Multiplayer shooters are technically complex. In addition to a fundamentally well-rounded gaming experience, titles like Rainbow Six: Siege must also allow for a fair match on a technical level. Different hardware and variously strong Internet lines should by no means impair the experience too much.

Now Ubisoft has explained in a technique analysis how to fight against the “Peeker’s Advantage” approach. The term is used to describe the advantage attackers have when they run around the corner towards a defender and open fire. Basically, the defender sees the attacker only after the game information has been transmitted from the attacker’s PC to the server and from there to the defender. However, by then it may be too late if the attacker already opens fire on his screen while the defender does not see any opponent at all on his PC.

And, of course, the higher the attacker’s ping, the later information sent by the attacker arrives at the defender, so the peeker’s advantage increases with a poorer Internet connection. A unfair technical advantage for players with poor connection.

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Ubisoft relies on the “Window of Opportunity”.

In Rainbow Six: Siege, Ubisoft relies on a clear design philosophy: Whoever has the faster and more stable internet connection should also get the advantage from the game. No player should be rewarded for lagging in multiplayer games, especially since an increase in ping can also be forced with a little technical understanding.

That’s why we’re doing everything we can to exploit the Peeker’s Advantage. The attacker not only sends his movement information to the server with a delay, but also his shots (and hits). Accordingly, the defender also has a few milliseconds more time to react to the attacker. The ping should thus no longer have any effect on the shooting, because the more the attacker lags, the more time the defender has to react.

The server then checks to see if the defender still has time to react at the last moment, in the “Window of Opportunity”, fired. Then the server calculates: Did the attacker fire first, or the defender as soon as he could see the attacker? The player who reacted faster then also wins the shootout.

New features for Year 2 – Season 3 Mid– Season

The system will be refined in the next mid– Season , the following steps are planned:

• Latency alignment: Latency adjustment is a change that allows the server to more accurately reflect the response time of a shooter with an unstable connection. When a player sends position updates in unstable periods, the server adjusts the timing of the shot messages sent to more accurately represent the player’s commands. Although it is only milliseconds, the result is a larger window of opportunity when the opponent is a player with fluctuating latency.
• Offset Physics: A new “Displace” physics system that should fix the bug where players can teleport behind shield users. This bug occurred most often when a door was blocked with Montagne.
• Improvement for hit validation: We are reducing the upper bound of the required latency to introduce additional hit validation steps. More details about these additional steps and how they affect gameplay will be published in another blog post.
• Replication Enhancement: We are also optimizing the replication of actions. The result improves the response experience for all players and reduces latency.
• Processing delay and ping: At the moment, the ping value shown in the menus includes the processing delay. This is misleading because a lower ping value is displayed at a faster frame rate. We remove the processing delay from the ping value. While this is only a cosmetic change with no impact on gameplay, the displayed value will more accurately represent your connection speed with the servers.

There will also be new connection icons:

• Latency icon: The latency icon appears when your ping is high. A yellow latency icon means that your ping is high enough to trigger additional validation steps at the server (at a ping of about 100 – 140 ms). These validation steps come into play when calculating your shots and deciding whether they hit or not. You may notice that some of your hits do not register. A high ping can also mean that you are encountering unpleasant situations, such as dying even though you are in cover. A red icon means that your ping is bad (at a ping of about 400 – 500 ms). If a player is in this stage for too long, they could be kicked off the game server. With a red latency icon, almost none of your hits will be accepted by the server. This is intended to be the case.
• Connection icon: The connection icon appears when you experience packet loss or latency instability (for example, when some of your packets are redirected over a different Internet route). With this icon, rubber band effects may occur, hits may be rejected by the game server, and abnormally caused latency may occur. With a red icon, the probability of these conditions is much higher.
• Update rate symbol: The refresh rate icon appears when your frame rate drops or is unstable and the number of packets your game client sends to the server is not high enough. Your hits may be rejected by the game server and you may experience abnormal latency (this latency is caused by the game server to prevent other players from seeing your characters falter). A red icon may also cause rubber band effects.
• Host icon: The host icon appears when the server has problems and is unable to maintain the stability of the simulation. All players connected to this game server will see the icon appear at the same time. When you see this icon, you may experience rubber band effects, abnormal latency, and hit registration issues. These situations are more noticeable when the icon is red.

All of these changes are intended to make Rainbow Six: Siege more fun for players with good Internet connections, while players with lags and high pings are left behind. This is the intention of Ubisoft. It is not yet known exactly when the update will be released.

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