Image via SiegeGG
There's possibly no more iconic combination in the gaming space than Rainbow Six Siege players and overreacted to everything without an informed experience.
Particularly, we see this with maps. While some snap judgments are completely correct in hindsight (old Outback was, in fact, bad), they're still snap judgments that hinder our ability to accurately assess new content.
New Skyscrapers is great! It's barely been played and is just now making its way into professional play. New Outback is perfectly serviceable and yet is still banned in unranked games more times than not. When it isn't banned, at least one of the ten people in the server leaves.
Snap judgments are all around us. This is overpowered, this is underpowered, this is useless, this will fundamentally break the game as we know it. Hell, there are many people who are coming around on attacker repick -- possibly the most controversial change the game has had.
When the new map drops today, there will be a deluge of takes. Takes about how the map is good, takes about how the map is bad, takes about how the map did everything but ruin the writer's marriage. This cycle with every bit of Rainbow Six Siege content is insufferable, it's doubly insufferable when it's something the community has been clamoring about for three years.
You read that correctly. Three years. This is the first new map in three calendar years.
Let's try not to make any sweeping decisions before we play it, please? It might be great! It might suck! I don't know, and neither do you. Let's figure it out together, as we go along, and not push people further away from our game in the process. Snap judgments have their roots in elitism, and elitism is bad.
Grow the game. Grow it together. Let's learn something, together for once.