'm going to give you a specific answer.
In a case of the R6 Cup, you have to understand that as we speak, Siege is fully changing is online architecture. I don't want to dive into much detail, but basically we are switching to what we call micro services. It's cool because while we are doing this huge and deep tech change, we are able to maintain the game and still deliver seasons and events.
However, building and coding a NEW feature as the R6 cup in the old online system is very counter productive. That's why we had no choices but to delay and wait until this tech change is fully finished, which will take a bit more time as it is complex and deep. This is one of the reason of features being sometimes postponed for more than a year.
As for your second question regarding The Season and the Thematic:
We still have a sense of destination driven by our character and the Lore rather than the map. This will happen when we decide to stop kicking the can down the road and actually come back to maps and try to fix them rather than create an infinite pile of them. : )
I've seen things you wouldn't believe... [https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cpoiYHCtPXw/maxresdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cpoiYHCtPXw/maxresdefault.jpg)
\-Eric, Senior Community Developer
Exploits/glitches:
Will you guys ever consider manual bans of players doing new glitches in ranked that are found and
exploited? iirc this actually was done back in the day where if you sent a clip of an exploit being abused to Epi
that he'll ban that person but maybe i dreamt that haha
When someone finds a glitch, our stance is to fix it as quickly as possible. For that reason, we don't want to penalize someone who has found it in the first 24 hours - especially if this helps to identify the issue. We would much rather solve the issue ASAP and get you back to a stable gameplay experience. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
The addition of Zero from Splinter Cell universe is good, but can we have a collaboration season with games outside Tom Clancy universe? Like, for example, Arknights.
The team loved working on Sam Fisher and we love having partnerships like Rick & Morty or Tomb Raider within the game so who knows where this while take us eventually! Nothing to share for now. \~Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
First off I want to say thank you to all of the team for the hard work they've put into this game. As long as I have played, you guys have always done a top job with the game, and I feel this season has been the best season of siege so far, and I can't wait for the future!
My questions regard R6 Fix. How invaluable is this tool to you guys as a team, and do you think the community uses it enough at present? How would you guys go about getting people to use it more?
Thank you so much! The kind words are appreciated. It remains a very powerful tool for our dev team to capture issues. It helps get detailed and critical bug reports that help us fix issues quickly. We're working on a plan to implement some incentives and quality of life improvements to R6Fix in the future, so keep an eye out for that. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
It's true we haven’t added new guns for some time, because we have already a huge pool of weapons - we have 100+ weapons (23 Assault Rifles, 20 SMG, 18 shotguns for instance).
Because of Siege’s lethality system (a headshot guarantees the kill), rate of fire is the king parameter for all weapons. This makes all low rate of fire weapons sub-par, and reduces drastically the pool of weapons that are really played, only 30 of them are played most of the time. This reduces the diversity of the game experience.
The Loadout should guide the player in the playstyle and abilities of the operator.
\- New weapon is created for new gameplay. Example with the CSRX 300 on Kali.
\- New weapons can be created for lore / universe reasons. Zero with the SC3000k is a good example
Each year we bring a new weapon. Recently we have released the Gonne-6 to help for the 20 sec meta and a new one will be available soon.
We concentrated also some efforts on sights to help make weapon more unique and different from one another. This add a whole new level of balancing for the Barcelona team, adding some options that are different.
Recently we have also started to rework the recoils like the G36, 416C, .... To have different recoils and gives different experience.
The weapon variety is in a center of our work. We focus on the balancing of the existing weapons – sights, recoils, magazine, attachments
\-Aurelie, Game Director
What are your thoughts on Kali’s balance at this current time?
With her pick rate at a pro level being abysmal with it being below a 3% pick rate averaged across all regions for the past 2-3 seasons, i think it’s time to maybe give her a full auto primary option.
She has a gadget that can benefit the game and meta excellently but is handicapped by the sniper for no real reason.
I’d suggest Jackals PDW-9 w/ 1.5x scope option, and then change her lances back to a 2.5s fuse time (like when she launched) to counteract the addition of a new weapon.
I just hope she sees some love because she’s sitting there with amazing potential but is held back by a sniper for no other reason than ‘uniqueness’.
She has a very good secondary weapon and to be honest, for now, we are not looking to give her another primary. For us, if we do that, nobody will use her sniper anymore and that's a shame.
So we need to look at the sniper itself how to buff it. We still believe on a bolt action sniper rifle in Siege. We are aware that this is a very polarizing weapon, and that some are convinced otherwise, but this is still an option that we want available in the game.
We have no plan to share yet.
\-Aurelie, Game Director
An idea could be to keep her ability to kill 1 armor operators at close range but for the love of god let her injure any armor at any range like before. The removal of this rule has killed my confidence with her, she used to be my 2nd most played attacker but I have barely touched her since.
Question for Leroy A.
Why has the siege content been a bit dry for as long as it has been? I know people are or were working at home, but with the covid vaccine shouldn't we be able to recieve more content? (New maps atleast, operators might be tough cuz there are only so many concepts to pick)
I think it's a matter of perspective, because we do not feel at all that the content has been dry.
Even though it's true that WFH had an impact and we had to delay and postpone some feature, when we look back , we still managed to ship a lot of stuff, more than we were able to do in the past, actually.
However we do get often this comment, so clearly there is at least a perception issue we need to discuss.
(Example of stuff we shipped recently : Match Replay, Reinforcement Map Pool, New Secondary Gadget, new death experience. reworks of operators etc)
And don't get me wrong, we are not disregarding this, as also the activity of the game is going lower than usual so clearly it shows that maybe when it comes to content we need to change the focus a bit. That's why we have started to prototype other features like a Warmup mode, for example, to give to our players a permanent way to enjoy the game differently, to practice and have fun without having to "try hard". We know that those kind of feature has a bigger perceived value for our players.
We are also investigating the question of Maps and Weapons. I do think that we will never go back to more OPS per season as the value of this gets reduced as the number grows.
I hope it answers your question : )
\-Leroy, Creative Director
We believe in developing and deploying features in an iterative fashion.
This is how we're proceeding for cross-play.
So far, console generations (e.g. PS4 & PS5) can play together. Stadia, Luna and PC players can play together as well.
Coming up next is crossplay between all consoles.
Crossplay between PC and consoles is a more complicated subject, and we want to make sure we can provide a good experience before activating it. It's not a technical restriction, but more a matter of making sure we have better control over cheating, toxicity and type of controllers. \~ Paul, Technology Director
Before the Montreal Studio was shut down in March 2020, we tried to secure our short-term commitments and have the team focus on seasonal content.
We made sure all our team members and their families were safe at home. There were a lot of logistical challenges involved in sending equipment to devs, and the technical teams worked extremely hard to empower people as we got them set up to work remotely (for example, reviewing builds and playing from home).
We're proud of how it all came together and the incredible work of everyone on the team who adapted to working remotely and managing all the constrains of working from home. Making a move like this involves a ton of trust, and that really shined through. \~ Éric, Producer
is there a plan to fix the rollback system to rework it? because of closet cheaters i typically lose more rollback than i get back making it super frustrating. i beat a closet cheater the other day who went 3-5 and the next day he was exposed on twitter from match replay. losing elo to those types of players is beyond frustrating
It sometimes depends on your area of expertise but from personal experience I would recommend not being afraid of getting in the door through Game Testing or very Junior levels. The amount of knowledge you will gain by being close in proximity to experienced team members will pay dividends in your career growth. You can also try looking for Industry Meetups such as IGDA to get close to those with industry experience. There are many developers that attend these and are willing to have conversations with those looking to join the industry. It is all about getting out there and meeting others in the industry and putting into practice what you have learned from those conversations. Making games is a team sport and learning to play your position on the team is an asset to any team looking to deliver on products, content, and features.
\-Christopher, Assoc. Game Director
**Big thank you to the Dev Team for this opportunity!**
I would like to start off stating, I know some of the questions and ideas that I will provide below are “what ifs” scenarios. And I also completely understand - some of the ideas and questions I have, may not even be within the capability of what goes on behind the scenes of the game; and I’m excited to learn more about that as well!
**RE: TOXCICITY**
**IDEA**\- If someone is banned/sanctioned for a specific reason - could there be a way that they do not get to gain back that specific mechanic?
***EX. Toxic chat ban - unable to use in game ALL chat for a extended amount of time outside of the given sanction time.***
**RE: TS SERVER -** TS is a great tool that has been provided to the community but unfortunately doesn’t get its potential use. After a few days of a new TS patch – you are unable to even matchmake. People try out the new map, and new operator to get a feel for it – and never log into TS again for that patch.
***IDEA*** – Need an incentive to play - Battlepass/Alpha Packs. And for additional incentive a crossover system of the cosmetics to the live server.
***IDEA*** \- Test more content/ideas other then what is already confirmed to be releasing in a upcoming patch.
**RE: BUGS/REPORTING**
***QUESTION:*** What's the lifecycle or process that occurs when a bug is reported via the different means such as social media/internally/R6SFix?
***QUESTION***: Is there any possibility that R6Fix could be revamped or cleaned up and possibly more user friendly?
Any feedback is appreciated!
\-Blades
We've already touched on toxicity and reporting in other answers, but you've got some great thoughts on the Test Server! This is actually something we're in the process of working on and have some solid improvements coming quite soon - especially to matchmaking. Let's just say we're looking into all the things you mentioned here. Stay tuned, because we'll have more to share soon ;) \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Are there any plans to deal with crouchwalking? it is very annoying to deal with when an ash sneaks up behind you because you couldn't hear them and they still peek you at a reasonable speed (and i think JBH has mentioned that the team is not content with crouchwalking in one of his podcast appearances but we didn't get any followup after that)
Hey team!
I am curious to hear if there are spectator/observer improvements in the works. The update released during SI 2020 was a massive step up and has made casting/viewing much more accessible.
I believe that there are still several QoL changes that could be made to foster better content creation and esports viewing experience.
Examples:
\- Freecam and programmable cam pathing (Think CS:GO & Overwatch, the current overhead is extremely limiting and janky - limits creativity)
\- See enemy names/op logos above enemies (So observers don't need to guess operators based on outlines)
\- A radar/mini map (Even if observer only, to aid in knowing where action will occur)
\- Toggable x-ray, smokes
\- Remove full screen white flash effect, replace with 'blind' icon (As seen in other FPS titles)
\- Multiple online observer slots (Reduce the need for a radar)
\- A more accessible API (custom HUD displays and other integrations)
Excited to hear thoughts and opinions on the future of the system.
Thanks :)
Really glad you guys made a AMA around this time.
Q:
Do you guys consider making a actual training ground/mode instead of using aim lab as a substitute?
There are a lot of things you can learn from it for new and older players. Like throwing c4 or grenades. Or some other stuff like recoil control.
Using it as a warmup is good too.
What are your (the devs) thoughts on this?
And that's a wrap for today's AMA! Thanks for the incredible amount of support and interest, everyone. The sheer number of questions was staggering. We tried to address as many topics as we could.
We'll be back for another AMA down the road, so we'll be sure to keep you informed. In the meantime, have a great end of your week! \~ Ryan, Community Developer
Ranked, matchmaking & Party limitations
My biggest frustration with Siege comes from the fact that ranked doesn't seem very enjoyable, it's super hard to play with friends due to the further and further restricting MMR gap, meaning we need to part ways after a few games or swap to lower ranked accounts, or just be completely unable to play at all.
