I still find it hard to believe sometimes that Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege has been around for 3 years now and is about to head into the fourth one. In a recent post on Siege’s official website, Ubisoft has released a trailer for the upcoming Year 4 Season 1 and all the changes it will bring to the game’s universe.
Covering their bases
Ubisoft has finally decided to do away with their Starter Edition of Siege. As someone who has been playing the game, I’ve always found the Starter Edition to be a huge waste of time and money, especially after the changes done towards progression and unlocks. If you’re in the blank, Starter Editions allowed players to buy the game for a heavily discounted price. But it came with the drawback of having severely nerfed progression.
When starter editions first launched back in 2016, it would only give you two random operators from a pool of six. And they would throw in an additional 600 R6 Credits to buy two more operators from the remaining four or buy some in-game cosmetics. Later in 2018, they revised the plan and gave three attackers and three defenders to people who would purchase the starter edition and the additional 600 R6 credits as well. But the problem arose with unlocking the remaining base and DLC operators.
For any other edition of the game, the base operators came free of cost. But Starter Edition players had to pay 12,500 Renown for each of them, making the unlocks a massive grind which was certain to put off even the most persistent of players. Additionally, you need 25,000 renown to unlock any DLC operator that your edition doesn’t cover. Which essentially meant Starter Edition players were paying less to access the game but their progression was severely hampered compared to the other players who could dish out a little more money.
Fast forward to 2019, Ubisoft is dropping this convoluted edition system and going in with their original content plan. You can buy the standard edition and enjoy the entire game and unlock everything at your pace. And if you have the money to shell out, you can also buy one of the costlier editions to instantly unlock all of the bonus operators they provide. Progression for existing starter edition owners has also been addressed. All starter editions will be upgraded to the standard edition at no additional cost and they will continue to unlock operators normally.
And every Standard edition owner, you can unlock new Legacy operators for each CTU with each remaining operator costing 500 more renown. To put it simply, if you want to unlock all four operators from the FBI, you need to pay 500 renown for the first, 1000 for the second, 1500 for the third and 2000 for the final operator. This brings the grind down to a much more player-friendly level which is always a good thing.
Moving onto the DLCs, previously, all DLC operators required 25000 renown to unlock which was also a massive grind. Starting this season, operators from Year 1, 2 and 3 will cost less and lesser renown to unlock the older they get on the roster. We don’t know how the prices will be decided as they will be revealed during the Rainbow Six Invitational. But as a player who has unlocked all the operators from Year 1 and 2 by spending 25K renown for each of them, I sure am happy for the newer players.
To make their stance more clear, Ubisoft is holding an introductory sale for newer players who are waiting to dip their fingers into this fan-favorite shooter. You can even try out the game for free during this weekend and see if you can work the tactical combat and realism the game brings. You can find more info on the official Ubisoft website.
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