Malicious Multiplayer

Rainbow Six Siege is a game I picked up on the promise of tactical, slow-paced gameplay and then I sold it for lying. But I’ll save my quarrels with its gameplay for another time, because instead I wanted to focus on a few things that curse multiplayer titles in general, and Siege is the perfect scapegoat for demonstrating those points. So without further ado~

Player Visibility and Colour

Simply put, a player should NEVER fade into the environment. They should pop against their background, but with more games leaning towards the duller, realistic washed out colour palettes, this becomes an issue. Especially when you mix that with cluttered maps with props absolutely everywhere to help further obscure players. All this results in unfair frustration as you get gunned down like the guy in the screenshot below by someone practically invisible.

This is certainly not a problem exclusively shared by Siege. I brought this up as an issue in CSGO as did many players before me. The position of enemy players is information that needs to be relayed instantly to the player. Otherwise you end up with sloppy, aggravating, one-sided fights that end before the other can even retaliate. Brighter, harsher colours can easily alleviate this, either on walls or the player model (or both) so that they contrast.

Bloom

This one is obvious enough. Light sources blinding the player, providing an unfair advantage to those covering the angle. You’d be surprised how much this one reared its ugly head in Siege. I think they thought they were fixing the problem of player visibility with the lights they had everywhere. Who the hell mounts a huge square light on the side of a wall? Whoever it is got me killed time and time again by a threat I never saw.

One-Sided Vision

I’d like to say this was a console limitation, but I’ve seen this on PC too. That, and even on PS4 it runs at 60FPS, so it clearly isn’t struggling. Beyond a certain distance, indoor spaces simply fade to pitch black. This wouldn’t be a problem if it worked both ways, but you can still see outside clearly. This led to the defense having some absolutely insane lines of sight that the attackers couldn’t even be aware of.

These aren’t simply dark areas either. Once you’re standing there (Or near) it’s lit up like a christmas tree! I guess it was going for “realistic” lighting, where your eyes adjust accordingly or something. Which would be fine, if it were a single player stealth game and not a “tactical” multiplayer shooter.

Inaccuracy Between the Client and the Server

I’d often take smoke grenades when on the attack, I liked the versatility they offered a support. You could use them offensively and defensively, to cover open ground or to obscure enemy vision when storming a room. Except this didn’t happen. The location of the smoke would be radically different from person to person. Meaning you’d be shot with perfect accuracy through a cloud of smoke thicker than treacle, more often than not.

This made me rightly paranoid, so I’d still take smokes, but instead throw each and every one of them at the same location before praying to RNGesus that one of them had actually managed to remember what the point of a smoke grenade is and fulfill that role. I remember my friends spectating me as the last man standing and telling me that the smokes I’d throw were everywhere but where I wanted them to be.

Though, it was mainly the awful tick rate that would screw us most. My favourite moment being when I stacked up on a door and my friend sprinted across the doorway to the other side to cover my flank. A volley of shots flew through the centre of the door frame afterwards and we both laughed at how close he’d come to death.

At that very moment, his body flopped onto the floor.  So, basically, the reason I grew tired was that victory felt more like calling heads or tails rather than outsmarting your opponent.