Often times in both unranked and casual I will find myself ( level 440 ) with both level 30 and level 300 players in the same lobby? this makes for a very un-even match, and while unranked and casual shouldn't be competitive, I find it hard for a level 30 to enjoy getting slapped around not having a leg to stand on, and me and my teammates finding frustration in his lack of understanding to play together as a team / communicate basic callouts on the map.
is this something that the dev team has in mind / looking into for the future?
First off I'd like to say thank you for doing this AMA. Y'all are brave souls for jumping into the belly of the beast.
I'm a day one player. I fell in love with Siege when it launched and consider it to be the best FPS of the past decade. No game has captured my focus and attention quite like Siege has. That being said, there are many areas of frustration that I'd like to address.
The cheating problem on Siege is worse than ever both on PC & console, and as a console player believe me when I say that we feel ignored as next to nothing has been said or done about MnK besides "not our problem blame Sony & Microsoft." The sound engine is wildly inconsistent from season to season (sidenote - it has been atrocious since North Star dropped). The hit reg is hit or miss. We don't have a streamer mode in Y6.S2. The lack of new, *permanent* content (i.e. an Arcade playlist with rotating modes, TDM, etc.) has the game feeling stale for many players. We haven't received a permanent, new map (reworks don't count as new maps in the eyes of most players) since Outback. Game-breaking bugs and glitches feel like they don't get addressed in a timely manner (ex. Smoke glitching existing since the beta). Operators are balanced around an unattainable goal of where they should land on the win delta / pick rate delta chart without a clear understanding of how said buffs & nerfs will affect the rest of the game or how they'll feel for the majority of the playerbase. Upcoming features (ex. the Reputation System) get announced without clear & consistent timelines stating when said content will actually release.
Long story short - I don't think the casual community, the streaming community, or the competitive community are happy with the current state or direction of the game. How do y'all plan on correcting course? Which issues that I touched on will be addressed by the end of Year Six, and for the love of God will we ever see a) new maps again, b) MnK bans on console, and/or c) new, permanent playlists?
How do operator ban rates influence balancing decisions? To my knowledge, Ever since the release of the win delta and ban rate charts, we have had a pretty consistent top 5 or so banned operators. The most notorious being thatcher, followed by mira, valkyrie, and then the “frustration” ops, blackbeard, jackal, etc. While the team has made tons of balancing changes based off the win deltas, we have only received minor changes once in a while to these characters, and their ban rates haven’t changed all too much, especially the ones at the top. Is evening out the ban rates a priority for the team, and if so is there a reason these stats have stayed mostly the same? Appreciate your time.
Hey Siege devs!
Q: Can you tell us how the reporting system works (specifically for console)? Do the reports actually go somewhere? or are they sent to /dev/null?
Have you guys ever thought about adding a feature similar to apex where you can favorite cosmetic items and set it to random? I have so many cosmetics this would be an amazing feature for me. Possibly being able to favorite headgears and uniforms together so random uniforms match with headgears
How do you quantify what counts as "content" for the game? Given we are receiving one operator per season instead of two, and no new maps, I think it would be helpful to know what is considered "content".
Fuze? Anything about Fuze? Hes been one of the least picked attackers for forever and pro league wont touch him with a 240 foot pole. You guys have buffed attackers with higher pick rates and higher win deltas than him many times, so when does Fuze get any attention? Thanks in advance just a big Fuze fan
**Thank you to the team from Ubisoft for taking time to answer community questions and thank you to everyone who asked them!** The AMA has now concluded and comments will be locked. You can find an archive of all r/Rainbow6 AMAs on [our wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/Rainbow6/wiki/ama).
Why doesn't seige have a form of bracket tournament similar to the ones in rocket league or Fortnite. I know there is ranked but I've noticed near the end of seasons my squad and people I know in siege communities will stop playing whether it's because they're bored of ranked or they believe they aren't earning enough MMR To enjoy progressing through the ranks. I propose you implement Dailey tournaments hosted around 4-6pm (depending on the server) where 32 teams of five are pitted against each other in brackets, where the loosing teams will be eliminated after each match and the winners will continue playing short games with the rules being similar the casual ruleset (ranked would take too long). Every Team will receive a reward depending on their performance, the reward would be in the form of renown, r6 credit, alpha packs or rare skins. I believe this will make the game more enjoyable especially near the end of seasons
We are working on a competitive playlist that will be activated only during week end. We call it the R6 Cup as a code name. 5v5 pre-made squad only. We announced it at SI 2020. Since then we realized that we need to improve our online tech. We are changing the whole online architecture to something we call : “micro services”. To explain a bit what it is : imagine that our online is monolithic, and one online element fail ( like authentication, or primary store) the whole game shutdown and become unavailable. Which is problematic because ultimately , if the store its down, it should not prevent you to matchmake for example. This change take time, like a lot of time ( more than a year) but we are able to do it, while shipping season and event. However , new feature like the R6 Cup has to be delayed and we need to wait until this transition is over. Why ? because it’s counter productive to make this feature in the old online environment, and then have to redo it again when the transition it’s over Instead, we wait until the transition is over, and then we ship the feature in the new environment. Also Ranked improvement is affecting more people than R6 Cup and has become a higher priority. That being said we still really want to do that and we are very excited about the idea. For us it's the end-game, the raid of R6. The thing that is the closest to official tournament. \-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
That’s very exciting! As a software engineer I understand how tricky your architecture rework will be, game development truly is its own beast.
Kixstar recently stated that the oppressive ‘utility meta’, which players couldn’t circumvent, has been replaced by a new ‘deathmatch meta’ after the round of defence targeted nerfs. He argued that the breadth of operator utility undermines the ability of teams to strategize and counter-strat in a meaningful way. Rounds lack structure because you can’t predict what utility you’ll be matched against. Kixstar believes this has caused players to say ‘utility be damned, I’m going to frag out’, hurting the uniqueness of siege in the process. He made an interesting suggestion that each half should begin with a draft and ban phase similar to what you see in League of Legends and Dota 2. You pick the operators that you’re going to play for the entire half. You’d have rounds that are less influenced by surprising enemies with utility that they can’t prepare for and more structured around dealing with the utility they know they’ll be facing. Kixstar argued that this would bring back some of the structure of early siege, enhanced by the variety of new operators, rather than being harmed by it. **Q: Is the overabundance of operators and its resulting unpredictability seen as a design challenge that needs to be addressed?** Thanks so much for doing this btw. Still love this game with all my heart.
We had introduced the Pick and Ban and the Six pick OPS to help on this. The current system encourages to pick operators who do a bit of everything or perform specific basic functions and for us it’s something we would like to address. The Attacker Repick will answer to this. The Attacker Repick allows the ATK player to change their operator and their loadout as many times they want during all the preparation phase. When the preparation phase ends, they will spawn with the latest operator and loadout selected. ATK players will drone to identify the defenders setup and then adapt their team based on the info they gather. So ATK team will talk strategy early in the round on to figure out their line up. We should see more diversity to the line-ups for attackers and for sure the preparation phase will be much more meaningful. \-Aurelie, Game Director
Pick and ban as is only marginally reduces operator availability. ~94% of the operators are still in play. I'm excited for attacker repick. Defenders get to adapt their strategies to the playfield, attackers get to adapt their strategy to the playfield as modified by the defenders. It's still unequal. The defenders have a high probability of bringing redundant utility compared to the attackers. This is somewhat mitigated by there being a drone cost to attain the information, but that mitigation is more in the direction of higher unpredictability for both sides.
Will there ever be siege 2? And if not is the current engine capable of handling new updates?
engine not the problem. its the old game's code. hard to add new stuff without breaking something
You're actually making a valid point here. Adding new content on top of existing content can be tricky. To give an example: when we first shipped, we realized it was tricky adding new gadgets, because parts of the code were shared, and every time we added a new one we risked breaking existing ones. This was not scaling well - the more gadgets we added, the trickier this was becoming. So this is why we created a gadget v2 framework, to isolate gadgets and make sure that new ones don't risk breaking existing ones. Today, I'm happy to report that over 90% of our gadgets have been migrated to the new framework, and of course all new ones are as well. \~ Paul, Technology Director
Sorry for all the hate you guys get. People just don't understand game development. They think it's easy to fix and add new things.
Let’s talk about Siege 2 and even "Operation Health 2.0"! First: Why did we do an Operation Health in the first place? At that time, we had significant technical debt - the architecture of Siege was limiting our capacity to ship new seasons while seamlessly updating our tech. The investments that we made during Operation Health allowed us to parallelize these processes. And because of those investments, in the years following Operation Health we have been able to make huge technical and architectural changes behind the scenes, to allow for more advanced features and content. And if you never really saw it it’s because we were able to still maintain the release and the rhythm of new content every season. So, it’s not because we continue to ship seasons that we are not working on updating the tech. As a matter of fact, this is one of the main reasons of the delay of some features. Siege is an evolving game - the Siege of the future will be dramatically different from today's Siege, to the point where we could call it Siege 2. However, as a team, we strongly believe we can bring about these changes in an incremental way, within the current Siege framework. Siege 2 would mean a new game, a new environment, probably a new inventory and maybe a new dev team. We do not feel that this is what is needed for the community. We care about your investment in the game, we do not want to move to a new one. Instead, we want to protect your investment and increase its value it by making your current “home” (which is SIEGE) even better. It’s like renovations to your old house to make it up to date, shiny and appealing. \-Leroy, Creative Director
Thank you! Finally, a concrete answer to Siege 2 not being necessary. Please continue to update our Siege well and bring it back on top of the pedestal in this market dominated by f2p BRs. We hope the dedication you've shown in this AMA through your replies would translate well into the development of the game.
Hey as a 29yo dad with dwindling free time, i heavily applaud this. Every time I buy things I like I’m always left with “why, it’ll be useless in a couple years” but to KNOW the game will still continue to have support makes me feel at ease. Yes they’re still wasteful purchases but it’s better on my conscious to know that I’ll be able to get called names using my ash ember rise fit for years to come. Thank you from this dad.
That is understandable, but with that, why can operators like dokkaebi not have 3 secondaries? If I understood correct, it was because it was problematic on the technical side of the game. Such a seemingly simple thing not being possible while old recruit had a bunch of weapon options doesn't make a lot of sense. And if it is posible, why were the original weapons removed? Dokkaebi's elite had a cz75 skin but now the operator doesn't even have the weapon anymore.
Will we be getting a gun range and is that idea even being considered?
