by Dustin Steiner in Rainbow Six Siege | Jul, 17th 2020
Rainbow Six Siege has been one of the biggest success stories and turn arounds in gaming history – from a poor launch, to one of the most successful and anticipated seasonal games, it’s been made clear that Ubisoft has had a hit on its hands for some time now. One of the biggest problems that Rainbow Six Siege faced, however, was in its ranked system and the variance in MMR when players switched regions. Ubisoft has now looked to rectify that error with the launch of Operation Steel Wave.
With Operation Steel Wave, the new “Unified MMR system” has been released. This revised system for Rainbow Six Siege drops regional ranks, with MMR gains and losses now reflected globally. This should limit the ability of players to simply switch their region when they want a new placement or to be able to intentionally rank lower to grief less-skilled players.
“In order to prevent matchmaking abuses while switching regions, we will be changing to unified MMRs for each playlist,” Ubisoft explained in the Operation Steel Wave release blog. “This means that you will not have different MMRs depending on the region you play in. However, your matchmaking ranking will remain separate in different playlists.”
Additionally, thanks to this new system, it also allowed Ubisoft to create a more comprehensive ranking system called Champion ranks that only rank you after you’ve played 100 matches of Rainbow Six Siege. This means that the game will have a really clear snapshot of your current skill and will try to rank you appropriately.
“For those of you who are or aspire to be in the Champions rank, this change will in fact cause the Champions’ leaderboard to be worldwide, making it all the more challenging to reach that top spot. Additionally, we want to reinforce that the notion that Champions is not just about skills but also about dedication, so a minimum of 100 matches is now required to get the rank, on top of the 5000 MMR threshold.”
How Does the New MMR System in Rainbow Six Siege Work?
Rainbow Six Siege ranks players by tiers ranging from Bronze to Champion via a skill-based MMR rating system. Using an algorithm (which Ubisoft did not fully disclose) the game compiles your wins and losses across teh playlist and determines your Matchmaking Rating (MMR). This MMR corresponds directly to your rank, with it becoming more and more accurate the longer you play.
It utilizes Microsoft’s Trueskill technology, favrioting in average player skill and uncertainty. It helps to determine your MMR value, which will go up and down based on your skill in wins over time.
Players can increase their MMR by winning matches and identifying cheaters in a match. Your personal statistics, including Kill to Death Ratio, match score, and the moment to moment gameplay, have no bearing on your MMR at all. This was done to encourage teamplay over players trying to pad their stats.
The things that decrease your MMR include losing matches, leaving matches early, being kicked for being idle, being voted out of a match by your teammates (usually done for being excessively toxic, idle, or generally being a bad teammate,) or having a cheater identified in a match that you won. Ubisoft regularly bans players for cheating, which means that your MMR might fluctuate a little bit even if you yourself were not the one cheating, mainly by invalidating the results of a game win or loss.
Ubisoft also invalidates results that were losses as a result of a DDoS attack or a server crash, meaning you are unlikely to lose MMR due to issues outside your control, unless your personal internet crashes.
What Are the MMR Tiers in Rainbow Six Siege?
Like many other ranked titles, Rainbow Six Siege has named all of its tiers so as to easily differentiate and make sure you can feel yourself progressing in the game as concretely as possible.
The game features 23 ranks across seven brackets in 2020. This was expanded to the Champion rank in Operation Ember Rise last year, with the requirements being buffed up significantly to 100 matches in Operation Steel Wave.
Below is a listing of each rank and its MMR requirements:
| Rank | MMR |
| Copper V | 1,100 |
| Copper IV | 1,200 |
| Copper III | 1,300 |
| Copper II | 1,400 |
| Copper I | 1,500 |
| Bronze V | 1,600 |
| Bronze IV | 1,700 |
| Bronze III | 1,800 |
| Bronze II | 1,900 |
| Bronze I | 2,000 |
| Silver V | 2,100 |
| Silver IV | 2,200 |
| Silver III | 2,300 |
| Silver II | 2,400 |
| Silver I | 2,500 |
| Gold III | 2,600 |
| Gold II | 2,800 |
| Gold I | 3,000 |
| Platinum III | 3,200 |
| Platinum II | 3,600 |
| Platinum I | 4,000 |
| Diamond | 4,400 |
| Champions | 5,000+ |
Due to the way matchmaking works in Rainbow Six Siege, don’t expect to have your high MMR friends jump into your game to boost you up. A feature called MMR lock prevents players from playing ranked when further than 1000 MMR apart. This should precent someone in Gold from helping their Bronze friend level up quickly. It helps avoid the disparities that might make someone in Bronze feel slighted if they were suddenly up against a platinum player.
It should, however, still give players the opportunity to play with their friends whenever they want. After all, players who regularly play together should have very similar MMR ratings, especially those playing together in teams grinding to get into one of the regional pro leagues. This change was introduced in 2019, and seems to have been positively received by the Rainbow Six Siege community.
Well, what are you waiting for? Get back in the server and grind that MMR!
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Dustin Steiner - Author
Dustin Steiner has been writing about esports professionally for nearly a decade. If there’s a game that’s been played competitively, he’s covered it; from the hotel ballrooms of the FGC to the stadiums of League of Legends and beyond, he’s been there, finger on the pulse for fans to have a look behind the scenes. If he’s not writing, Dustin’s likely grinding it out on Valorant, Smash, or Street Fighter.
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