Have things improved in Siege?

Almost a year ago I have written an article about things to improve in Siege. Let’s revisit and see what has changed. For each topic mentioned, I will assign points. One point if things changed for the better, minus one if changed for the worse, zero for no change.

Cheaters: 0 points

If anything, cheating has became worse, especially recently, the season Aruni was added. If you watch any popular streamer, he/she will encounter cheaters every day. Sometimes every second match. No matter if it’s Beaulo, King George, Kixstar, or MacieJay, it’s the same story: stream snipers and cheaters (the new “streamer mode” is currently a cruel/pathetic/terrible joke, BTW).

Moreover, at high ranks, where there are fewer players, everybody knows everybody to some extent, and everybody knows who cheats. Yet those cheaters are still there, level 200, 300, or more, at Diamond and Champion ranks. This shows how corrupt the ranking system is.

To credit Ubisoft a bit, they finally introduced the match replay system, so you can identify cheaters quite easily. Here’s a link to MacieJay’s saved stream, in which (4h 13min in) he reviews a suspect’s gameplay.

The cheater uses wallhacks and is as blatant as they go. He’s also a very bad player, watching people through walls but missing the shots, which makes watching him entertaining. He’s a literal bot playing in Platinum ranks only because of cheats.

I give -0.5 points for the cheating situation and 0.5 points for the replay system, 0 points overall.

Bugs: 0 points

A year ago I mentioned that in my impression Siege was coming apart at the seams a bit. It was a mix of many things, sound being one of the most important.

These days I think that everybody’s got used to bugs and treats them as normal. Recoil changes randomly? Of course. Silent rappel every now and then? Yeah, what about it. Breaking a wall sounds like breaking a hatch? Who even cares.

One of the last year’s events, Mute Protocol, had exploitable glitches so bad that it became entirely unplayable and Ubisoft had to pause it to fix them. When unpaused, there was another serious glitch making the event entirely unplayable again. That’s Siege life for you.

Map selection: 0 points

Ubisoft didn’t introduce map selection. However, they improved Ranked/Unranked map pool by reworking Chalet, Skyscraper, and Border, and removing Outback. This means that most maps are playable now. Bank remains an obvious candidate for re-work. Visually it’s nice, but the layout is terrible.

Somewhat worryingly, there are no mentions of Bank rework in the plan for Year 6. They announced Favela (!) rework and minor reworks for other maps. Hopefully that includes Bank.

In general, Ubisoft has done a pretty good job working on maps, although still no map selection, so zero points.

Player visibility: 0 points

At one point, enemy players gained a visible glow, similar to the glow on teammates. Hurray! Visibility problem solved, great success. Punchline? The glow was apparently A BUG so they removed it. For maybe a month we had a good visibility and then they removed it. Back to invisible players. Ubisoft is still working on a solution to visibility problems, blah blah blah. Zero points.

Shooting range: 0 points

There are no improvements whatsoever in training facilities for the game. The same old T-hunt over and over. Want to test another muzzle attachment? Why yes, restart the match. It only takes a minute. Zero points.

Overall: 0 points

Overall, there’s zero progress in the issues I touched on, with some exceptions mentioned above. However, to be fair to Ubisoft, they did a good job improving map pool, finally added the match replay system, and introduced some very good gameplay changes during the last year. For example:

• new sights, particularly 1.5x and 2.0x. 2.5x is ACOG changed from 3.0x
• custom colors for sights, so you don’t have to use red anymore
• separate mouse sensitivities for various levels of Aim-Down-Sights zoom

It did take five years for developers to discover that a shooter game NEEDS an option to change the crosshair/sights color and a separate sensitivity setting for each zoom level, but hey. Better late than later.