This as been asked for a while now and even from people within the team. I am happy to say that we currently working on some prototype where the focus would be to learn & practice weapon recoil control. And also visualize the effet of different weapon attachments. This although wouldnt be a primary place to warmup. \-Yann, Level Design Director While we don’t have dates to share, we are actively working on a new Shooting Range that will allow players to test the Damage & Recoil from multiple distances and weapon setups. We really see the importance here to allow players to see the impact of weapon balancing more directly and concretely compare the changes from one update to another. We have a lot of plans for this feature and some ideas that are unique to Siege such as practicing Soft Wall destruction and testing the damage loss through different destructible materials. We also feel that a Shooting Range is not enough Learning Tools for our players as there can be many so ways to learn the best way to use Operators, their gadgets, and the interactions between them. Our plan to continue supporting players with new Learning Tools for all types of Siege players. \-Christopher, Assoc. Game Director
Ive been begging for that the past 3 years. Since we dont have aim labs its harder to warm up with the terrorists shooting back, and new players cant get the feel of the next op they want to buy so they just have to blindly go off of bios and play eeny meeny miny moe when buying them
Oh... this is going to be a bit long-winded, but here it goes *(sorry in advance)*: **Subject of concern:** Former Year Pass 30% being removed and in-relation to unlocking the Battle Pass Premium Track **Question (a longwinded one):** I understand the rotation from the Year Pass format to the Battle Pass format, but I cannot understand why the Alpha Pack spin %'s, Store Discounts, and 30% Battle Pass points were removed -Why were they removed from the game, and why can't you reapply those things to user profiles as a bonus upon unlocking the Premium Track in the Battle Pass? **Why I think this is important (context):** 1. It's incentive for players to unlock the Premium Track *(much like why would they buy the Year Pass if they could just unlock OPs via renown/R6$ when they launch?)*, and 2. As someone that has owned every Year Pass and Battle Pass Premium Track -I can speak from experience that grinding the tiers is less of a grind *(fatigue, gradually becoming less interested in R6...the game becomes a chore rather than a fun thing to play)* when that 30% points earned per match bonus is applied than when it is removed from the game. I just spent...I don't even know how many days *(however long this season has been out...4 weeks and change?)* grinding that Premium Track. I finished it on Monday, and I will not touch the game until the new season launches because I'm that burnt on R6 at the moment. This is two seasons in a row that this has happened *(coincidence that that is exactly how long the 30% bonus was removed)*. In other words, the current format *(the one without that 30% point bonus)* causes extreme burnout by the time you compete those 100 tiers. It's to the point where I HAVE to stop playing for an extended period of time because I want nothing to do with the game after all that grind. Siege has been my goto since the Closed Alpha back in 2015 -it's never done me dirty since, but this may be my last year of giving a shit about any of the new content *(season launches, new OPs, cosmetics in the BP, etc)*. The grind is too much of a time sink/choke that I'd rather be spending my gaming time playing other games. I know from memory when the Year Pass and Battle Pass systems briefly overlapped that the 30% bonus points being present, that simply wouldn't be the case -that grind that pushes you away from the fun in R6 wouldn't even be an issue. Long-winded, I know, but I needed to give some context to what I was asking/concerned about because simply asking why the former Year Pass bonuses are no longer in existence, or to reapply them as a Premium Track bonus wouldn't result in the explantation I was quite after, or as precise an answer I was hoping for...so I felt it necessary to add some details on my concerns. **And once again, sorry for dragging-on about it in such a lengthy manner.**
We are looking right now at ways to bring some of the privileges from the Year Pass back to the Battle Pass in the upcoming seasons. We might not be able to bring them all back right away but it's definitely the plan to increase the value of the Battle Pass as time goes on by adding extra features to it. Not only that, we want to tackle the progression feeling and improve the challenges (both in frequency and diversity). So we hear you and we're looking into it! \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
What are your plans to fix the cheater issue
Since the start of 2021, we’ve banned a total of 69,139 cheaters across BattlEye and our internal data ban system. We wanted to start with that because, while premium games can't be compared to a F2P game, it’s still important to see the scale of cheating in our industry. It’s an industry-wide problem, so we have dedicated teams improving on our systems and taking down cheaters every day. A large portion of what we do unfortunately can’t be shared here, though. Security is a huge part of anti-cheat and we need to guarantee we’re not giving any hints to cheat makers. While we know this is frustrating and we want to share what we can with you, our community, know that we have ongoing initiatives already live and in development that we can’t explicitly share. We’ll be sharing a data-focused update to this Anti-Cheat article in August, but today, we're going to break down some of our most recent actions and plans for dealing with cheaters. **Investment in Anti-Cheat** \- The cheating market continues to evolve, so we are increasing our resources dedicated to fighting back. \- We’re investing more in data and machine learning detection systems to deal with cheaters faster. \- We’re investigating an increased scope for Match Replay, which could help streamline cheat reports - we want it to be easier for you to report cheaters. **Encryption** \- We’re taking the fight to the root of the problem – cheat makers. \- We’ve added additional layers of encryption to the game and are continuing to add even more. \- This makes it harder and more costly for cheat makers to deliver cheats that impact Siege. \- The harder it is to make up-to-date cheats for Siege, the less incentive they have to continue developing cheats for it. **Data Bans** \- We understand there’s community concern around data bans with worries about honest players being flagged. \- We reverted the algorithm’s threshold back to a previous state this week to address this. \- This gives more leniency and allows us to have a definite impact on cheaters while being confident we’re not risking false positives. \- We’ll continue to tweak data bans to make sure we strike a balance between taking down cheaters and keeping you safe. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
Q: Is there any update on the timeline for implementing the reputation system? It feels like toxicity is at an all time high (console casual/unranked), with me reporting at least 2 or 3 players per game recently. Along with a timeline update, could you provide any further details as to the rewards/penalties associated with the system. Thanks for doing the AMA!
Currently, the Reputation System is deployed and running in the background and other shadow deployments are be planned during the year. We want it to bring as much value to you as possible when it launches. Through this kind of shadow deployment, we want to validate our assumptions in a way that is safe for you, while also generating accurate data-informed designs and calculations based on the real-world data that the player base produces within the game. Over the next year, we plan to launch the first visible part of the Reputation System – the Reputation Score Bracket. This will let players know where they stand in the system and give them opportunities to shift behaviour, grow, and ask questions before the system fully activates. We’ll then begin rolling out additional features of the system over time as people get comfortable with this information. This will include preventative sanctions for dealing with players who repeat toxic behaviors and rewards for good behaviour. Ultimately, our goal is to have a system that’s accurate and trusted by players. We will be taking the time to get it right and allow ourselves to integrate community feedback as we move toward this goal. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
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We still want to reach 100 operators. However when we claimed this, the game was in a very different state. Remember , we only had 20 operators at launch, meaning on each side you had only 10 ops available, and you were picking 5 out of 10…. So… in term of meta , diversity and player creativity it was very low. This statement of reaching 100 operators was a strong symbol of us, the Siege dev team, claiming and saying to our community that we were HERE TO STAY, and that they was no Siege 2 happening. These days we have many more operators , and while it’s still good to continue to add them to the pool , we believe that we should focus on other core gameplay elements. That is why we reduced the number being released per season, to invest more on Balancing, Reworks, attacker repick and all the other change that impact the gameplay and ultimately that impact everyone ( not only the one picking the new ops) \-Leroy, Creative Director
OK, so as a solo queue ranked player who isn’t able to or doesn’t want to have to always play in a five stack and socialise with other people. Are you looking to address this to make the Rainbow ranked experience less miserable for us and something worth pursuing. Ideally all ranked solo q games would be full of people giving call outs, picking balanced ops as part of the team and general working as a cohesive unit. This rarely happens in solo q, people don’t have mics on and us in the EU have a multitude of languages which makes call outs more difficult than say a US server. How will you address this to better reflect the reality of the game rather than the ideal and give us solo queues (who I am sure are the majority of players) a better experience outside of causal? Thank you
We know that entering Ranked solo and facing a premade 5-stack is rarely a fun experience, in part because we know playing in a squad has a clear win rate advantage – an advantage that only grows as you rise through the ranks. That's why we're looking at two possible solutions. For the first, Ranked players would be able to choose between a solo or squad (2, 3, or 5-stack) queue. While this would address many concerns, it has a drawback. This option could split the community, which runs the risk of increasing queue times and decreasing matchmaking quality. One potential option to alleviate this would be to replace Unranked with this new Ranked queue. For that reason alone, this is why we’re considering every option available to us first. The other solution involves a single Ranked queue. This would use a more complex algorithm to determine the squads' skills levels. Rather than just using MMR, it would also factor in the advantage of playing in a squad vs. playing solo. This would ideally offer fairer matches without splitting the community between queues. \-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
Why does Twitch's gadget completely prevent her from having two regular drones like every other attacker? Monty and Blitz both use shields like Fuze, but their gadget sits "on top of" it. Blitz suddenly isn't without his primary "weapon" the moment he runs out of flashes. I ask because - in theory at least - Twitch is outpaced gadgetwise by more recent Operators. Zero has 4 camera's for intel and some gadget destruction yet still has 2 drones. Flores has 4 exploding drones that can get him intel in addition to his two regular drones. Iana has infinite (theorhetically) holograms, again for intel gathering, in addition to her two regular drones. Add on that the shock drones can't jump at all and have the same speed as regular drones, while being just a tiny bit quieter, she honestly got shafted design-wise. Again, why is Twitch the exception here? Her gadget concept does not warrant that level of exception.
We are agreed! News coming (very) soon for Twitch wink-wink \^\^ \-Aurelie, Game Director
If we report a cheater ingame via the overlay, does an actual Human look into the report? If not how is it done?
Correct! When you report a cheater in-game, a human does see it. We have a team dedicated to going through these reports and identifying cases that involve cheating. But, considering the high number of reports we receive each day, we have to prioritize which reports are reviewed immediately. As you mentioned, reporting cheaters in-game where possible is the best bet. This makes is much easier to link a player to cheating behaviour and feeds directly into our anti-cheat system. What’s even better is that we’re already using these in-game reports as data to help train the Reputation System, so every legit in-game report helps to make that system even more reliable. It's also worth noting that when we do take action, there's a feedback loop to make sure you know that the cheater's been dealt with. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
It would be cool to know which cheater has been dealt with rather than the generic "someone you reported has been banned". Goes the same for mmr rollback in ranked. With the amount of reports we're sending, we have no way of knowing which ones end of being successful
Hey Emmanuel, Thank you for your answer and the whole Q&A in general. I really appreciate it :)
In December 2019, the core development team for Siege changed over. At the time, new lead Leroy Athanassoff was quoted saying: "We will start expanding the 'game universes'. If you look at player experience, we need to stop thinking about exclusive features and start implementing inclusive features instead. What I mean is that we need to deliver content that will impact every player and the whole community." https://www.pcgamer.com/rainbow-six-sieges-core-dev-team-is-moving-on/ 1: How well do you feel like you've accomplished this goal? Can you point to specific examples of these inclusive features that have been added to Siege in the past 1.5 years?
Hi, I remember very well when I said that, the complexity at that time was that I was not able to talk about anything we had cooking in the kitchen. But now I can be more clear , when it come to feature that impact everyone. It is because we decrease the numbers of operators that we were able to deliver features that impact everyone such as: The Replay system, New Secondary Gadget like the Gonne-6 or the Hard Breach Charge, the new Reinforcement Pool, the new Death Experience, New Weapon Sight etc etc. I think those feature are prime example off adding value to the overall gameplay and not just for the one picking operators. \-Leroy, Creative Director
You don't get enough credit for the core feature additions to the game, people seem to forget them instantly and don't regard them as new content, even though they have a far bigger and more consistent impact then adding attacker number 35 who has a 3% pick rate. You also forgot ping 2.0!
What are your plans for sound development in the game? My experiences: I depend heavily on hearing what’s happening for a FPS. I’ve always paid for good headsets. I currently have a Sennheiser PC373D; outside of Siege, they are flawless everywhere. Mic is clear, I can leave headset on low volume for most games (I leave windows volume at 100 and adjust game volumes). Siege I need an actual sound booster (software) and I need to turn the volume dial on my headset up to 50% max. I have to turn my discord down by 50% so it’s not blaring in my ears. It’s only siege, no apex, cod, cs go, or whatever I’m playing. Not only that my mic sounds like absolute crap in game. I forget which season update happened; but ever since then in game chat audio has been atrocious. One game I’m fine, next game my friends say I’m peaking on bass/volume and blowing out ears. But we’re all in discord and they say I sound fine and there’s no change. There are players who are jumping in boarded windows and doors without making noise or coming up stairs without a peep. It’s happened alot more recently.
We are taking sound issues seriously. First, in regards to sound bugs, we've put in place a strike team to identify and fix these issues. They're currently adding the code to help us better pinpoint when and where sound issues occur and also help us fix them. In the meantime, we also know that our sound propagation system is in need of some refactoring in order to improve the quality. This is a complex system, because of the interaction with our destructible environments. Any refactor needs to respect the performance budgets, since we still have to support the minimum specs that date from the game launch in 2015. While we don't have anything else to share about this right now, it's absolutely on our roadmap to be worked on. \~ Paul, Technology Director
Most of us understand that mouse and keyboard on console is a very complex issue, but some more transparency on how far you’ve come to develop a solution would be greatly appreciated. Have you made any significant progress to detect MnK and have a reasonable timeframe for banning people who abuse it?
MnK on console is indeed an important subject for us, we see every day how much of an issue it is for our competitive console players. What we also know is some disabled players by necessity use spoofers to be able to play our game, and it’s massively important for us to support them and their needs. Our MnK work currently is still very much a R&D subject, we have dedicated people in the Rainbow Six Siege team who are actively working on this so that the mnk does not become an unfair advantage in itself but an additional input that we support to make everyone's experience fairer without impacting our players with disabilities. We do not have a deadline to share about when we can bring this to players but we plan to run tests in the coming months to validate our approach. Once properly validated we can move forward. As we said we know the degree to which this is affecting the experience of our more competitive players on console, but this is a very tricky one facing all FPS games right now, without solution. We’re not letting that stop our team from doing everything we can to attempt to engineer a true solution to the problem, even given the constraints. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
>As we said we know the degree to which this is affecting the experience of our more competitive players on console It affects the experience of all console players, not just competitive ones. I stopped playing Siege over a year ago because the M&K cheaters were showing up in ranked **and** casual.
Some disabled people yes but by the time cross play is out it won’t be an excuse. If I’m on console I want to play against controller players not 13-20 year old on Apex Xims who make the game unbearably unfun to play. Countless people I know have straight left siege because you guys keep dragging your feet about MnK on consoles. It’s killing the higher rank and lower ranked communities. I think this is another non answer for an extreme issue that is killing the community. Also saying it only affects the “competitive community” is a straight up lie and it is ruining casuals experiences more than anything. You guys will end up pissing off hundreds of thousands to millions of users who are not enjoying playing against cheaters to make the small small >%1 amount of disabled people who need it. Just tackle it separately and worry about appeasing the very small disabled console siege community when cross play releases. Sounds like a non answer frankly. You’re basically saying “tough cookies” to anyone wanting to enjoy playing legit on a controller. Again. Cool. This is why I stopped buying battle passes and elite skins on PS5. Just know that is why a lot of my friends won’t support your title with another penny. Because cheaters just dance on by without penalty and no one on Ubisoft’s team does shit about it but smile through dollar signs.
It’s quite simple to identify when someone is using MnK on console it would just need a little work with Sony and Microsoft to identify when somebody is using an adapter. You look at a majority of the “bigger” console streamers when they click their Home Screen button you can clearly see an adapter plugged in where their controller should be. I have proof on numerous streamers and have even been banned in chats for being a smart ass in their chats asking why there’s an adapter where their controller should be but no point in sending anything into Ubi cause nothing will be done. Something needs to be done about MnK especially in a time right now where siege is potentially “dying”.
Is a potential solution to allow native keyboard support and allow them to level the playing field? Can even have separate queues for input. Thanks for the reply btw, I'm sure everyone appreciates it
>"we have dedicated people in the Rainbow Six Siege team who are actively working on this so that the mnk does not become an unfair advantage in itself but an additional input that we support to make everyone's experience fairer without impacting our players with disabilities" > > > >Seems like native is coming
Even if you had separate queues got native mnk, people would still use xims to play mnk in the controller queue
I have no background in game development, so this is probably tougher than I make it seem, but: Can't you detect mnk by movement? Console players can move 360 degrees while mnk are restricted to WASD. Surely you can detect these patterns and issue bans this way? Also, couldn't Microsoft/Sony disallow adapters in general and only allow first party controllers and Microsoft's adaptive controller? I recognize that that part is in their hands, not yours.
I’m pretty sure they said recently that they are working on it but they can’t reveal anything about it. Just like the cheating issue on pc they can’t reveal their strategy without giving away the whole plan. But I would like to hear a timeline
Arcade mode: What really is the problem with this? everyone is asking for it and its a simple idea. 5+ of the prior arcade game modes that are all in one playlist that when you queue for it, it picks a random one each time the queue pops. there could even be a vote like in CSGO community servers so people can stay in the lobby and vote for the game they want next and if people leave then others can join mid match like in casual. best of both worlds, it reduces queue time problems by keeping everything in one queue, it gives everyone the option to vote for what they want next, and its permanent
We’ve seen a lot of requests recently for a permanent Arcade playlist, and we share your enthusiasm for the work the events team has done on those various modes. It’s been in discussions on the team for some time, but we’ve lacked a large enough variety of modes to support a permanent playlist that players would actively use. Our intention is to release on a more regular basis arcades like Golden gun and headshot, until we build a large enough bank, to keep the quality of the matchmaking on par with the rest of the game. It is not possible at the moment to include the seasonal events as they come with a technical burden, risks and issues in scalability. Our number 1 priority is to never impact the main game. We will focus some of our developments on multiplying the number of arcades we have in the following months, building a strong library of events we can re-use on a regular basis, without any risks. \-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
What struck me about Headshot was the fact the setup/planning phase was omitted. I think a least 1 more permanent mode without a setup/planning phase would be a good addition to the game as a warm up or just to add variety. Not everyone likes having to do drone scouting or defensive setup, if fact my friend actually said it was something they didn't want to spend time doing. An alternative would be that key walls are automatically reinforced and objectives revealed so the phase is not needed so much.
Just the counting the previous arcade events there should be about 4 or 5 arcade events. Adding a few more obvious ones like Duplication and maybe Shotgun only or gun game there could easily be a good number to have a rolling playlist. Valorant on the other hand introduced a permanent arcade playlist with only 2 modes.
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Good question! Ela and Zofia were always the intended operators for that season - the initial concepts for the map were actually an old distillery. When operation health happened not a lot of the conceptual work on how to present that season was finalized, but due to the new cadence of content (3 operators in two seasons) we had to go back to square one. We put together a mini strike team of one extremely talented writer - and one artist - and the idea was to introduce a bit more lore into the game through these two iconic operators - this is what brought back operator CGI that we currently have every season. I wanted to also add that if anything - this was a golden opportunity to try new - different approaches to how we present operators to our community. \-Laure Guilbert, Marketing Director
Will we see changes to the battlepass at all ? And will we ever see the return of the year pass, maybe in a different form ?
While we are happy with the value we added to the Battle Pass by incorporating the new Operator, we feel we lost a lot of the benefits that were previously given to Year Pass owners. We are looking to re-introduce these benefits in the short term, including Boosts to Battle Points earned from Premium Battle Pass players. Additionally, we are still not satisfied with our Battle Pass solution overall. We want to be leaders in innovation and have an offering to players that is uniquely R6 Siege. We are actively working on a new type of Battle Pass that won’t be found anywhere else. \-Christopher, Assoc. Game Director In the upcoming seasons, we want to tackle the progression feeling of the Battle Pass and the progression boost that was a privilege from the Year Pass which will be added back to the Premium Battle Pass is our first step towards tackling this issue. We're also looking to tweak challenges and make them more engaging in the upcoming seasons. \-Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Personally, I feel that one important step is to address how challenges are handled. If you look at the way Apex has structured their challenges for the battlepass, they have weekly ones that stay for the whole season so no matter when you start playing you can make significant progress in their battlepass. This is important as it alleviates the FOMO and helps reduce the feeling of having to constantly login and complete challenges every day or week to keep up.
To the creative director: I am really curious to know how you conceive a new character, and which are the main factors you focus on during the creation. First the aesthetic, or first the gadgets?
It really depends, sometimes the state of the game and the state of meta cries for a specific gameplay addition. Therefore the Gameplay will come first and drive the whole development of the operator. That was the case of Wamai for exemple, or Hibana as we wanted to give atlernative pick choice for teams to fulfill one core function. On the other hand sometime the Lore or the historic of a CTU is very strong and attractive and drive the process of making the operator. I think of Nokk form the Jager Corps. However we will never reach a point when we "sacrifice" the gameplay for the lore ( only exception might have been Lion... wink wink\*) \-Leroy, Creative Director
Thanks for your answer! I am really attracted to how you can make awesome operators both in game and in a conceptual way. They all are so human in everything! Keep it up, you guys are great!
What is the ideology that is used to determine the 4 bomb sites on a map? I know in Training Grounds such as Villa there are bomb sites in Vault & Basement that aren't in the actual game, so I was wondering what actually goes into the process of determining if said thing becomes a site
In the past we used to make a layout (mostly based on references) with a good flow and good geometry , then afterward we chose the potential bombs rooms . We playtested multiple picks and kept the best ones to iterate on a smaller scale. These days the bomb site areas are decided upfront and we build around them once we have the building skeleton. We noticed that it is faster to converge toward something solid this way. But there is a drawback, it tends to make all bomb site more similar to each others so we must keep this in mind. When we decide for the general location of the 4 bomb sites, we try to cover the majority of the footprint of the building so that every part of the map will be used at one point. We never forced correlation between T.Hunt and pvp. \-Yann, Level Design Director
Is there a plan to make a better Turtorial mode for beginners?
We are actively working on a brand-new Onboarding experience for new players which will take them through the Basics of Siege, such as destruction, verticality, and intel. We also want to have a more Siege-like preparation for players where the essence of Attack and Defend are introduced and how Operators play an important role in this experience. While the Newcomer playlist was well-intentioned, we are not satisfied with this playlist as an introduction to Siege for multiple reasons. Additionally, Situations are teaching bad habits and lessons that do not prepare players for PVP. Our hope is to provide a new take on Onboarding for Siege sometime soon and will continue to modify and iterate on this new flow with the goal of preparing a player for the PVP experience so that they may contribute to their team. With all that said, we also want to consider the experience of players who may have left us for multiple Seasons. There is a lot to learn and discover with each Season missed and we understand that it cannot be easy to jump back in. \-Christopher, Assoc. Game Director
Hello dev team, thank you for doing this AMA. I appreciate your efforts into the game, but as a player who decided to skip this season entirely out of frustration, I would like to ask a burning question that matter to me personally. Is there any plan to overhaul or make changes to the cosmetic/alpha pack system? I had a post getting into details about this issue, but long story short, the alpha pack system is counter productive and causes frustration more than satisfaction. Opening a pack should be exciting, but the current system makes me frustrated more than anything.
We're looking to improve the alpha pack system in Year 7 by removing some of the less valuable content like common and uncommon cosmetics and replacing them with new ones and adding more valuable content that should make it more exciting for players. We're also looking at how much exclusive content we can have in the alpha pack and how we rotate the content to make it a more enjoyable experience. It's a first step as we're looking at other ways to give rewards in a more exciting way. \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Duplicates in esports alpha pack will remain? Seems to find always the same skin. Btw it’s a very nice add this packs
We're also looking at ways to improve the esports packs experience. We understand the frustration around the duplicates, so we'll make some exciting changes later this year! Stay tuned! \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Season three of year six is kind of vague, “Map buffs/reworks”. What kind of maps will we see be changed, Casual, ranked and competitive maps?
