Rainbow Six Siege overhauling recoil to fix accuracy

From the playground to Uplay, one persistent problem of simulated cartoon violence is baddies refusing to fall down dead no matter how accurately you shout "Bang bang!" at them. Video games can mediate these negotiations of "I got you!" "Nuh uh you didn't!" but lag and glitches often mean it's still a little fuzzy. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege intends to remove one of its little dead/notdead quirks by fixing weapon sight alignment issues within its recoil system that mean players can sometimes miss targets even if the crosshair is right over a face - or hit when it isn't. Ubisoft have been working on this for a while, and a new solution hits the test servers today.

"Our recoil system currently has a flaw, primarily affecting fully automatic weapons, that occasionally causes bullets to diverge from where the reticle is pointing," Ubisoft said in yesterday's blog post. So they're fixing it. "The goal is to offer a clean, tight shooting system that does not cheat players out of a great show of skill, or on the contrary, register a headshot when the player is aiming at the torso."

Ubisoft trialled a possible solution on the test server last year, which didn't make it to the main game, but now they think they've really cracked it. They go on to explain that their solution meant they had to re-make all recoils under the new system, which they've spent a long time getting right.

"With this new direction, we have made an effort to ensure that each weapon feels as close to the original recoil as possible. We have worked hard at trying to match the unique shooting feel of Siege by firing tens of thousands of bullets and switching back and forth between the two systems, alternating between the two and iterating to bring the new recoils closer to their live counterpart."

The test server will open with the new recoil system today, along with some nerfs to Lion's scan.

Here, this video shows the before/after of bang bang: