While the Call of Duty and Battlefield princes squabble over the FPS crown, King Counter-Strike sits upon its throne chuckling at the upstarts. The former Half-Life mod's competitive potential has been evident since it was in beta, and proven again and again since.

But there’s a new usurper in town with eyes on Counter-Strike’s competitive shooter dominance: Rainbow Six Siege . If developer Ubisoft Montreal has anything to say about it, Rainbow Six Siege, the little shooter that could, has the chops to swipe Counter-Strike’s coveted PC shooter crown. It’s going to take time – at least a few years – but the potential is definitely there.

Here’s why (but first, let’s start with the thorns surrounding Siege’s rose).

While CS is no stranger to controversy, Siege’s launch was anything but rosy. Hell, it was rocky. Rampant cheating. Hit-registry issues. Problematic netcode. This is just a taste of Siege’s problems at launch in December 2015. Despite this, Siege’s community grew while those problems abounded and it continues to grow as those issues are slowly improved.

Thanks to Ubisoft Montreal’s transparency with their audience – combined with its refusal to follow the trend of subdividing the player base with each release of DLC – Siege has scored unprecedented digital street cred and, perhaps more miraculously, unparalleled player patience from its community.

During my recent visit to Ubisoft Montreal for the Six Invitationals – where I spoke to Aussie Xbox team Mindfreak and key developers [https://www.redbull.com/au-en/rainbow-six-siege-the-future-of-competition] – Ubisoft Montreal further acknowledged the year-one problems with Siege and the challenges of the road ahead. According to a presentation by Band Director Alexandre Remy and Creative Director Xavier Marquis , the main strategy for the first year of Siege was simply player retention.

For year two, the core focus is on the health of the game. Remy and Marquis refreshingly and readily acknowledged the kind of issues that other developers might dismiss as impacting limited numbers of the community, boiled down into three categories: connectivity, hit registration, and matchmaking.

Over the course of 2017, Ubisoft Montreal will shift Siege from its hybrid peer-to-peer/client-server model to a pure client-server model, with the pledge that this should help fix core issues with connectivity and matchmaking. As for all-important hit registration, Ubisoft Montreal is confident it has discovered latency issues (in the engine and within the dedicated server infrastructure) that can be similarly addressed in 2017.

The result: a game whose execution edges ever closer to its potential that’s been clear since launch. Assuming Ubisoft Montreal can pull it off – and comparing the state of the game now to launch is certainly promising the team is heading in the right direction – Rainbow Six Siege at the end of 2017 should be a different competitive beast to where it’s at now. Part of that is obviously the key technical issues that need to be addressed to minimise frustration among the community, but the other part is how Ubisoft Montreal actively wants to reshape the meta with each DLC drop.

Counter-Strike Global Offensive--the reigning king © supplied

This is the main thing that sets Rainbow Six Siege apart from other competitive shooters. When games like Call of Duty, Battlefield and Counter-Strike release new content, it doesn’t drastically impact the meta, unless a game-impacting glitch is being ironed out (or introduced). Preservation of the gameplay formula is paramount in these shooters, but Ubisoft Montreal has created a culture of upsetting the meta each quarter, albeit in a way that doesn’t change the core gameplay pillars.

On top of this, Counter-Strike’s high skill ceiling is primarily based on fast reflexes, precise aim and the reality that high lethality (specifically headshots) are linked to an absence of respawns in a round. Siege’s skill ceiling includes these factors, too, but it takes it to the next level by having a Quake-like requirement of 3D map awareness, because attackers should rarely be trying to kill defenders through traditional windows and doorways. There’s no point shooting through doorways or windows when you can shoot at enemies through a wall, floor, or ceiling in Siege.

That’s not to say that there can’t be a noticeable skill gap between pro players and community enthusiasts in Counter-Strike, but Counter-Strike’s tactical depth is shallow when stacked next to Siege.

In Siege, fast reflexes and precise aim are admirable skills, but they’re secondary to the intelligence game. Marquis admitted that Siege was inspired by RTS games, and it’s clear that’s why strategy is so important when playing. Fast reflexes and pro aim will help in a pinch, of course, but the better firefights in Siege are those that the enemy players aren’t aware they’re involved in.