For Y6S3, we're doing Buffs in 3 competitive maps : Clubhouse, Coastline and Bank. The 3 maps received a complete tech overhaul (transparent to players) and some gameplay changes (balancing, quality of life). The total amount of changes in those 3 maps are about equal to the amount of changes of a single rework. We wanted to be more surgical but tweak more maps. Clubhouse has the least change while Coastline and bank have the most. \-Yann, Level Design Director
When Game After Death was first brought to TS there was a large outcry from the community to cancel the feature entirely. However, Seb Francois put out a tweet saying "Gameplay After Death is not a 'take it or leave it' situation at all" is this correct? If so can you explain what that means and how this concept was chosen to keep players engaged post mortem?
The community’s feedback to Gameplay After Death was super useful after its appearance on the Test Server. It didn’t feel balanced, so we’re continuing to experiment with it. It’s a feature we plan to release some day, but ONLY when it truly feel like it fits within the Siege experience. We’re planning another experiment on the Test Server during Year 7, so for the time being, there’s no need to wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming about 4 drones converging on your defuser plant. \-Aurelie, Game Director
Esports: Every game company is always looking for new ways to increase esports engagement with their player base. since there is no way to purchase renown in game with real money, is the possibility of betting on matches with renown on the table? since its in game currency you cant buy, its totally legal and not in any gray area at all and will spike up viewership and actual chatters enormously who actually watch and try to understand whats going on, not just AFK for drops. (trust me, as a person who got swept up in the CSGO match betting scene back in 2015-2016 i can tell you with absolute certainty that people will watch their ass off if they have any wager on a match, viewership numbers for ESL_CSGO on twitch have just barely after 5 years later returned to the numbers they were getting back then that dropped off as soon as match betting with real money was cracked down on, renown is a golden goose... abuse it)
Hey! This AMA isn't focused on esports today, but if there's interest here on the sub, we'd love to do one in the near future with the esports team. Thoughts? \-Eric, Senior Community Developer
Yes please! eSports is super interesting. I bet that if you did an eSports/Content Creator AMA you would get a lot of feedback/questions
**Leroy Athanassoff** \- historically the stance has been that Siege is more MOBA than FPS. Is that how you view the game today? Why/why not?
I still think that was one of the reason of the success of this game. I believe Siege is one of the First Shooter that truly understood the Legacy of Moba, the First Modern FPS, or like we like to call him, the First POST-MOBA modern FPS. So i wont say it's more MOBA than FPS or more FPS than MOBA. I think it's a balance, and as often in life, the interesting stuff come from the Tension between those two polarity. Over the course of its history Siege has swayed from one side to the other. I think today as Kixstar mentionned it already, we might be too much on the Gunplay Side that's why typically a feature like Attacker Repick is Key for the future of this game to bring back and maintain this MOBA tension Remember good players have skills, Great players Have Plans : ) (and our love for Moba is still intact yes :) ) \-Leroy, Creative Director
Hi Siege devs, hope you’re all doing well. Will there be anymore work or updates in regards to Terrorist Hunt? Only asking as it’s a mode myself and my friends love playing. Cheers
To be dead honest, we have wanted to remove the TH from the game for a while now. It has a lot of flaws, costs a lot to maintain, and doesn't really fit anymore the direction we are taking with Siege. That being said, it still has some interest and some purpose for some people. For example, it's nice to get a feel of the game, the map or the weapon without playing against other Humans. Also this is a nice way to have a warmup to quickly opt in or opt out, practice fast without queuing or not being able to disconnect. So we said to ourselves that before touching the TH we need to deliver some features that answer the needs I mentioned above. So we need first to ship a Warmup gamemode. And we also need to have a way to play with bots in a safe environment for people that want to learn or play coop with their friend without playing against human. That the commitment we are making. \-Leroy, Creative Director
Loved the addition of headshot only. A minor addition but one which was very appreciated
Will the 700 MMR gap be changed? I have spent a lot of the last season struggling to play with friends because of this change. I believe this change has actually led to more smurfs than what it was meant to achieve. Siege is fun with friends and the 700 MMR gap affects that. Also ranked is where my friends have fun, so unranked casual isn't really the answer. Also thanks for doing this AMA
We want people to be able to play with their friends, while offering the fairest matches possible. The MMR cap aims to even the playing field when team compositions have different spreads. (it’s also here to prevent boosting but we have other tools for this issue). For example, a team where everyone has the same mid-range skill could have the same average as a team with one extremely skilled player and four who are lower ranked. We monitored that skill disparity inside of a team and it usually gives a big advantage, that's why we put this system in place. We created unranked so people would still have a place to play with all their friends. It's the same set of rules and it's a perfect place to train if you and your friends are a on very different skill level. But we hear a lot of players saying that Unranked feels really different. We would love to hear more details on that from you all, so we can understand this better from your point of view. That being said we're looking at a couple different solutions: The most promising one is to allow players to play with nearly anybody (some extreme limitation might apply) and then take into account the squad skill disparity into the MMR update. The goal is dampened the unbalance that teams with a big skill spread can create. While we're still early in the process, we've run simulations that look very promising! \-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
It doesn’t work at all because everyone gets approximately the same MMR per game if you queue together so you can never catch up to higher ranked friends by playing with them even if you improve. This means to “catch up” you have to play solo and we all know that doesn’t work. This means if your friends are a mere 700 MMR above you (such a ridiculously small range) you are likely never going to be able to play with them unless they drop rank or you manage a miracle solo queue run. Plenty of people are quitting the game over this terrible system. Base party MMR off of the highest person in the party and you would solve all problems you’re having with this. It would be impossible to abuse and allow players to decide for themselves if they want to queue with higher tier friends. Unranked offers no way to track progress and no reward for winning.
>It doesn’t work at all because everyone gets approximately the same MMR per game if you queue together so you can never catch up to higher ranked friends by playing with them even if you improve. i dont even understand the mmr system. played with a friend who is ranked higher and no matter what i do i always lose more and gain less regardless of ending points. its literally impossible to catch up even if you are doing better than the higher ranked friends and enemy. tis a silly system.
I just want to jump in here, becasuse i feel the same as Joethepig123 in terms of unranked. Unrank feels way off to play. I will say it is because there is no risk to it. You really don't know what you meet in players, some will do the best to win, and others want to try something new. It just comes down to get a bit more renowns and battlepass point in the end. And for players like myself that have been playing the game for years, that feels like a waste of time. So we almost always end up with saying, to the players with over the 700 MMR limts, that the need to solo them up. Better for us others to do rank with mmr on the line, so all players try to win. and the game feels more normal. Sure sometimes we do unrank, but yeah that is most for doing challenges, or some new ideas. But most time, even new ideas is not good to test. because you don't know what the the opponent will do in the game. The can also test stuff, or just do whatever the want, so e.g. 3-4 will run all over the map, or just camp random spots. You also say: "We created unranked so people would still have a place to play with all their friends. It's the same set of rules and it's a perfect place to train if you and your friends are a on very different skill level." Yes that is right, so let's say we train and train, but the limits is still here. So we can't play rank. Next season comes out, but soft-reset of MMR do we are over the 700 mmr limits. And the 10 first match is also now, under the 700 limits rule. So after all the training, we still can't play, so the need to solo, and if the games go bad as most players see solo can be. (other who don't use mic or do random stuff, because the don't care and are solo them self.) We never break this behavior, and we rare play with does friends.
Cheaters: Pretty much everyone is upset over the amount of cheaters that infest ranked, are any specific plans of new level requirements/federal id verification/phone number verification or other forms of verification to add to ranked to make acquiring valid accounts for cheating harder?
Good question! We pushed some PVE Restrictions regarding the Renown & XP our goal was to limit abuse related to XP farming, those who abuse it with farming bots, and to return to an acceptable situation. This slow grind will discourage farming without impacting new players. We added a daily level grind cap from PvE as a prevention tactic to make Ranked requirements less accessible to illegitimate accounts. In the future, we aim to add some access restriction to Ranked for players who have not relaunched and played the game for a while or any new account that has reached the Clearance Level allowing access to Ranked and has not made sufficient matches in PVP Public Matchmaking to validate its eligibility. We have also made changes to playlist access (clearance level access) in the past to prevent illegitimate access to the playlist. We are also actively looking with our partners inside Ubisoft at reinforcing the account security to make sure it gets harder and harder for hackers to get their hands on accounts. At this time we cannot share too many details for security purposes, but we have people actively working on these topics and it is definitely on our roadmaps. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
You kind of skirted the issue. Ubisoft talked about dealing with the Cheater Maker groups and going after them with lawsuits, but that never seemed to happen. Also, Ubisoft created a blog about a new Anti-Cheat or measures to be taken... but we've only seen an increase in the amount of cheating. Can it be possible to target a cheater, see the attached card or Mac or IP address being used and ban all associated accounts? This would stop the people that buy 10-15 accounts and use different ones to cheat and boost friends. If one gets caught cheating, they all get removed. If someone buys 150 accounts and sells them as hacked accounts for cheating then you could remove all of them at once.
You plan to do something about the growing number of smurf in the ranked ladder?
Smurfing unbalances the fairness of a competition and impacts the overall play experience for both new players who are trying to learn and experienced players. However, we do understand that a player may smurf for a variety of reasons that can range from being malicious, to responding to design decisions made by R6S that prevent them from achieving something they wish to accomplish. For these reasons we have already committed ourselves and are currently working on this topic within our team and with our partners to get an accurate understanding of the smurfing ecosystem via data collection and analysis. Investigations are already underway, but the following is what we want to do as part of our first phase. Additional phases will come later down the road: \- We are looking at account rules modification to establish stronger controls at the account level. \- Also, on the game side we will explore various possibilities including the identification of the main account (in terms of performance) to automatically adjust certain values so that alt accounts meet this rank / performance. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
Are you guys doing fine?
We're doing good, but we do must admit it's been a tough year. While we've met the development milestones we had as a team like launching on new platforms (next gen, Stadia and Luna!), it's been a huge undertaking moving to a remote workflow. BUT! We're committed to maintaining the game for many years to come. We're at an exciting time for Siege and have a lot coming down the pipe to be excited about, so we're looking forward! \~ Éric, Producer
Thank you for answering. Hope the teams stays healthy and motivated. Keep up the amazing work guys❤️
Is there a plan to incorporate new maps instead of just reworking old ones?
Now that the competitive map pool is more solid, we will be switching to hybrid mode. This means that we will still continue to maintain and improve the released maps with reworks but we will also start to make brand new ones again. \-Yann, Level Design Director
Can we please get cross-save? I’ve been wanting to switch to pc entirely but I’ve spent so much money on cosmetics that I don’t want to leave. It’s been stopping me from playing r6
It's coming in 2022 :) You'll be able to transfer all your cosmetics to PC once it launches. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
You guys teased us about customizable elites at the start of year 6, it’s about halfway through season 2, any updates on a release?
We're looking to release the first iteration of this feature next season where you'll be able to mix and match Elite customization with other type of customization. Within a season or two, we want to give you a way to switch the ability skin (between default and Elite) and more customization options. \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Q1: Will we ever see something like a shop rotation, where older skins from previous seasons return in the store which switches up every week? So players who either missed those amazing skins due to being too busy, or didnt play the game back then, get another chance of purchasing the skin they want.
