Last month, Rainbow Six Siege released a major patch that followed the anticipated Operation Blood Orchid update. The patch addressed the "Collision" issue, a critical bug that cheaters were able to exploit in order to glitch outside of the physical map. Ubisoft addressed the issue rather promptly and Siege has been more or less stable over the past couple of weeks. However, that doesn't mean work is done for the dev team. According to a recent Ubisoft blog, the team is now working on addressing reports on ping abuse, latency and peekers advantage.
In most games, players with stronger, more stable connections get more out of online gaming. And when a player with poor ping is playing Rainbow Six Siege, then a complicated problem arises.
Essentially, a player's position and his trigger are transferred to a server for validation -- a higher ping will cause the process to take a longer time and create what's known as lag. If a player has a ping of 200ms, then the players position as seen by the server is actually 100ms behind. The higher the ping, the further behind is a player's position as seen by the server.
This phenomenon creates "peeker's advantage" that is caused by the lag. The peeking player will turn around a corner on his screen before his position is registered on the screen of the opposing player. And once a peeker becomes visible, the opponent has a small window of reaction time to come out on top. However, if the peeker a high ping, the window of opportunity is reduced. Say a peeker has the reaction time of 300ms while the opponent has a reaction time of 150ms. If the peeker suffers a high ping of 400ms, then the peeker can win even if the opponent had the quicker reaction time. To better understand the phenomena, check out Ubisoft's diagram here.
To alleviate the ping gap between players, Ubisoft is working on a new Latency Alignment system that the team expects to implement by Year 2 Season 3 Mid-Season Reinforcements update. according to the Ubisoft Blog, the Latency Alignment will allow the server "to more accurately mirror the reaction time of a shooter with an unstable connection." If a player's position on the server is inconsistent, then the server will adjust the timing of when it receives shots to more accurately reflect a player's reaction. This will also create a fairer window of opportunity between the peeker and the opponent.
The Rainbow Six Siege Ubisoft blog also addressed the following patches that will arrive in the upcoming update:
PAWN-TO-PAWN PHYSICS
We have a new pawn-to-pawn physics system, which should address issues with players teleporting behind shield users. This issue was most commonly experienced while blocking a doorway with Montagne.
HIT VALIDATION IMPROVEMENTS
We are reducing the upper limit on the latency required to initiate extra hit validation steps. More details about these extra steps and how they affect gameplay will be published in another blog post.
REPLICATION IMPROVEMENTS
We are also optimizing the replication of actions. The result is a more responsive experience for all players and a reduction of latency.
PROCESSING DELAY + PING
Currently, the ping value displayed in the menus includes the processing delay. This is misleading, since running at a faster frame rate results in lower ping values being shown. We are removing this processing delay from the ping value. Although only a cosmetic change with no impact on gameplay, the value displayed will be a more accurate representation of your connection speed with the servers.
CONNECTIVITY ICONS
We are implementing a series of adjustments that will help you monitor the status of your client, of the server, and of your network connection.
With this change, the game will display up to four icons in the upper right corner of your screen. These four icons denote the quality of your gameplay experience concerning your ping, connection stability, update rate and host stability, respectively from left to right.
When one of these is in a degraded state that could affect your performance, the icon appearing will notify you. This will help provide a more accurate representation of your connection status beyond just a player’s ping. The icons have two states: yellow and red. The thresholds for each state can be tweaked at any time by the dev team, therefore the following values are just an approximation of the current settings.
- Latency icon: The latency icon will appear when your ping is high. A yellow latency icon means your ping is high enough for additional validation steps to be triggered by the server (around 100-140 ms of ping). These additional validation steps come into play when treating your shots, and determining whether or not they are a hit. You might notice some of your hits are not registering. Having a high ping also means you could encounter unpleasant situations such as dying behind cover. A red icon means your ping is bad (around 400-500 ms of ping). Being in that state for a long time could result in player being kicked from the game server. When the latency red icon is visible, almost all of your hits will be rejected by the server. This is intended.
- Connection icon: The connection icon appears when you are experiencing packet loss or latency instability (for example, when some of your packets are being redirected on another internet route). When this icon is triggered, you can experience rubber banding, hits being rejected by the game server, and abnormal induced latency. The probability of experiencing those situations is far higher when the red icon is visible.
- Update rate icon: The update rate icon appears when your frame rate is dropping or is unstable and the number of packets sent by your game client to the server is not high enough. You might experience hits being rejected by the game server and abnormal induced latency (this latency is induced by the game server to prevent other players from seeing your character stuttering). You could also experience rubber banding when the icon is red.
- Host icon: The host icons appears when the server is experiencing issues and is unable to preserve the stability of the simulation. All players connected to that game server will see the icon appearing at the same time. When you see this icon, you can experience rubber banding, abnormal latency or hit registration issues. Those situations will be more noticeable if the icon is red.
What are your thoughts on the upcoming Rainbow Six Siege patch from Ubisoft? What other bugs does the game need to address? Let us know in the comment section below.
