This is obviously an outdated piece, the specific operators I discuss have long since gained or lost their coveted 1.5x’s. That said, there’s a certain timelessness to it all the same. Were I to make the operator names blank, you’d be liable to think I was talking about Thorn getting her 1.5x. I’ve done very little to change this beyond writing a conclusion and trimming some fat.
Ubisoft released their latest designer notes for Year 8 Season 1. In it there weren’t major changes to operator utility. Instead, optic roulette was being played. Oryx and Kapkan lost their 1.5x scopes while Wamai’s MP5k is back in action and Tachanka became the 4th Defender with a 2.0x. As Ubisoft was kind enough to explain their thinking with these changes the general public can get a sense of what the developer is trying to do. Personally, I despise it.
Balancing is a difficult topic. From a developer standpoint you want your game to be perfectly balanced but the reality is that no game ever is. Chess is about as balanced as you can get and there’s still an inherent advantage to playing White because they go first. This makes “perfect balance” an ideal rather than a realistic goal for developers to hit. Even if a game were perfectly balanced, is that in terms of statistics or gameplay? A balanced op may not seem like it from the data and vice versa. Lion was left so oppressive for so long because he made Siege closer to a perfect 50% win rate between Attack and Defense.
The goal of balancing in a game as complex as Siege should be to have operators that are viable enough for their kits, and then leave them be. Castle and Clash are ostensibly balanced at the highest levels of play, but their pick rate in ranked won’t reflect that. Rather than making random changes to their kits it’s better to leave them be and let them exist in their niche. Powerful ops like Solis and Azami are much more problematic, too strong relative to the rest of the cast. Changes should not be made temporarily. If you add or remove something, it should stay that way. The goal is balance, not long term musical chairs.
In these notes it is revealed that Ubisoft understands the influence that 1.5x scopes have on the community. The developers know that players will naturally migrate to Defenders with the higher zoom scopes, regardless of what gun or utility the op has. When justifying Oryx’s loss of the optic, it sounds like the 1.5x was simply a way to get people to try the operator rather than a long term decision to make the most balanced game possible. Now that people see Oryx has value, there’s no more need for the scope. Baked into that is the idea that the 1.5x is inherently powerful and will skew pick rates drastically. But this raises greater questions around 1.5x’s on Defense and what the balancing endgame becomes.
Wamai recently got his 1.5x back for the MP5k after losing it only two seasons ago. First he lost the 1.5x and every player moved to the Aug, but then Ubisoft realized that a Defender using an rifle was also powerful so they nerfed the Aug. Subsequently people stopped playing Wamai because both guns sucked. Completing the cycle of clownery, because Wamai’s pick rate went down too much, he’s getting the 1.5x back. Of course not mentioned by Ubisoft is that this will once again raise his pick rate and win delta, the original reason he lost the 1.5x. Given this, the historically consistent precedent is that Wamai will lose the scope in a season or two, restarting the cycle.
This is all symptomatic of an off kilter balancing philosophy on Ubisoft’s part. The company and developers are clearly statistic based when making decisions. Almost every balancing decision is based on data, the win delta and pick rate. Rarely do we hear about how oppressive an op ‘feels’ or the way they’re used in game, perspectives related to eye test and in game experience. It’s only when the data supports whatever the eye test told players months ago that we see movement. Given this, the 1.5x scope seems like a balancing problem that should be addressed given its clear effect on pick and win rate.
Sledge and Mute were ostensibly balanced in the sense that they had no downsides but were also very reasonable in the power level of their utility. They had clear use cases and were always valuable to bring into any lineup, but were rarely necessary. Siege is a game about committing to choices, and being flexible gives players freedom. Of course the flexible operators are popular.
And by being popular Ubisoft looked at the numbers and wanted to make changes to bring them more in line with their statistical ideal. Why these ops are bigger priorities than LMG spam, Azami, or any number of statistical and obvious (eye test) problems, we’ll never know. But that’s besides the point. Now we have 3 armor Sledge and Mute, a wildly unpopular change across the player base.
In totality, these balancing decisions scream of a developer making changes just to make changes, using data as an excuse to do so. Combined with the heavy handed way that the 1.5x is used to affect Defender pick rates Ubisoft seems to be trying to herd the playerbase into solving Siege the Ubisoft way. Which is wrong. Players aren’t some test animal to be herded into certain patterns of behaviour, it’s the player’s game now, regardless of what Ubisoft Account Management thinks.
The beauty of video games is that they aren’t solved. New tactics and techniques are found in decades old titles like Street Fighter and Counter Strike by players searching for that extra edge over the competition. Siege is still unsolved, 8 years in and operators like Fuze are only now seeing use in unexpected ways. The Bandit Trick was never meant to exist, but players found it and made it integral to early metas. This innovation was player led. Ubisoft moving scopes around and making arbitrary changes to balanced ops tries to skip the player led process of innovation. It’s like a teacher not telling you the answer but oddly gesturing to a specific part of the math equation. Yeah, you’ll get the answer but was it really you?
The developer has a duty to keep the game balanced and interesting, yes, but what that looks like and how the players act in the sandbox of the game is up to the players, not the developer. If something is broken, fix it. If something is too weak, buff it. If something is overbearing, nerf it in a reasonable or interesting manner. But if everything is relatively fine? Leave it.
Ubisoft seems reluctant to let Siege breathe, being so hands-on, but only with asinine changes. Only with balancing that solves the problems from 12 months ago. Only tackling non-issues and avoiding any real problems. It’s as if balance patches are more to tick off a box, game be damned.