A lot of people have been complaining lately about the fact that the year 3 DLC and the respective event are proned to make people that want certain skins waste a shit ton of money on "alpha packs", the game's equivalent of lootboxes.
I think it's very important to note this one thing, that everyone mentions but doesn't give it due value: the "alpha packs" only drop cosmetics and they're 100% unecessary to play the game at full capacity. What a lot of people are completely ignoring, and the reason why I'm making this post is the fact that you can pay real money, via the "Year 3 Pass" or with the in-game premium currency to obtain the new Operators.
Operators are the characters you play as in Rainbow Six Siege. A lot of people will argue that every operator is decent and that there's no advantage to buying the operators with real money, but they also fail to mention to the people that don't play this game, that your average player will take over 3 weeks to unlock a year 1 or year 2 operator.
Just to give you an example, it takes 25000 renown (the in-game currency you get for playing the game) to buy an operator. This number by itself shouldn't raise any alarms, but when you put in the fact that you only get a maximum of about 250 renown. You can only get this much if you win the match, and get MVP (the player in your team with the best score). If you don't get MVP and still win, you'll get from 200 to 230 renown, but if you lose, you will only receive 100 to 150 renown. There are also several weekly challenges where you can gain some extra renown.
There are 2 weekly reward types: the in-game weekly challenges, which appear a new one every day, and the uplay challenges on the uplay overlay. each challenge that provides renown only gives about 150 renown, and its also worth nothing that there are some uplay challenges that only offer pointless experience for leveling up. Leveling up does nothing for you after you unlock Ranked mode, which is level 25 I believe.
So lets see how many games a player has to play to unlock a single operator...
assuming every 7 games you play, assuming they're played 1 per day every week instead of several each day, and you complete all of the current day's challenges, which will award you additional 300 renown (150+150), and we'll also assume that you get MVP for the best possible reward. That makes (300+250 )*7 = 3850 renown. That means you have to play aproximately 45 games, always getting MVP, and assuming you complete 2 challenges every day you play, to get enough money to buy a year 1 or year 2 operator.
There are 16 year 1 + year 2 operators. That means you need 720 games in the conditions mentioned previously to get all the extra operators. This is also taking into consideration you're not buying any of the standard operators during this time, and that you're also not buying addons or skins for the weapons of the new operators, for these also cost renown.
I am also not mentioning the fact that the people that purchased the cheapest version of rainbow six siege also have each of the standard operators priced at 13500 renown, instead of 500>1000>1500>2000 renown (it increases the price in each operator team every time you purchase an operator).
You might tell me though, that there is no actual pay-to-win, because every operator has a gun, and all guns in this game kill. OK, lets ignore for a second the fact that everyone weapon has different effectiveness on different maps and even diferent performances, how would you feel if you were limited to play with operators you don't like? There are plenty of standard operators with who I perform specially well with (like Montagne, Glaz and Bandit), but my characters of choice most of the times are Hibana (which weapon and special ability is far superior to the standard counterpart Thermite), Caveira (which beats by miles any standard roamer operator with her ability to not produce any noise while crouched and reducing sound overall), Vigil (with his crazy automated pistol that instakills anyone in close range, also shared with Dokkaebi) and Zofia (with her multi-use grenade launcher). I would not feel happy if I were now taken away these operators and was forced to only use the standard operators agaisnt other players. Not because I couldn't win, but because there's a clear disadvantage when they're using far stronger operators just because they paid money for them.
What I'm trying to say with this post is that the game is in fact Pay2Win, as the money you put into the game directly affects your progress, and gives you advantages over players that did not pay for the DLC characters, and an even bigger advantage over players that purchased the cheapest tier of the game. Other games that provide better characters for money in multiplayer games often fix this by making you play with players that also share your characters/vehicles/Strong Item in a certain tier, and make the players with inferior equipment or progression play in their own tier, but in Rainbow Six Siege I kept getting matched agaisnt people that always had the DLC operators before I purchased the DLC, as if the game was trying to force into me the idea that I was getting my ass kicked because I did not have those operators.
I still love the game, even though there are some serious network issues for European players and there's an increasing number of hackers in the game, but I feel like the people that defend that this game isn't Pay2Win or that just now started complaining about the lootboxes are missing the bigger picture, and ignoring the real issues with this game.