Getting the drop on your enemy because of the intel you’ve collected, denying intelligence gathering, or spreading misinformation are key to success in the competitive scene for Rainbow Six Siege. This is easily accommodated in the game design thanks to destructible and penetrable walls, barricades, floors and ceilings; the importance of reconnaissance equipment; and the individual MOBA-like Operator gadgets/abilities of the attacking and defending operators.

In Siege, you don’t have to have line of sight on a player to kill them outright through a penetrable surface if you know they’re on the other side. There’s limited penetrable surfaces in CS, but it’s on a smaller scale, and shooting through them doesn’t leave object damage like it does in Siege. Similarly, because of the asynchronous approach to multiplayer (granted, similar to CS), time-wasting as a defender is crucial to placing pressure on the attacking team. Unlike Counter-Strike, even player death in Siege has its advantages.

Dead players can view reconnaissance equipment (drones and cameras) and are encouraged to relay information to the living from the digital grave. On top of this, mould-shattering semi-realistic sound design means that crucial audio cues travel primarily through openings, which means the tactical placement of barbed wire, or enemy operators stepping on glass or destroyed barricades, can provide timely audio intelligence without the need for line of sight. It also means that holes created in penetrable surfaces allow for these sound cues to carry from adjoining spaces.

Because of the semi-restrictive kit options, it also means knowing which operators you’re fighting against provides additional passive intel about how you should engage them, and what tricks you should be wary of in terms of equipment and their respective weapon ranges.

Operators can pre-fire common attacking or defending positions, knowing that they might score an easy kill if the enemy is caught napping. The addition of leaning in Siege means the peeker’s advantage is compounded, but what this does is dissuade stationary tactics and rewards players that move. Couple this with the ability to go prone, as well as the attacking operators’ option of covering 360-degree angles while rappelling, and the kind of tension you feel when playing Siege seeps through to the viewers.

Ultimately, because Ubisoft Montreal is so actively disrupting the meta with the quarterly release of new operators (one attacker and one defender), it means the competitive scene is regularly in a state of flux. Tactics that were clinically effective at one tournament are learnt and countered by pro players but, in fairness, that’s no different to other shooters.

Holes in walls create new sight lines for attack. © supplied

What is different in Siege is that new operators have the potential to create all-new tactics and subsequent counters. The recent introduction of attacking operator Jackal, for instance, makes common defender roaming an even riskier tactic, and defending operator Mira rewards on-site defenders with crucial intelligence-gathering abilities that make attackers re-evaluate their strategies at the mere sight of her unique Black Mirror gadget.

Beyond the meta mix-ups, Ubisoft Montreal is unafraid to mess with popular gameplay trends, too. Existing operators are changed in terms of their abilities, equipment and, sometimes function, and there has even been discussion of introducing randomised full-auto recoil in the future to dissuade learnable recoil-compensation tricks that players currently use (across shooters) to keep an entire mag of unloaded bullets within a tight grouping.

Then there’s the reality that defenders can temporarily leave the structure they’re protecting for a high-risk/high-reward shot at catching attackers napping. It’s a divisive mechanic in the community but, once again, it’s one that makes for exciting viewing, whether the exiting defender’s gamble pays off or they’re gunned down.

What’s more important in Siege, though, is it’s not who can outshoot who, it’s who can outthink who and execute a plan or, alternatively, counter a well-laid plan and roll with the punches.

In its current form, Siege isn’t ready to spark a meaningful exodus from Counter-Strike. There are threads like this one on Reddit dedicated to the kind of existing issues and newly introduced problems (in recent patches, no less) that plague Rainbow Six Siege. It’s not so much that they make Siege unplayable in its current form, it’s more that they tarnish the competitive potential in terms of all-important balancing.

The closer Ubisoft Montreal can bring the reality of Siege to its clearly attractive promise, the more shooter fans will take note of its appeal. Remy says that there’s at least another decade of operators planned for Siege, so it’s not like there’s any risk of running out of new content and, therefore, subsequent meta mix-ups.

Assuming Ubisoft Montreal can address Siege’s current problems and resist the urge to release sequels instead of subsequent seasons of new content, a few years from now, Rainbow Six Siege will have snatched the crown off Counter-Strike’s head in an act of regicide that was ultimately the result of death by a thousand melee swings.