The team over at Ubisoft that developed Rainbow Six: Siege has graciously participated in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) letting the community ask any question they want. There was a bunch of good information so I went ahead and tried to format it all as best as I could with questions in bold and answers indented. I did my best to remove duplicate questions and also included who asked the question to keep everything on the up and up. It’s interesting to see even after the alpha and beta previews Ubisoft ran that the team was quick to come out so close to release and participate in the community event. I hope that means the plan to support Rainbow Six: Siege for a very long time since my initial impression of the game is going really well so far. I know a big part of the community along with Ubisoft is also hoping that this entry in the series makes its way onto the eSport circuit and with a dedicated developer behind it keeping the game balanced and fair I could see that happening if the community sticks around and doesn’t become toxic. Head past the jump to see what to expect from the upcoming updates to Rainbow Six: Siege.
The following Devs will be present to answer your questions on the associated topics:
- Alexandre – Brand Director
- Daniel – Lead Game Designer
- Duff – Lead 3C Programmer
- François – Associate Producer
- Geneviève – Community Developer
- Jalal – Lead 3D Programmer
- Jean-Baptiste – User Research Manager
- Lorenzo – Online Architect
- Pierre – Lead AI Programmer
- Sapin – Lead Gameplay Programmer
- Steve – Lead Multiplayer Programmer
- Xavier – Creative Director
Rainbow 6 Sub-reddit moderator /u/Livinpink was posting the answers from the developers mentioned aobve, first some general information.
Hello everyone. We have indeed heard your concerns for hit detection within the game and we want to address it.
We already knew we had improvements that could be made, but after further investigation, we can share that the problem you experience is based off multiple issues that we will be working on. Some of them can be addressed with quick fixes, while others require development time.
BUGS ON REPLICATION AND KILLCAM
Let’s start by talking about quick fixes. We have a few bugs that we managed to get out of the way and that will be fixed for our next title update in mid-December:
Fixed: Pawn rotation latency: the difference between a player’s action, the server’s perception and another player seeing said action had an extra delay due to a bug. This had even more impact on shield wielding Operators since sometimes players using those would think they were protected while they were not because of the additional delay caused by the pawn rotation bug.
Fixed: Shield positioning while rappelling: certain shield angles were not being replicated properly, this caused the shield wielding player to be overprotected in certain cases. This caused hit detection issues for the player shooting at the shield wielding player.
Fixed: Shooting and moving while rappelling: when moving and shooting while in rappel, the hits were sometimes not registered properly by the server.
Improved: Kill cam replication issues: the kill cam was not displaying an accurate representation of hit positions. The point of view seen after death was not the exact point of view of the killer. Moreover, we have instances in which the kill cam shows body parts sticking through walls while they actually weren’t being seen from the killer’s perspective. This has been improved for the next title update, but we still need additional work on this. It is still considered under development.
SERVER TICK RATE
We are currently investigating having a higher tick rate, which would improve positioning and shooting replication. The current servers run at a tick rate of 64, but the position of players is updated 30 times per second. We have plans to address this very soon and are currently running tests in which we have a position update rate of 60. If the results are satisfying, we will be deploying this in a future update as soon as possible.
CONNECTION TO WRONG DATA CENTER
Another issue we will be working on is that right now, some players connect to the wrong data centers. If you are not connected to the nearest data center, your gameplay experience will likely not be ideal. We believe that the best solution for this will be to allow the players to select their data centers and that is what we will be working on.
GENERAL ISSUES WE ARE AWARE OF
Although we do have a high ping kick in place, one thing to note is that there are some edge cases in which some players have high ping due to poor internet connection spikes. This affects replication quality for the other players within that person’s match.
We hope that this addresses your concerns and we will make sure to keep you updated as we keep monitoring and improving on this and progress within our plans.
/u/DL-Z_ftw Questions:
Q: When will the Harvard map (Bartlett University) be available for PvP in the game? The game seems to have only 10 maps, which is contrary to the statement made by you guys earlier.
A: We are currenty working on making that map available for all in PVP and PVE, on top of all other free maps that are planned for year one.
Q: Will there be more single-player situations, like Article 5, coming out in future patches?
A: No additional single player Situations are planned as of yet.
Q: Keeping in view that you guys promised to support this game post-launch for a long time, how regularly should we expect to see stuff that keeps the developers in touch with the community (such as blog-posts, AMAs, etc.) posted from your side?
A: We plan on having monthly patch notes.
Q: The Tactical White-Board available on-line on the website is a really nice concept. Most of us like it to be an integral part of the game to make it more useful. Are you guys going to integrate the Tactical Board into the game itself, instead of it being browser-based?
A: It’s not in our current plans to integrate the Tactical Board to the game itself.
