It didn't take long for "free-to-play" to also mean "more hostile to your time and wallet."
As the honeymoon fades on Rainbow Six Siege’s big “Siege X” update that dropped a payload of welcome quality-of-life improvements on the aging FPS last week, players have identified new ways Ubisoft is stinking up the joint.
Ubi is facing backlash to some ugly changes to XP and Renown gain in Siege X. The amount of Renown (Siege’s free currency used to unlock operators and many cosmetics, but not all) earned simply for playing matches has been slashed dramatically, in some cases by 200% or 300%.
“108 Renown with 30% booster after a won full game of [Dual Front] does not feel rewarding,” wrote Reddit user BlauerRay over the weekend.
“I can understand this for F2P players. But for people who already bought the game? Really?” user VoidSlap added in the comments.
For context, Siege used to reward hundreds of Renown for winning a match, depending on how many rounds were won, how well you did as an individual, and if the team had boosters activated. A new operator, the hottest ticket item for the majority of players, costs 25,000 Renown, so under the old system, grinding to unlock operators for free wasn’t especially quick, but very doable.
Now? Not so much. As user Newbieguy5000 discovered by running the numbers, Ubi’s new equation for Renown gain severely punishes losing.
“Now you only get SEVEN renown for winning a round. If you lose 0-3 with 1,000 score? You’re only getting 38 renown.”
To compensate for lower match Renown, Siege X has introduced two new ways to earn Renown: 1,000 for leveling up, and 500 for playing two matches per day. Ubi tucked this change into the “Additional updates” portion of some gargantuan patch notes, reasoning that the daily rate means “players can make a good amount of daily progress earlier in the play session.”
That’s one way to look at it. Another is that we’re witnessing Siege X’s shift toward free-to-play throttling: “No” to an infinitely grindable currency, “yes” to daily challenges that compel players to log in every day or miss out.
No matter which way you slice it, Ubi has gotten stingy with Renown at the same time that it’s upselling the most expensive microtransactions it has ever offered—a garish $50 Valkyrie skin called “Quintessence of Form.”
The bundle represents a new uber-super-duper tier of cosmetics called “Masterpiece,” the distinguishing qualities of which appear to be animated skins, custom inspect/reload animations, and approximately ten times the visual clutter.
The Valkyrie bundle has all the hallmarks of a cosmetic screaming, “please believe this is worth the scratch,” such as sixteen layers of clothing, sharp accents, multiple glowing accessories, and a gun that transforms into a sword. Like other bundles “Elite” or higher, it can’t be purchased with Renown or be sold on the Marketplace for R6 Credits.
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