Rainbow Six Siege and you: a beginners guide.

[Felicity]

Ok, hi, hello, I decided I wanted to talk about rainbow six siege. I have 300+ hours on the game and i'm barely mediocre, I hit gold 3 in ranked last season and haven't looked back since.

 

Specifically this is a beginners guide of sorts, maybe a orientation to get you in the right mindset to learn the details of the game that you can only really learn by playing.

 

So let's start with a little bit of context for those who don't know RS6. RS6 is an FPS game with a bit of a checkered past. As an entry into the Tom Clancy series it has a notable weight as part of the franchise and when it came out was met with a mixed reception. On the one hand a slow, strategic FPS based on unique operators who get one life round to round is a fantastic concept that leads to some of the tensest most exciting situations you can get in a multiplayer game. Add onto the unique characters the unique maps and destructibility of said maps, you get a very complex game. On the other unfortunate hand, the game was as broke as a dropped china plate. Bugs were, and some might argue are, prevalent and caused much frustration for the fanbase for a good chunk of the games lifespan. Until the game went through Operation Health, a time period where many of the games issues were focused and attempted to be solved. Fast forward in time, now we're in year 3, new operators and maps come out every few months and a very diverse cast of operators has led to the rise of a fascinating if obtuse meta. This is to me a bit of ancient lore since I started playing during Operation blood Orchid, major content updates being framed as different Operations.

 

So how can you get into this complex game as smoothly as possible?

 

The first and most important thing I'm gonna try and impress on you is the necessity of information and communication.

 

The typical learning curve starts with understanding the abilities of the different operators. 40 characters in total, 20 on attack, 20 on defence. I'm not going to describe all of them, information on who is who is easily available and I daresay you'll find out what they do when you're subjected to a particular ops shtick. They can be sorted into different roles per se though there's no official sorting.

Defenders:

 

Anchors: People who stay in the room. Whether it's to hold a line of sight and watch for rushes into the room or hiding to utilise remote devices such as drones or cameras, these ops are largely stationary. Echo and the most recent op Maestro are examples of solid anchors.

 

Roamers: The exact opposite of Anchors, Roamers roam the map. They keep their eyes and ears peeled for anyone moving around the map whilst trying to flank the enemy and take them by surprise. You will hate these people. Examples include Lesion and the infamous and incredibly fun Caveira.

 

Attackers:

 

Rushers: On the attackers side there's people who excel at getting in quick, fucking up anyone they can see and then running forward to do the damn thing. A departure to the typical slow and steady approach, these characters aim to take the enemy off guard. They are vulnerable to an alert enemy or traps. Examples include Ash and Ying.

 

Breachers: Ops who destroy the environment to offer new lines of sight or circumvent the enemies defensive gadgets. It can be as destructive as a thermite breaching charge to melt through metal reinforcements or as simple as a big fuck off sledge hammer to break through wooden walls. Hibana and Thermite are the king and queen of breaching metal walls.

 

The next steep rise in the learning curve and easily the biggest will be map knowledge. Understanding where the enemy can and might approach is the most important aspect of this game. Learn entry ways, alternate routes to get around the map, figure out which windows and doorways lead to the outside, learn where destructible hatches are in the floor and ceiling. The quicker you get used to the maps the better. There are custom game modes and single player terrorist hunts you can use to explore the maps.

 

The last aspect of the game is a vague one. Once you know who is who and where is where, you get to practice the application of that knowledge. This is where you find lines of sight, innovative uses of your gadget, use your map knowledge to rotate around behind the enemy and take em out, sound whore to determine where the enemy is coming from, so on and so forth. Once you get to this point it's hard to call you a beginner.

 

So with this mindset, you might be "Ok, who should I play at first? who's easy to play? Who's available at the start?"

 

Well first, there's an important distinction to draw now between which version of the game you bought. If you bought the £15~ or so version then you'll be in for a grind. After being given six operators, 3 for attack and defence from the first year of the game, you'll have to grind the ingame currency to purchase a new operator. If you bought the full game you'll have much less of a grind, but you'll still have to purchase people. In which case I don't think there's much advice to be had since it'll be much easier to pick up ops.

 

Stand out choices though are:

 

Glaz: The sniper of the game. With a thermal scope he can see through smoke from a distance to see the bright yellow body of the enemy. His weapon is single shot, requiring accuracy and he is best utilised by finding long lines of sight that use his scope to make it easier to get those kills. Very good to hone your mechanics, so long as you can transfer what you learn to other operators.

 

Rook: A simple defender whose gadget gives the whole team an armoured vest. His gadget is simple and can be put down without a thought at the start of the round allowing you too focus on the gunplay. Good for beginners who don't want to tackle a complex operator.

 

Caveira: If you want to dive into the deep end, pick Cav. As mentioned before she is a roamer whose ability is a silent step that allows her to run around the map full speed without fear of alerting the enemy. Very mobile and very dangerous with her other ability, her interrogation. Go up to a downed enemy and interact with them to interrogate. A successful interrogate reveals every surviving member of the enemy team. You can use this knowledge to snowball the game and chain interrogations to dominate the round. Learning Cav requires map knowledge, communication to find the enemy and intuition as to when you can get an interrogation off. If you can learn Cav you'll find the game much easier for all the fundamentals you need to get good with her.

 

Finally my last recommendation is to get a team. Communication is so important to winning games and so having a team of friends who know what to do will make your games far, far better.

 

So there you go. Hopefully this might make things a bit easier for getting into this bitch of a game. 

[5hift]

One thing I always see the seasoned veterans of the game doing is creating rotation paths in the walls. Unlike most games, you are not limited to just the paths presented in the map. You have numerous opportunities to exploit the map which create new paths that you can use to outplay the enemy.

 

This is crucial because should the attacking team attempt to flank you by changing their approach, you will need to reach the other side of the map ASAP. And some of these maps are really confusing. So cutting a hole straight through the map so you and your team can swiftly move from one side to the other.

 

This also ties in to wall reinforcement. At first you may think the best course of action is to completely box in the the objective to make it as hard as possible to reach. While on paper this seems like a good idea, it presents the issue of making it difficult for your team to gain full access of the objective. If the enemy team manages to reach the objective, you have a narrow window of opportunity to stop them. It may be better to not completely seal the objective off and create areas where you and your team can move about.