Q: What game-modes have you guys planned for the game in future? Especially, are we going to see team-survival mode make a come-back?
A: New game modes: this is a surprise 🙂
Q: Can we expect post-launch content beyond YEAR ONE and will the season-pass cover that content as well?
A: Post-launch content beyond year one: It is our ambition to keep supporting the game Post-Launch for as long as possible.
Q: Was choosing FairFight as an anti-cheat system a good choice based on the statistics gathered so far by your team?
A: We cannot disclose too much about the current anti-cheat solution (Fairfight), but we can confirm that we are satisfied with it.
Q: Will there be anything informative available similar to post-alpha & post-beta infographics somewhere, where players can see statistics, such as Top Operators (Most Picked), Win Ratio (Attackers vs. Defenders), etc.?
A: Statistics and infographics: we are currently working on something along those lines. We will share more info on it when we’re ready.
/u/Ketku_RiGhT Questions:
Q: When will the absurd voice chat issues (Push-to-talk not working, mic being always on, etc.) get fixed? Really annoying to play knowing that my team might hear everything that is happening in my house without me knowing about it!
A: We are aware of those issues and are currently working on fixing them. We hope to bring this to you as soon as possible.
/u/shanefalls Questions:
Q: As a season pass owner I was wondering if we could get a perm 10% bonus on renown not 5% for all modes & missions? This 5% seems like a very small bonus for season pass holders when everyone at some point will get everything we do.
A: Season Pass: We do not have plans to change the renown bonuses for Season Pass owners at the moment. We are tracking the game’s economy and if we believe changes should be done, then we will address this.
Q: Will we see more weapon attachments for all guns later updates? seems like we are lacking in that department which is not bad but seems like I add the 3 same attachments for every operator and i’m then done with them forever.
A: Weapon attachments: We are currently discussing this possibility.
Q: Can we get a more detailed weapons stats page when looking at weapons w/ attachments?
A: Weapon stats: This is not in the current plans.
Q: Will we see more weapon skins for all weapons in later updates?
A: Weapon skins: Yes!
Q: Can we get a Global Leaderboard for all stats / game modes? or at least ranked.
A: Global leaderboards: Not yet, but we are looking into it for the future.
Q: Can we get something to watch / spectate live ranked matches? This is good for learning and watching for hackers.
A: Live spectating: For public matchmaking, currently the answer is no. However, we are planning on bringing the Spectator Camera on all platforms, on dedicated servers within custom games, in early 2016.
Q: How will we make the servers better and more stable for everyone? I am not one to have any issues at all with servers but a lot of people are reporting problems still. What is wrong right now with them that’s causing the connection issues?
A: Server stability: We are constantly fixing game server crashes and have already released several seamless updates that have improved server stability. We will continue to do so as long as the game is live.
/u/Nekoboi_sam Questions:
Q: Will you remove the YOU HAVE BEEN SPOTTED from ranked matches?
A: We have a communication about our vision for all game’s playlists (casual, ranked…) that should answer all your questions. It will be released this month.
/u/demonhope Questions:
Q: Are you ever going to increase that terrible chat character length? You can barely type 5 words on PC without it cutting off. Also, why isn’t chat available in lobby while in a squad?
A: We are glad to share with you that the character limit will now be set to 128 in the mid-December title update.
A: About the lobby question, we have no plans of adding the chat to the squad lobby.
/u/Sethos88 Questions:
Q: Was the orange / cartoon red blood change a bug or intentional?
A: This was a last minute bug. Blood color is fixed in our upcoming title update, in mid-December.
/u/Jindouz Questions:
Q: What’s the reasoning behind hiding the map’s name, gamemode type and map layout from being accessed during operator selection phase in casual? 20 seconds are more than enough to let you at least move your eyes to the top of the screen to see which map/gamemode you’re in but it isn’t there. Just a grey background with nothing in it. That information only shows up during the loading screen which can be extremely brief and easily overlooked. Once you pick your operator there’s nothing you can really do besides stare at your teammate’s operators and wait for the timer to start the game while you can use that time to actually get enough information to help you make a decision on which operator you want to choose before starting a game.
A: The feedback has been reported and will be evaluated by the team. Thank you for sharing.
Q: Also adding the ability to choose/toggle silencer mode for your weapons loadout during operator select would be most appreciated. Leave it to the player to manage his selection time to manage his attachments, don’t prevent these tools.
A: Character customization between rounds is a feature that is in our wishlist for future improvements. No ETA to share at the moment.
Q: Finally, bring back the stats score timeline from the closed beta. This can just be hidden after the renown score page and never auto-change to it. That way players who would like to see these could easily just click the tab to bring it up for their liking.
