Rainbow 6 Siege Ranks and Ranking System Explained (Latest Patch)

Rainbow 6 Siege Latest Patch Ranking System and Ranks Explained

Updated:

05 Mar 2024

Ranked is the most competitive game mode available to most Siege players, and it is in Ranked mode where one can truly experience the game in its truest sense. Tactical, teamplay heavy, and intense. The ranking system in this game is quite complex but is one of the best in the gaming world when it comes to determining a player’s real rank. In this article, we’re going to talk in-depth about how the Ranked mode system in Siege works.

How Does the Ranking System Work?

You need to play 10 placement matches to determine your initial rank every season
Ranks are determined through MMR
The default initial MMR is 2,500
Every win will increase your MMR and every loss will decrease it
Disconnections or abandonment will be considered as a loss
However, players can reconnect to an on-going match
The start of a new season will implement a hard reset on all players’ ranks

And now that we’ve covered the basics. Let’s add more nuance.

Why is there math all of a sudden!?

While the default initial MMR is 2,500 every season, if you played Ranked in the previous one and got a rank, I.e., you’ve completed the placement matches, the system will take into account your last MMR from the previous season in order to give you your initial MMR for the current one. That means if you perform well during the previous season, you’ll have a better chance to rank higher in the on-going season.

The formula is very simple. X = previous season’s MMR. (X + 2500)/2 = The initial MMR for the current season. So, if my last MMR in the previous season was 3,238, which has a rank of Platinum III, my initial MMR for the next season would be 2,869 which is already in Gold II territory.

You might notice that the more you play Ranked, the MMR that you get each match becomes lower and lower.

That is because the system wants to determine the player’s real rank. And by real rank, I mean skill level. For example, a player can get or lose around 150 MMR per match during the first few Ranked games in a season. The player can win all the ten placement games and have Platinum 1 as his starting rank, but it doesn’t mean that his skill level is really fit to be in Platinum 1 because he could have just won those ten placement games through sheer luck.

With this system, which kind of uses the Law of Large Numbers or the Probability Theory, the more the Ranked games the player plays, the more his real rank will show. Once you’ve played more than a hundred Ranked matches in a season, the MMR you can get or lose per match can be as low as 30-35.

Factors that affect MMR

Although Siege’s ranked system is quite complex, the factors that affect a player’s MMR are quite simple and few. Winning or losing a match, and the opponents’ ranks. That’s it. One might ask, why doesn’t it reward skill level? If one has more kills, shouldn’t he receive more MMR? Well, the answer is no, because Rainbow Six Siege is a tactical game based on teamwork. And Ubisoft wants to encourage more teamwork rather than kills. If the MMR system rewards more kills, then it could result in players chasing more kills instead of committing to teamplays.

Game Mode

The only game mode that is available in Ranked games is Bomb wherein the Attackers’ job is to defuse the bombs inside the objective area which are placed in two adjacent rooms. The Attackers can accomplish this by going into either of the bomb sites and planting the defuser. Killing all the Defenders works too of course.

The Defenders job is to defend the bomb sites. And since the bombs are located in two adjacent rooms, it is common practice for Defenders to connect the two rooms by creating rotation holes on the destructible walls in the middle of the two bomb sites. Killing all Attackers doesn’t always mean that the Defenders get the win because if the Attackers managed to plant the defuser before they’re all killed and the Defenders weren’t able to cancel the defuser before the time runs out, the Attackers still win.

Rewards

The reward for playing Ranked in Siege is the love and hate relationship that most players have for the game mode. Just kidding. The reward after playing each season in Ranked is basically bragging rights through weapon charms. Each season features a unique set of reward charms for each rank and the player will get the charm that is equivalent to the highest rank that he got for the season. And in the next season, he can attach said charm to his weapon to let his opponents know that they got killed by a copper. Just kidding again, let’s do our best to be hard struck golds at least.