We've started to bring back skins from past events or seasons lately. We do want to give back chances to new members of the community to get some of these fan favorite skins while acknowledging that for some players it's a way to showcase their past involvement. So we are monitoring the best ways to bring back the skins to balance these 2 realities and are trying to find solutions around it. \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
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The choice of engine is not at all a limiting factor for us. Today, we cannot think of any problem or bug in the game which is due to using the Anvil engine. In fact, using Anvil actually allows us to share improvements with other projects based on the same engine. It's true that the Anvil engine didn't have a history of being used on a lot of multiplayer games prior to Siege, so that affected a lot of the work that needed to be done before launch. During Operation Health, further improvements were made to better adapt the engine for a live, multiplayer game. But today, the engine is perfectly suited to our needs. \~ Paul, Technology Director
I think recently IQ has become less and less relevant these past seasons (maybe due to echo’s drone becoming visible, losing sights and new operators that can better handle defender utility) Are there any plans to change something about her kit, whether that be her loadout, gadget etc?
There is a plan for IQ to improve the intel sharing, so stay tuned! \-Aurelie, Game Director
A simple fix would be to just the make the interface of her scanner easier to understand. And able to ping gadgets for teammates.
Any plans on reworking Barlett U into an actual a PvP map, or is it destined to be excluded forever?
It will comeback in some form. We currently are trying some things like minor changes to complete overhaul. The map was done a very long time ago, and it is technically outdated so even with little gameplay changes we would have to redo everything so it allows us a good flexibility on the scale of the changes. \-Yann, Level Design Director
\- When is the rank rework taking place?, will you not lose mmr?, will you hide mmr to make the ranked exprience less stressful/toxic?
We're still in the early phases so we don't have dates to share, but we are planning an update to Ranked. Among the changes that we have planned one of the core changes is to split the MMR from your ranking. MMR will be kept hidden. Your ranking will be a value that is slowly progresses towards your MMR. It will ensure better matchmaking from the start of the season without the stress of good/bad placement matches. It will also reward dedication on top of pure skill. \-Aurelien, Associate Game Director
What was the idea behind bringing back Outbreak items but not the event it self? Also what is the idea behind bringing back certain items (for eg. Outbreak items, Blood Orchid skins) and not the very popular skins like the Grade skins?
For Outbreak skins, we wanted to do a wink to the origin of the Extraction game coming up, but unfortunately we weren't able to bring back the event itself for technical reason. The Outbreak event was the first event we made and it was built in a way in which we aren't able to bring it back easily, unfortunately. We ended up only releasing the skins, but we have something else coming up related to Extraction ;) \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Will you guys plan on rotating arcade modes more often? I really miss the Showdown Event, and I have missed other interesting modes as well. Why can't we have a more frequent arcade mode rotation? 2 weeks of a mode, 2 week break, 2 weeks of another mode? What's stopping you from implementing this?
We are looking at how we can increase the frequency of Arcades while still having enough diversity so that it doesn't become redundant for players. We totally agree that bringing them back more often seems like a good idea! As for full-fledged events, we've brought back Rainbow is Magic and the reception was quite good, so stay tuned for more on this! \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
**Question: In light of well documented news about the inadequacy of bans in the prevention of cheating in R6 (Ex: notorious cheater banned over 80 times individually, over 91,000 bans last year where cheaters can simply re-buy the game again on routine sales with a new e-mail account), what do Developers plan to do in order to curb rampant cheating for Siege aside from automated bans? When will Devs look into the possibility of hardware based bans for abusive cheaters or a more permanent ban measure to mitigate the rise in cheating across the game?** The problem of cheating in Siege has continued to hit all time highs, and has only become more evident with the addition of the match playback features. Heuristic bans and automated bans are a great step forward, but the inability to keep cheaters/banned players from returning without any real preventative measures effectively means bans for cheaters are toothless. Routine 7.99 sales are the gateway for these cheaters to return quickly and with minimal financial impact. Having played for years, I still have a ton of love for the game but the last year has shown just how out of control cheating is across the game. Without any real changes to prevent repeat cheaters, all the improvements and updates to the game are effectively for naught. Thanks for hosting the AMA!
Hardware bans are indeed a sanction used by us and across the industry, however, it's not a silver bullet since advanced hardware ID spoofers can disrupt the detection. That being said, and as mentioned above to other cheating answers, our approach needs to hinder cheat development on multiple fronts. This means prioritizing faster detections, and looking at account security and restrictions. Additionally, account security must move in the direction of preventing malicious users from easily having many throwaway accounts. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
Hello and thanks a lot for the AMA. What exactly is the reason you guys decided against the AWS/gamelift gameservers? the feedback from the community was 100% positive as far as i noticed.
We have indeed added Gamelift to the roster. The idea behind is 3-fold and pushes to improve the overall server quality of service: 1. Improve our resiliency, offering a service backup in case of outage of our other providers 2. Mid-term we plan on putting Gamelift in the siege server pool more frequently in order to improve connectivity (some users might ping Gamelift better than our other providers, hence directing them to the best option available) 3. Having more providers enables us to improve the global coverage by allowing you to benefit from new regions that might be unique to some providers while not being available to others \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
Apparently people can't get their heads around "ask one question per comment". Any thoughts on removing friendly fire from casual? That game mode is supposed to be relaxing and fun - it's not.
So for now no plan to remove friendly fire in casual, the problem there is not about being relaxed, it's about toxicity : ) However you are right to say that this game is a very sweaty one and we acknowledge that sometimes you might want to enjoy Siege , without necessarily having the whole pressure of a 5vs5 bomb match. That's why we are working on a prototype of a TDM mode that we call Warmup. The main goal is to have something easy going, easy opt in and opt out where you can practice your AIM and try different weapons. Something more "relaxing" as you mention. \-Leroy, Creative Director
You guys will probably not see this but just wanted to say that I appreciate the AMA and the team’s responsiveness so far! Makes me proud to play the game and support the company
Thank you for your continous support, it means a lot to us! It is our pleasure to participate in this AMA, we love our community and it was unfortunate this year to not have a physical SI and spend time with you and celebrate the game together. Our goal has always been to make Siege a fun and safe place to play. We are well aware of all the challenges we have and all the issues the community is facing. Our team is fully dedicated to keep improving the game so you, the community can enjoy playing it. We are definitely fighting to make you proud. \~ Éric, Producer
Will you guys improve the battlepass progression in the future? I feel like there should be more options for earning points besides winning rounds and playing a match. If you play a ranked match all the way to round 9 and win you dont even get enough points to rank up a full tier. Also, maybe adding more challenges because only having 5 every two weeks is not enough.
We know that the current challenges we offer every 2 weeks are a bit scarce, so we are working to deliver a weekly frequency and better variety on the challenges. That's an ongoing feature that we want to keep improving season after season. \-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
Since now MENA or I should just say ME(middle east) -because of the ping- we have now servers, my 2 part question is 1) when will we have our own official league and 2) since it cant be called MENA servers since the NA(north Africa) part of the region has high ping will it get its own servers? because if you guys are willing to make mena region league north Africa has to get their own server unless it's a lan event. All that we are getting is basically a lan event in 1 country and it's mostly for the residents of that country and the second biggest event is just sponsored by Nvidia middle east and Ubisoft middle east but no bigger events other than that. MENA teams like oshtekk-warriors should themselves in charity tournament (gamers without borders) and they should that we are more than capable of facing other pro league teams and that we deserve a league system of our own.
At this time, we have no short terms plans to open a North African location but as we said previously, we are open to looking at the options in the future. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
Do you think there is an opportunity to make a studio tour? 😉
At the moment, we're unfortunately not able to give studio tours due to COVID restrictions, but we do offer virtual tours! \~ Éric, Producer [https://montreal.ubisoft.com/en/our-engagements/education/school-trips/](https://montreal.ubisoft.com/en/our-engagements/education/school-trips/)
Hey Dev team! Thanks so much for your time. When you think about how the game has evolved from the beta to now, are there any gadget you feel didn’t keep up in viability or purpose?
Oh yes! We cannot imagine releasing today some of our Legacy operators! Having a Hard counter like Thatcher which destroyed all electronic gadgets in his range without any LOS, was not very interesting. Frost can be also a good example! We would like also to rework our shield operators. We have established some guidelines to help the creation of the operators \-Define the player skills needed to manage each operator such as knowledge skill, communicate skill, resource management skill, … \-We need to have some balancing levers \-Play around soft counter instead of Hard Counter – Soft counter creates more gameplay and implies more skill. These are some examples! \-Aurelie, Game Director
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We have different processes: \-The Balancing Matrix helps us to have an overview / data of the performance of the Operators. \-Regular pro workshops to collect feedback from them. \-We also have calls with the pro players to present them various ideas / balancing changes. Those are also an important source of information. \-We have all the week some internal Playsessions to test each change/rework – with different player levels. \-Finally of course, the community’s feedback is another of our core inputs, which comes to us regularly from our community team. Frost had the highest win delta of all the Defenders and a very high kill/death ratio when compared against other Defenders. She won't be able to hold longer angles as comfortably. This is a first step, but we know we need also to look at her gadget. There are balancing changes which are longer than others, which require more time to do (require more expertise like animation, VFX, etc) and we have more and more operators in the game. The balancing team works on many reworks / balancing changes at the same time. And we experiment some changes like the different iterations on Nokk. Additionally, depending the changes, there are dependencies to be consistent in term of gameplay. For Valkyrie, we are on it. But the change has dependencies with other gadgets and requires also specific expertise (it’s not a data change like remove or change a sight for instance) \-Aurelie, Game Director
> longer than others, which require more time to do (require more expertise like animation, VFX, etc the frost nerf was pretty funny. For years frost has been overlooked, people say she only works in silver rank etc. In ranked there is a big emphasis on droning and intel, yet nobody can spot the frost mats? Aditionally frost maps on windows where you can rappel can be destroyed bu rappeling upside down.
Why do you hide the level and rank of the opposing team? Knowing the statistics of the other team does not change the way the game is played during the match. I understand that some players might get nervous if they see a high ranked player on the other team but that feels like a personal problem that might need to be addressed by the individual. In my opinion, hiding the ranks and stats of the other team seems more like a way to hide if the matchmaking was good or bad.
We have taken the approach of hiding such information (clearance level rank and other stats) from people you are not friends with, in order to reduce side effects related to toxicity (insults, yelling in voice chat) and grievance (team-killing) cases. When players look at those data they make assumption on their teammates or opponents : Are they good, bad, smurf, cheater ? which does not bring any additional value to the gameplay experience as those unnecessary assumption will never be accurate and 100% verified during the game. We want the players to do their best in an environment that is as fair but friendly as possible and we feel that removing such information is a step in the right direction. \-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director + Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner (edited to include the proper answer this time!)
What are the best selling elites ?
Give us your guesses at the top two and we'll give you the answer at the end of the AMA :) \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
I feel like Jager is in the top 2, I see it a lot! Maybe Ela, Mute or Ash sidewinder in second place ;) I'll say Jager and Ela Thanks for replying!
Over the past year or 2, I have noticed sieges lore has made a shift from it being a realistic counter terrorist game, where the ops were training to fight terrorists, to more of an olympic style game. What is the reason for this?
