So I've been playing Rainbow Six: Siege quite a bit lately after finally having a decent enough system to run it, and I have to say I am massively disappointed with it.
I love the game to death
as a concept.
I love the tactical, slow and methodical teamwork that is involved as attackers, as well as the strategic gameplay of the defenders. It is incredibly satisfying to take your time, plan out your attack/defense [in real time], coordinate it with your team and come out on top.
However, I found that the netcode absolutely wasted all of the effort that was put into these ideas, and would go as far as saying the game is
unplayable in it's current state.
A significant portion of my deaths were a result of an enemy managing to pull off what appeared to be super-human reflexes, but the killcam showed they had
far more time to shoot me. Sometimes they would not even appear on my screen at all and yet I was on their screen for more than half a second before they killed me. Mind you none of the games I played had ping any higher than 90, and many of these deaths had people with
twice(!!!) my ping.
My very first few rounds I felt that I simply was rushing myself too much, but some very apparent patterns began to form once I had gotten comfortable with the controls and overall gameplay.
So after a particularly bad game, I decided to try and do some research into the netcode of the game and I found
this.I cannot even begin to understand how ubisoft could possibly believe this acceptable not only because this is a game highly touted as a "competitive" game, but also because
the entire basis of this game relies on accurate information between client/server. It is simply not fun to have the drop on somebody, only to have them rush around a corner and one-shot you in a nanosecond.
Even more abysmally, ubisoft has acknowledged the issues, and claimed they would fix them
over a year ago.
If I was asked to summarize my experience with Siege, I would simply say don't bother. With the netcode in it's current state, you may get lucky and earn a few good kills but the netcode will take the rest of your efforts and beat you over the head with them until you give up.
Looking at the netcode analysis video you provided, especially with the first experiment with the shooter/victim, it seems that the game trust client's data, during my lessons in network programming, I've been taught to NEVER trust client's data so we hit a compromise here.
The thing that reveal player's IPs is also stupid in my opinion, it's a mix between P2P (Peer 2 Peer) and client-server architecture.
This is why I disable client prediction whenever I can, I would rather see players lagging and have a true confirmation of hit/non-hit instead of smooth player movement with "false hits".
For me, the best Rainbow Six game is still Raven Shield along with it's extensions.
One of my other roommates has Vegas 1 and 2 on steam, and I've been playing them a bit lately via steam sharing. Quite a fun experience, though there were quite a few very cheap feeling deaths. (And the final boss for 2 is absolutely sadistic)
Have yet to find the Terrorist Hunt map I remember watching Urby and Archie playing on youtube though. I seem to recall the video being called Defusing the Convention Center, but I also remember the spawn being outside, so I dunno.
Haven't tried online with them because I doubt anybody plays 'em anymore, so I can't attest to the netcode in the Vegas games. Probably better than Siege though.
@JeffMOD: Interestingly enough, the map was called Convention Center
Rainbow Six Siege is frustratingly broken. It does not.
We had a lot of fun with terrorist hunt against AI, but I don't think we've ever won a PvP game that wasn't a fluke.