After almost 3000 hours playing Siege, a fair chunk of which was spent involved in the competitive scene, I can no longer support or recommend this game to anyone.
Siege has been experiencing a downward spiral for the better part of 2-3 years and unfortunately I do not see it improving anytime soon.

The decision-makers behind the developers are making the worst decisions and focusing on aspects of the experience that do not matter to the players. For instance, cheating is an issue that effects all PvP games but it is rampant in Siege where you are likely to get a blatant, aimbotting cheater 1 every 3 games (and quite possibly get a closet wallhacking cheater the other games) in Ranked, but also fairly likely to run into one in the game's Unranked modes too... nowhere is safe.

While the cheating issue is rampant the game continues to push out features no one asked for, such as the Reputation System, which was a broken mess on release unjustly limiting players gameplay and communication while not punishing those actual toxic players. The system still isn't fully functional almost a year after it's release, and is still marked as 'Beta' despite the fact that the negative effects (bans, mutes, sanction periods) are still given out automatically by the incomplete beta system.

The game has become extremely complex for new players being absolutely flooded with unknown random abilities with little to know explanation of what happened, unless a new player is accompanied by a long time player they have almost no chance to understand what is going on with certain operators as Siege doesn't give them to you to learn/practice, or have a way to practice against them. The training system they added in with AI is limited to a select amount of operators, plus the AI doesn't even use the operator abilities properly so it fails to do the one thing it is meant to do. If a new player is lucky enough to know and play with a long time player, they just get hit with high level players and full 5 stack teams... or most likely, cheaters.

At one point Siege wanted to be seen as 'esports ready' but took forever to add any support for which, eventually releasing a 'Beta' of their replay/spectator system which was a great step forward however buggy it was, now a few years later they still have not given that system the focus it sorely needs with it being the absolute buggiest and replay system to work with. This system is how they hope to attract new players with gameplay visuals, hype tournaments and great clips but none of that can happen when the system is rigid, clunky, crashes players constantly, causes bugs throughout and is a pain to even learn.

It's clear to me that the decision-makers have written off Siege now, and given up any hope of turning it into something great, instead have decided on milking it for everything they can. The payment structure of Siege looks a little like;
- Pay for the game, but if you get the cheaper version you are limited and only have access to a few operators (the most recent starting experience I've heard of is that you get to choose 2 operators, out of 72... then have to earn the rest).
- Grind to unlock the operators you want/have remaining, they range from 10k to 25k renown, ingame currency (70 x 17.5k = 1,225,000r). An average player can earn 1500 per hour, but can be increased depending on skill, speed, boosters and challenges. Without any bonuses and at an average speed, without spending any renown on skins or packs, you'll need to invest 816 hours into the game before you can play every character.
- But of course there is a premium battlepass which will give you boosters to earn that renown quicker, give you access to the newest operator immediately and you can directly buy operators with the premium currency (R6 coins)
- Now Ubisoft have the audacity to ON TOP of everything, introduce a paid monthly subscription to Siege. To me, is obviously trying to con new players into purchasing, as it comes with the item 'Operator Token' to unlock an operator (along with skins and boosters). Veteran players won't need or use a token/pack like that, so clearly it is targeted to new players

Just to remind everyone Siege is almost at it's 10th year (Year 9 Season 3) and these issues are still paramount, causing long time players to abandon the game completely, unfortunately I have seen some who still play with a genuine addiction where it hurts them to play but they still claim some hope despite the personal issues it causes them.

If you've read through all of this and still want to get the game, make sure you do yourself a favour and get it on a huge sale. Don't be surprised when you get in and are met with a confusing experience, a toxic community of anyone who's played more than 500 hours and after learning how all the mechanics work, mastering the meta, Ubisoft completely change everything... again.

Good luck.