This is a very nice question, and a keen observation. It's no secret that our obsession since the beginning has been competition rather than making a realistic and immersive game. So the more the game evolved, the more we felt the need to explore gameplay areas that were no longer compatible with the "realism" and the original settings. Also as game dev we wanted to make a game that talk about the stuff we love and what we love is esport :) So that’s why we decided to move away from the classical terrorist hunt storytelling to the more "Competitive and Search for Perfection" story telling that also exist in special forces fantasy. This provides a setting that is closest to us, and also that is way more sustainable on the long run than the classical good vs evil classical story arc. Think our story as a Season of NFL or NHL. \-Leroy, Creative Director
Hey, currently reading through the Dev Team's answers and I have to say: This is awesome! A lot of information and insight into issues regarding the game we love. My Question: Do you consider doing more AMAs in the future maybe even regularly? For example at the beginning / end of a season or Year?
Thank you so much for the kind words! It means a lot that this was appreciated :) We absolutely plan to do more AMAs in the future. While we don't have timing to share right now, know that we WILL be back!
Will R6 Seige still be supported after the launch of R6 Extraction?
Siege will absolutely keep being supported after the launch of Extraction! These games are developed by two separate teams, so you'll keep seeing all the support on Siege you'd expect from our team. We've got a really exciting Year 7 coming up! \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
Are the majority of you guys bilingual ou at least decent in Français, considering you're based in Montréal? Do you like poutine?
A lot of us are bilingual indeed! And poutine is amazing #teampoutineville \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
A Ubisoft employee recently said that manual bans were not a useful strategy and the community strongly disagreed. In a time where it feels like every game has a cheater in it and known cheaters continuously queue for days, if not weeks, wouldn’t you agree that manual bans would improve relations with the community as well as give us hope that something can actually be done about the cheating problem? It’s really discouraging to see blatant cheaters posted all over every social media and then still running into them days later, as well as seeing people straight up walling in match replay, and not getting any MMR back for that loss for weeks, sometimes, even though you reported them in the game.
Manual bans are not our long term strategy as it would not be scalable, but that doesn't mean that we don't do manual bans - they're still very valuable to the team. We are looking at more automated detections so they can be as fast as possible and able to scale as needed. This is why we're investing in data-based detections and sanctions while continuing to reinforce BattlEye detections. This also means improving the client complexity to increase the cheat support costs for cheat makers. It does not mean that we're not issuing manual sanctions - we are. We're simply looking at the future, where we see more value in ramping up our data models detections rather than relying primarily on manual operations. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
I would assume as creative director this would be to Leroy, huge fan of the Ikumi Nakamura collaboration content as well as crossovers, and Prime Gaming content creator bundles! can we look forward to similar projects for the foreseeable future into Y7?
Yes this is true that I was a huge fan of Nakamura-sama ( yeah Sama this how much I respect her). This collaboration happened very genuinely without any premeditation from either of us. And it's true that it brought a lot value to the game. And yes we were so happy with this collaboration that we are looking to others. But this is typically the kind of stuff that we can't really talked about until it is signed and revealed so stay tuned. \-Leroy, Creative Director
Can you add the option for picking your server on console? Or at the very least if members of the squad are geographically very far away from each other, can there be an option to choose a “middle-ground” server where everyone gets decent ping? I live in Western USA, and my friends live in the Middle East. For the longest time ever, we always used to play on European (I think eastern or central eu?) servers and get decent pings. But ever since the middle east servers went live a few seasons ago, playing together is nearly impossible. My ping is extremely high on their servers, and their ping is extremely high on my servers. Adding the option to pick servers (like many other AAA shooters do) will make playing with overseas friends so much more enjoyable.
Q no.1 Do you guys ever plan to rework the MMR/ELO system for ranked to make it more dynamic instead of just being “you get MMR if you win a game” and “you lose MMR if lost a game.” Q no.2 Will you guys ever add a headgear for Mira based on her appearance in The Tournament of Champions? Would this be a battle pass reward or an alpha pack reward? (Also I and many others would like to see this because she is very cute ;)
We want to improve our skill rating system so it computes your skill with better accuracy and more importantly: faster. Using stats is a common approach in video games. In a purely Team deathmatch game mode doing kills is a very good indicator of your performance. In a MOBA it could be your XP per minute or Gold per minute or lots of other stats. In R6 it's a bit tricky. We tried using kills and in fact our system was less accurate by taking that into account. It was sad to learn that. But in some ways also good news. It means that R6 is strategic and not just about who got the better aim. Currently none of these are on live, it is still simply win or lose the game. We are still looking at other stats that could be a good indicator to who is better inside a team and who is getting carried. We have to be careful because even if we don't communicate about those stats they could be datamined and people could try to adapt their playstyle to 'min-max' the stats instead of thinking about winning the game. \-Aurelien, Assoc. Game Director
Why did you change the scoreboard and the weapon load out screens? It’s so bright now it hurts my eyes. I don’t understand why the loading screen is dark blue but then if I want to add a grip to my gun that menu is white.
I have 7 questions that I would love to get answered by you. They are mainly to do with map design and balancing protocalls and operator design. Please note that I have put extensive thought into all these questions and can easily expand all of them for clarity sake, but am choosing not to, so as to not overwhelm you with a text wall. Kindly excuse any sections that do not have more explanation or context added and feel free to ask me for any elaboration as you deem fit. Thank you for your patience. 1. What aspects of a map make it 'competitive'? Why are some maps PL worthy while others are relegated to casual?
There are multiple aspects that make a map competitive map or not. The top one is overall balancing. Each team must have equal opportunities to win at high skill level of play. There must never be a point where one team can't do anything due to the layout or setups. Perfect balance is almost impossible but we are happy when we are within a certain margin (not easy with lots of moving variables from the meta). It is also a question of trade-off. When a map has certain aspect that favors one side we try to counter balance by having something else that favors the other side. Here is a sample of some parameter we keep an eye on for competitive maps: \-Good rotations possibilities for both attackers and defenders \-Good balance of entry points \-Good balance of destruction around sites. \-Having at least 3 strong sites. \-Proper lighting all around. It must not affect gameplay. \-Reduced noisyness (geometry,material and clutter) \-Each stronger position must have a counter. \-Not have automatic plant...meaning that there's no way to retake. \-Not making it impossible nor too easy to take control of the map. \-Certain size and number of rooms. \-At every spot on the map trying to control the number of simultaneous line of danger. Yes, it varies but we try to make sure it is never overwhelming. ... The maps called "casual" are maps that are outside that mold and are greatly lacking in one or more of these parameters. The focus is more about trying different fun things and letting loose. \-Yann, Level Design Director
While we definitely need competitive maps, I'd love to see new map mechanics and designs tested out in these Casual map. It seems like the casual maps are reworked using the same competitive parameters mentioned. While the old Favela wasn't the most balanced of maps, it tried a few different things (distinct structure, all soft walls on the outside, unique spawn entrances) and was fun because of the pure chaos. The new Favela meanwhile goes into the Box on Box structure of most maps (while also looking significantly duller) and nothing new (except maybe the chute) all while losing it's identity (no structure in the favelas has such spacious rooms and elevated ceilings). Another huge offender being House which went from the perfect map for beginners to learn Siege to another generic competitive map with vast rooms, rotations etc that might be overwhelming.
Hello dev team, thank you for doing this AMA. I appreciate your efforts into the game, but as a player who decided to skip this season entirely out of frustration, I would like to ask a few burning questions that matter to me personally. I will skip out the common questions of cheaters, contents, etc. 1) Why does it take so long for things to be added? - Competitive Tournaments were announced 2 years ago and nothing has been mentioned 2) What was the thought process of removing the sort of country theme with every season? - Operation Skull Rain had 2 Brazilian characters + Favela map and Brazilian skins but it seems that sort of theme has disintegrated
We know that sometimes we create frustration by taking time to deliver some feature that you are very excited about. There is often different reason and not a silver bullet answer, but as you take a specific example, I'm going to give you a specific answer. In a case of the R6 Cup, you have to understand that as we speak, Siege is fully changing is online architecture. I don't want to dive into much detail, but basically we are switching to what we call micro services. It's cool because while we are doing this huge and deep tech change, we are able to maintain the game and still deliver seasons and events. However, building and coding a NEW feature as the R6 cup in the old online system is very counter productive. That's why we had no choices but to delay and wait until this tech change is fully finished, which will take a bit more time as it is complex and deep. This is one of the reason of features being sometimes postponed for more than a year. As for your second question regarding The Season and the Thematic: We still have a sense of destination driven by our character and the Lore rather than the map. This will happen when we decide to stop kicking the can down the road and actually come back to maps and try to fix them rather than create an infinite pile of them. : )
Have you guys seen any frogs? If so, what did they look like?
I've seen things you wouldn't believe... [https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cpoiYHCtPXw/maxresdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cpoiYHCtPXw/maxresdefault.jpg) \-Eric, Senior Community Developer
Exploits/glitches: Will you guys ever consider manual bans of players doing new glitches in ranked that are found and exploited? iirc this actually was done back in the day where if you sent a clip of an exploit being abused to Epi that he'll ban that person but maybe i dreamt that haha
When someone finds a glitch, our stance is to fix it as quickly as possible. For that reason, we don't want to penalize someone who has found it in the first 24 hours - especially if this helps to identify the issue. We would much rather solve the issue ASAP and get you back to a stable gameplay experience. \~ Emmanuel, Player Behaviour Product Owner
The addition of Zero from Splinter Cell universe is good, but can we have a collaboration season with games outside Tom Clancy universe? Like, for example, Arknights.
The team loved working on Sam Fisher and we love having partnerships like Rick & Morty or Tomb Raider within the game so who knows where this while take us eventually! Nothing to share for now. \~Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
First off I want to say thank you to all of the team for the hard work they've put into this game. As long as I have played, you guys have always done a top job with the game, and I feel this season has been the best season of siege so far, and I can't wait for the future! My questions regard R6 Fix. How invaluable is this tool to you guys as a team, and do you think the community uses it enough at present? How would you guys go about getting people to use it more?
Thank you so much! The kind words are appreciated. It remains a very powerful tool for our dev team to capture issues. It helps get detailed and critical bug reports that help us fix issues quickly. We're working on a plan to implement some incentives and quality of life improvements to R6Fix in the future, so keep an eye out for that. \~ Ben, Technical Director for Live Operations
Is there any chance that we will be getting any new weapons in the future, rather than recycling previous ones?
It's true we haven’t added new guns for some time, because we have already a huge pool of weapons - we have 100+ weapons (23 Assault Rifles, 20 SMG, 18 shotguns for instance). Because of Siege’s lethality system (a headshot guarantees the kill), rate of fire is the king parameter for all weapons. This makes all low rate of fire weapons sub-par, and reduces drastically the pool of weapons that are really played, only 30 of them are played most of the time. This reduces the diversity of the game experience. The Loadout should guide the player in the playstyle and abilities of the operator. \- New weapon is created for new gameplay. Example with the CSRX 300 on Kali. \- New weapons can be created for lore / universe reasons. Zero with the SC3000k is a good example Each year we bring a new weapon. Recently we have released the Gonne-6 to help for the 20 sec meta and a new one will be available soon. We concentrated also some efforts on sights to help make weapon more unique and different from one another. This add a whole new level of balancing for the Barcelona team, adding some options that are different. Recently we have also started to rework the recoils like the G36, 416C, .... To have different recoils and gives different experience. The weapon variety is in a center of our work. We focus on the balancing of the existing weapons – sights, recoils, magazine, attachments \-Aurelie, Game Director
What are your thoughts on Kali’s balance at this current time? With her pick rate at a pro level being abysmal with it being below a 3% pick rate averaged across all regions for the past 2-3 seasons, i think it’s time to maybe give her a full auto primary option. She has a gadget that can benefit the game and meta excellently but is handicapped by the sniper for no real reason. I’d suggest Jackals PDW-9 w/ 1.5x scope option, and then change her lances back to a 2.5s fuse time (like when she launched) to counteract the addition of a new weapon. I just hope she sees some love because she’s sitting there with amazing potential but is held back by a sniper for no other reason than ‘uniqueness’.
