What The Hell, Ubisoft (Original)

This season is a total mess, right off the bat. Ubisoft has been Ubishafting us for the last several months, pushing the community as much as they can to find out where the limits are and what they can retroactively change and what they can fuck us over on.

No, this isn't just about cosmetics. If you comment 'its just cosmetics', you didn't read the post.

They are becoming increasingly uncompromising and anticonsumer as the game becomes more successful.

First up: Outbreak and The Original Controversy
Ubisoft started out by announcing they were jacking the price of the game back up, with a 5$ instore pat on the head to justify increasing the price by $20. Additionally, Outbreak Packs would be cash-only, and new players would get 14 packs while current players get 4. Each pack is about 5$. We, naturally, lost our lids over this.

To shut us up, Ubisoft promised everyone the Ash Elite skin. Now everyone gets the minimum of 4 packs to start, rather than bumping everyone up to 14 (taking the low road), and the game price would remain steady instead. For whatever reason, this was enough for the subreddit.

The game price staying the same was a good win, but Outbreak Packs costing real cash only was/is still a massive issue and is extra anti-consumer. Now that the packs have arrived, there's all manner of issues with them. But more on that later.

The Ash Elite
Oh the hilarity of it not working day 1. But don't worry, the Outbreak Pack version still works, so go ahead and buy some packs if you want it.

So here's the thing about the Black Viper set; it's a cannibalized version of a Renown-purchasable set we were going to get. Back in Janurary, one of our diligent data miners brought us a cart of an Ash Bundle leak, which had the same camo skin the Black Viper Elite set now has. We never received this bundle, which is extra unusual since the promotional art for it was all done and ready to go.

What happened to it? Well when Ubi did some damage control to promise us the elite skin and shut us up without really fixing much, they cannibalized a 'renownable' set to make a second elite skin, so they could keep those Outbreak Packs nice and stuffed with goodies.

The Joke of a TTS
The TTS was (almost) a worthless endeavor this time around. Over the course of two weeks, we had only two real fixes; Blitz was made not-bugged and given less accuracy, and Finka was slightly nerfed.

Every other bug presently listed here existed day 1 of the TTS. Issues like the Damascus Steel skin have been around for almost an entire season now, and everyone not recieving their minimum 4 Outbreak Packs was reported constantly from day 1 of the TTS.

Most notable are the VOIP issues, huge performance bugs (some of the 'permanent' ones can be fixed by turning off vsync, or restarting the game as an fyi), and triple delay time between Buck's Skeleton Key and weapon switching, which is effectively a huge nerf until its fixed.

Either the timeline for the TTS needs to be increased so issues can actually get fixed, or the TTS is just a beta preview where they can fix any Siege-destroying issues but not much else. Either way, Ubisoft has had the time and the data to figure this shit out by now.

Increased Prices and Outbreak Packs
Some of you may have noticed we only have two renown-purchasable seasonal skins. Some of you might have also noticed the jacked-up price of them, as well. (The price was normal on the TTS; they jacked it up for release) Additionally, we were told Outbreak Packs could be earned by playing Outbreak. The original page that said this has since been edited, removing this tidbit, as the only way to earn packs now is to buy them.

But did you also know the season headgear price has increased too? What was once 5k is now 12k, a 2.5x~ increase in price for every single operator. Ohh, but don't worry; the R6 price hasn't increased as much. It only went up by about 2x the price. Effectively, Renown is now comparatively worth less R6 cash points in some cases, and this gap may continue to enlarge in the future.

Update: Confirmation from Epi that this is indeed the case.

We are going to be harmonizing the R6 Credit/Renown ratio more or less across the board moving forward. While we won't be able to get it on the dot in every situation, we are aiming for 600 R6 Credits = 25,000 Renown.

As such, the Renown cost for these bundles was increased to align with that.

Source

Additionally, the Health Hazard weapon skin added for the new ops is presently the most expensive non-global skin in the game, sitting at 15k. The closest a non-universal weapon skin has ever come to that is the GROM skins added last season at 7k. This is over double that price, and once again, an increase in price from what it was on the TTS.

Most seasons we get 4 seasonal weapon skins. This season we got 4, again - but as I said, the price for them has increased significantly. Not only that, but two of them are locked behind Outbreak Cash-only boxes.

This isn't even touching on the fact that Outbreak is a limited-time event specifically to get people to impulse buy Outbreak Lootboxes, much like Overwatch's timed events are to get people to impulse-buy lootboxes.

This is ontop of the massive number of R6-only sets, and the $321.55 USD of cash-only sets. And that's only counting what is currently available. Not to mention 3 years worth of seasonpasses, 5 different versions of the game, including the Trap Edition, 'gold' edition, and $130 'complete edition'. Speaking of...

Starter Edition and Old Ops
As we all know, Siege is plagued with the Starter Trap Edition. While some blame can be put on the consumer for making a bad purchase, ultimately Ubisoft should not be willingly providing us with a bad purchase, and no ability to upgrade. You'd think after a year and a half of the community chanting "It's a trap!", they might make some real changes to it. But they don't.

This season the Starter Edition got a slight buff, in that there are more initial operators available. However, this change is not applied retroactively, fucking over anyone who bought the Starter Edition before today. Bought it yesterday? Tough shit. 400 hours of grinding to get all the ops. Bought it today? Well, 200-300 hours of grinding still, but not 400.

Additionally, as all base ops are now free (and all attachments), the playerbase is not recieving any reimbursement. Again, if you dumped 20k in renown or 30$ in the past week to buy all the base ops/attatchements, you do not get any reimbursement today.

This, once again, shows Ubisoft not caring about its consumerbase - even the new ones.

All of this, when the game still has such glaring issues like trouble queuing together as a five man party, either failing completely or putting 2 people in a ranked match while kicking the other 3. I-frames while vaulting, hit registration, unstable servers, disappearing gadgets, countless exploits, insta-spawnpeeks, balance issues, hackers, and countless other problems. Instead of those fixes, we get more bugs, increased prices, cash-only lootboxes, and all this other shittery.

What the hell, Ubisoft.