I’m spending the week in Montreal, Canada for the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Rainbow Six Siege Invitational. ꩵThis weekend, a selection of teams are competing to be crowned the best tactical shooters in the world. Even as a relative outsider to the realm of Rainbow, the infectious passion of each competing country has me wrapped up in a game that I haveไn’t experienced first-hand since my final years of university. It has evolved with the addition of countless new operators and a charming crossover appeal - but the core of strategic teamwork and tactical gunplay remains untouched, and it still excels.
Ahead of the tournament I was briefed on the next 12 months of Siege, its eighth year on the market and a fundamental evolution of the live-service juggernaut it’s become. I last touched this game when battle passes weren’t a household mechanic and unlocking new operators or jumping back into the meta after just a couple of months away felt impossible. Ubisoft has seemingly come to terms with the beast it has created, k🎃nowing that in order to spend another decade on top of the world it needs to change. Veterans remain satiated while newcomers are left with no incentive to play the game, let alone learn everyth💙ing that makes it tick.
Year 8 will see the introduction of several new operators, map reworks, and the usual assortment of tournaments set around the globe as hardcore players continue to dive into the game over and over again. Minute changes to characters we’ve been playing for years combined with greater tactical utility in the acts of traversal and combat aim to turn actions we once considered second nature into far more deliberate aspects of moment-to-moment gameplay that will emphasise precise caution. Reloading can now be tracked by opposing teams thanks to new tells, meaning that even precious seconds spent revamping your arsenal can be taken advantage of by the enemy. The role of shields in the game are also being reworked, with the aim to improve accuracy from behind them and alleviate the annoying and unnecessary deaths that have lon𓄧g kept such operators on the sidelines.
Players are encouraged to work together or face the consequences. Acting alone might get you so far, but refusing to s𒊎ynergise with one another and instead relying on all-out firepower is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Siege is melodic in its unfolding chaos which can lead to some blockbuster moments, but these only ever surface when teams know where and when to help each other. Without that, you aren’t going to be having much fun. This is where Year 8 comes in, placing a colossal focus on bringing new folks into the folℱd and encouraging them to stay.
New tiered challenges dedicated to select heroes can be used to not only unlock them, but also earn additional experience and rewards that aim to get everyone involved. In theory, you can ta🌊ke your time t💜o learn operators before playing against real people, either through these quests or against AI in private matches.
Only one side is accounted for right now though in the form of Defenders, with no planned release date for Attackers at the time of writing. I’m still firmly on the fence about whether said challenges will have the cadence or convenience to pull me back in, and if whatever it has to teach will eve🎀n be applicable in real world c꧙ircumstances dominated by experts who’ve been living and breathing this game since 2015.
There’s a dichotomy here though, particularly in how Ubisoft is determined to embrace new players while further complicating the tactical nature of Siege, which right now boasts over 60 operators that newcomers will need to learn and unlock, and then find one that isn’t currently dominated by the meta. There’s also Brava, the first new operator in Year 8 who🐽se signature ability is a remote-controlled drone armed with a turret that can turn any and all ꦇdefensive gadgets set by opponents against them.
All of a sudden, several new abilities many players won’t even know how to use will be turning against them, morphing an already daunting battlefield of variables into a pathway of broken glass to navigate. Siege is unforgivable by nature, and without the right balance Brava runs the risk of making it feel unfair. Ubisoft said during the initial presentation that it will be actively responding to complaints, and expect the first few months of onboarding to be fraught with issues of balance, and the same process is being applied to Brava as she undoubted🔜ly becomes a top pick in the coming weeks.
This ambitious approach towards new players is accompanied by a stron💛ger view of combating smurfs and toxicity. Keyboard and mouse users dunking on consoles will now be punished with increased input lag after repeat offences, while a new system is set to be implemented to deal with voice chat involving harassment and abuse. I must say it’s confusing to learn that Ubisoft isn’t outright banning people and instead settling on a compromise, but I suspect it can’t tell the difference between third-party controllers perhaps intended for accessibility and cheaters, so it isn’t willing to accidentally punish someone who didn’t do anything wrong.
A few of these new initiatives are in their infancy, teething issues obvious in the lack of confidence surrounding them and how Ubisoft isn’t quite faithful in th🦄eir potential so much as takiꦚng them for a test run to see what sticks. I admire its honesty though, and how it wants to take on blunt player feedback and learn from its mistakes as a live-service game whose time in the spotlight is forever ticking down. An ignorance towards newcomers and only ever pleasing the hardcore will spell doom eventually.
I don’t trust my Rainbow Six Siege knowledge enough to grill the specifics of Year 8 and where exactly it might go wrong, but it might be doing enough to blend new and familiar things that piques my interest. It’s been🤪 around for a lifetime when it comes to video games, witnessing the dawn of new consoles, genres, and live-service🃏s. In order to remain relevant it needs to evolve while recognising its own shortcomings, and if all the promises made here reach their full potential, a bright future likely awaits.