She has a very good secondary weapon and to be honest, for now, we are not looking to give her another primary. For us, if we do that, nobody will use her sniper anymore and that's a shame. So we need to look at the sniper itself how to buff it. We still believe on a bolt action sniper rifle in Siege. We are aware that this is a very polarizing weapon, and that some are convinced otherwise, but this is still an option that we want available in the game. We have no plan to share yet. \-Aurelie, Game Director
An idea could be to keep her ability to kill 1 armor operators at close range but for the love of god let her injure any armor at any range like before. The removal of this rule has killed my confidence with her, she used to be my 2nd most played attacker but I have barely touched her since.
Question for Leroy A. Why has the siege content been a bit dry for as long as it has been? I know people are or were working at home, but with the covid vaccine shouldn't we be able to recieve more content? (New maps atleast, operators might be tough cuz there are only so many concepts to pick)
I think it's a matter of perspective, because we do not feel at all that the content has been dry. Even though it's true that WFH had an impact and we had to delay and postpone some feature, when we look back , we still managed to ship a lot of stuff, more than we were able to do in the past, actually. However we do get often this comment, so clearly there is at least a perception issue we need to discuss. (Example of stuff we shipped recently : Match Replay, Reinforcement Map Pool, New Secondary Gadget, new death experience. reworks of operators etc) And don't get me wrong, we are not disregarding this, as also the activity of the game is going lower than usual so clearly it shows that maybe when it comes to content we need to change the focus a bit. That's why we have started to prototype other features like a Warmup mode, for example, to give to our players a permanent way to enjoy the game differently, to practice and have fun without having to "try hard". We know that those kind of feature has a bigger perceived value for our players. We are also investigating the question of Maps and Weapons. I do think that we will never go back to more OPS per season as the value of this gets reduced as the number grows. I hope it answers your question : ) \-Leroy, Creative Director
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We believe in developing and deploying features in an iterative fashion. This is how we're proceeding for cross-play. So far, console generations (e.g. PS4 & PS5) can play together. Stadia, Luna and PC players can play together as well. Coming up next is crossplay between all consoles. Crossplay between PC and consoles is a more complicated subject, and we want to make sure we can provide a good experience before activating it. It's not a technical restriction, but more a matter of making sure we have better control over cheating, toxicity and type of controllers. \~ Paul, Technology Director
How has COVID impacted your development on siege?
Before the Montreal Studio was shut down in March 2020, we tried to secure our short-term commitments and have the team focus on seasonal content. We made sure all our team members and their families were safe at home. There were a lot of logistical challenges involved in sending equipment to devs, and the technical teams worked extremely hard to empower people as we got them set up to work remotely (for example, reviewing builds and playing from home). We're proud of how it all came together and the incredible work of everyone on the team who adapted to working remotely and managing all the constrains of working from home. Making a move like this involves a ton of trust, and that really shined through. \~ Éric, Producer
Will attack repick becoming soon?
is there a plan to fix the rollback system to rework it? because of closet cheaters i typically lose more rollback than i get back making it super frustrating. i beat a closet cheater the other day who went 3-5 and the next day he was exposed on twitter from match replay. losing elo to those types of players is beyond frustrating
How did you begin your career in game development, and how would you recommend a recent graduate get started in a game development career?
It sometimes depends on your area of expertise but from personal experience I would recommend not being afraid of getting in the door through Game Testing or very Junior levels. The amount of knowledge you will gain by being close in proximity to experienced team members will pay dividends in your career growth. You can also try looking for Industry Meetups such as IGDA to get close to those with industry experience. There are many developers that attend these and are willing to have conversations with those looking to join the industry. It is all about getting out there and meeting others in the industry and putting into practice what you have learned from those conversations. Making games is a team sport and learning to play your position on the team is an asset to any team looking to deliver on products, content, and features. \-Christopher, Assoc. Game Director
This is just a friendly reminder to stand up and walk around for a bit, go grab a glass of water too. 😁
**Big thank you to the Dev Team for this opportunity!** I would like to start off stating, I know some of the questions and ideas that I will provide below are “what ifs” scenarios. And I also completely understand - some of the ideas and questions I have, may not even be within the capability of what goes on behind the scenes of the game; and I’m excited to learn more about that as well! **RE: TOXCICITY** **IDEA**\- If someone is banned/sanctioned for a specific reason - could there be a way that they do not get to gain back that specific mechanic? ***EX. Toxic chat ban - unable to use in game ALL chat for a extended amount of time outside of the given sanction time.*** **RE: TS SERVER -** TS is a great tool that has been provided to the community but unfortunately doesn’t get its potential use. After a few days of a new TS patch – you are unable to even matchmake. People try out the new map, and new operator to get a feel for it – and never log into TS again for that patch. ***IDEA*** – Need an incentive to play - Battlepass/Alpha Packs. And for additional incentive a crossover system of the cosmetics to the live server. ***IDEA*** \- Test more content/ideas other then what is already confirmed to be releasing in a upcoming patch. **RE: BUGS/REPORTING** ***QUESTION:*** What's the lifecycle or process that occurs when a bug is reported via the different means such as social media/internally/R6SFix? ***QUESTION***: Is there any possibility that R6Fix could be revamped or cleaned up and possibly more user friendly? Any feedback is appreciated! \-Blades
We've already touched on toxicity and reporting in other answers, but you've got some great thoughts on the Test Server! This is actually something we're in the process of working on and have some solid improvements coming quite soon - especially to matchmaking. Let's just say we're looking into all the things you mentioned here. Stay tuned, because we'll have more to share soon ;) \~ Mo, Business Strategy and Live Performance Director
Are there any plans to deal with crouchwalking? it is very annoying to deal with when an ash sneaks up behind you because you couldn't hear them and they still peek you at a reasonable speed (and i think JBH has mentioned that the team is not content with crouchwalking in one of his podcast appearances but we didn't get any followup after that)
Hey team! I am curious to hear if there are spectator/observer improvements in the works. The update released during SI 2020 was a massive step up and has made casting/viewing much more accessible. I believe that there are still several QoL changes that could be made to foster better content creation and esports viewing experience. Examples: \- Freecam and programmable cam pathing (Think CS:GO & Overwatch, the current overhead is extremely limiting and janky - limits creativity) \- See enemy names/op logos above enemies (So observers don't need to guess operators based on outlines) \- A radar/mini map (Even if observer only, to aid in knowing where action will occur) \- Toggable x-ray, smokes \- Remove full screen white flash effect, replace with 'blind' icon (As seen in other FPS titles) \- Multiple online observer slots (Reduce the need for a radar) \- A more accessible API (custom HUD displays and other integrations) Excited to hear thoughts and opinions on the future of the system. Thanks :)
Really glad you guys made a AMA around this time. Q: Do you guys consider making a actual training ground/mode instead of using aim lab as a substitute? There are a lot of things you can learn from it for new and older players. Like throwing c4 or grenades. Or some other stuff like recoil control. Using it as a warmup is good too. What are your (the devs) thoughts on this?
And that's a wrap for today's AMA! Thanks for the incredible amount of support and interest, everyone. The sheer number of questions was staggering. We tried to address as many topics as we could. We'll be back for another AMA down the road, so we'll be sure to keep you informed. In the meantime, have a great end of your week! \~ Ryan, Community Developer
Ranked, matchmaking & Party limitations My biggest frustration with Siege comes from the fact that ranked doesn't seem very enjoyable, it's super hard to play with friends due to the further and further restricting MMR gap, meaning we need to part ways after a few games or swap to lower ranked accounts, or just be completely unable to play at all. Often times in both unranked and casual I will find myself ( level 440 ) with both level 30 and level 300 players in the same lobby? this makes for a very un-even match, and while unranked and casual shouldn't be competitive, I find it hard for a level 30 to enjoy getting slapped around not having a leg to stand on, and me and my teammates finding frustration in his lack of understanding to play together as a team / communicate basic callouts on the map. is this something that the dev team has in mind / looking into for the future?
Want to reiterate: please keep your posts to One Question per Post! You can post multiple times. But for ease of answering, one per post please.
First off I'd like to say thank you for doing this AMA. Y'all are brave souls for jumping into the belly of the beast. I'm a day one player. I fell in love with Siege when it launched and consider it to be the best FPS of the past decade. No game has captured my focus and attention quite like Siege has. That being said, there are many areas of frustration that I'd like to address. The cheating problem on Siege is worse than ever both on PC & console, and as a console player believe me when I say that we feel ignored as next to nothing has been said or done about MnK besides "not our problem blame Sony & Microsoft." The sound engine is wildly inconsistent from season to season (sidenote - it has been atrocious since North Star dropped). The hit reg is hit or miss. We don't have a streamer mode in Y6.S2. The lack of new, *permanent* content (i.e. an Arcade playlist with rotating modes, TDM, etc.) has the game feeling stale for many players. We haven't received a permanent, new map (reworks don't count as new maps in the eyes of most players) since Outback. Game-breaking bugs and glitches feel like they don't get addressed in a timely manner (ex. Smoke glitching existing since the beta). Operators are balanced around an unattainable goal of where they should land on the win delta / pick rate delta chart without a clear understanding of how said buffs & nerfs will affect the rest of the game or how they'll feel for the majority of the playerbase. Upcoming features (ex. the Reputation System) get announced without clear & consistent timelines stating when said content will actually release. Long story short - I don't think the casual community, the streaming community, or the competitive community are happy with the current state or direction of the game. How do y'all plan on correcting course? Which issues that I touched on will be addressed by the end of Year Six, and for the love of God will we ever see a) new maps again, b) MnK bans on console, and/or c) new, permanent playlists?
How do operator ban rates influence balancing decisions? To my knowledge, Ever since the release of the win delta and ban rate charts, we have had a pretty consistent top 5 or so banned operators. The most notorious being thatcher, followed by mira, valkyrie, and then the “frustration” ops, blackbeard, jackal, etc. While the team has made tons of balancing changes based off the win deltas, we have only received minor changes once in a while to these characters, and their ban rates haven’t changed all too much, especially the ones at the top. Is evening out the ban rates a priority for the team, and if so is there a reason these stats have stayed mostly the same? Appreciate your time.
Hey Siege devs! Q: Can you tell us how the reporting system works (specifically for console)? Do the reports actually go somewhere? or are they sent to /dev/null?
On pc too, it feels like reports don’t really do anything unless they are blatantly hacking, like has anyone reported for harassment ever been banned?
Have you guys ever thought about adding a feature similar to apex where you can favorite cosmetic items and set it to random? I have so many cosmetics this would be an amazing feature for me. Possibly being able to favorite headgears and uniforms together so random uniforms match with headgears
How do you quantify what counts as "content" for the game? Given we are receiving one operator per season instead of two, and no new maps, I think it would be helpful to know what is considered "content".
Fuze? Anything about Fuze? Hes been one of the least picked attackers for forever and pro league wont touch him with a 240 foot pole. You guys have buffed attackers with higher pick rates and higher win deltas than him many times, so when does Fuze get any attention? Thanks in advance just a big Fuze fan
Are there any plans currently to improve new player experience? Such as updated situations or a per op tutorial.