A: It was removed because it helped save time between rounds. This was one of the main Closed Beta feedbacks. We do not have plans to bring this back.
/u/sonny211 Questions:
Q: Any plans to change the color of the uniforms so it decreases team kill probability as that seems to be a somewhat a issue and lots of support from the user base for two different colored uniforms where you can easily tell enemies from ally’s. I hope so! P.S., Awesome game!
A: About team uniforms, we do not have plans for this at the moment.
A: However, we are looking at improving the current system to help distinguish friends from foes without disrupting the experience and immersion.
A: Moreover, we will be addressing separately team killing and friendy fire issues based on data being currently collected. We will be communicating on our plans for this shortly.
/u/IronicWhopper10 Questions:
Q: What is your current plan? It seems like you guys are mostly quiet and behind the scenes with your patches. I’d like to know exactly what you plan on doing about all of the issues that people are experiencing.
A: Our plan is to do monthly in-depth patch notes that we will be sharing with you, starting in January 2016. Expect an overview for the mid-December title update through Reddit and our forums next week.
Q: Follow up question: Do you guys read this subreddit? There a ton of issues posted here and I’d like to know if you guys catch them.
A: Follow up answer: We read it a lot 🙂
/u/el_scrubberino Questions:
Q: Will we see the cancelled Yacht map in future DLC?
A: We do not wish to spoil our DLC content plans right now 🙂 maybe there is a Yacht, maybe there isn’t.
Q: What happened to 11th map?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Rainbow6/comments/3l7m6y/rainbow_six_siege_will_have_11_maps_available_at/
You clearly say here, there is 11 maps “playable both day or night” (your own words).
Where is my 11th map, playable both day or night? (The Harvard) That clearly implies it’s going to be playable in PvP and Terrorist Hunt too, while it isn’t.
And if it’s released as MP map in January, please don’t tell me it counts into the 4 maps you promised for 2016. Because it doesn’t. The game is already light on content.
A: I can confirm that the 11th map (University) does not count as one of the 4 Post Launch maps promised for 2016.
See above answer for more information about University map.
/u/infamous1261 Questions:
Q: Do you guys plan on releasing a map creator/steam workshop?
A: It’s not in our current plans.
/u/AlchemeticZ Questions:
Q: Also how will balancing issues be addressed? Will it be based on player performance, or will it be placed mostly on community feedback?
A: About balancing, we are and will keep collecting cold data as well as community feedback. We plan on having monthly patches and balancing will be part of those.
/u/Thuller Questions:
Q: Are you planning to add advanced functionality for ingame lights, lamps and possibly add flashlights or night/thermal visions? At the moment they cannot be destroyed – thus encounters in complete darkness are non-existant. Siege is very tactical and this would increase the immersion and catapult it on a next level. Also if we considered, how much “Article 5” mission is loved amongst the community.
A: Although we love the idea, it is very demanding for GPUs performance and has strong design implications. It is not in our plans at the moment to have Advanced functionalities for in-game lights.
/u/Tommuh Questions:
Q: Clan tags?
A: Clan tags? We are working on something similar 🙂
Q: Customization of terrorist hunt games?
A: Custo for TH games: not planned at the moment.
Q: Customization of recruit weapons?
A: Custo for Recruit weapons: doesn’t fit the design vision for our Operator system.
Q: Recruit weapons availability when playing operators?
A: Recruit’s weapon availability: doesn’t fit the design direction for our Operator system.
Q: Ability to report cheaters?
A: Cheaters: Right now, you can report cheaters by submitting a Customer Support ticket. We are planning further improvements and will be sharing details through a communication.
Q: History of chat messages?
A: History of chat: not currently in the plans.
Q: Colourblindness support? I can’t see shit.
A: Color-blindness support: I can confirm that this has been reported as community feedback to the team and that it is in our wishlist of improvements for the future.
Q: Randomly placed cameras?
A: Randomly placed cameras: Limiting randomness in PVP is a design decision, which incudes camera placement.
Q: Terrorist hunt bug, all wire or c4 in one room?
A: TH bug: This works as intended, not a bug.
Q: When choosing an operator you can’t see if he wears heavy armor or not. It is important because the operator will move slower.
A: Operator armor: thank you for your feedback, noted.
Q: Pro tip: Less skins .. more weapons, more weapon customization in the form of grips, scoops, extended clips, siliceners ….
A: Pro tip: thank you.
/u/WhenAllElseFail Questions:
Q: The current servers run at a tick rate of 64, but the position of players is updated 30 times per second.
Can someone explain that to me? How is it running at 64 if it’s updating at 30? Doesn’t that mean it’s running at 30 and not 64?
A: The game server runs different elements at different frequencies. The position update, at the moment, runs at 30.
