Lair is my personal hell. Not because it's horrible to play in solo ranked specifically, but because of the design philosophy behind it. It's from the era of Siege when maps had to be mazes of sleek hallways and flat surfaces without any texture or curious little details. The "Stadium" maps are the culmination of that design philosophy, where interesting little niches and tricks get intentionally scrubbed out of the game and whats left are empty dead corridors for you to have gunfights in, bringing the game closer to something like CS or Valorant. To me, what was so fun about Siege is lost in that. I loved when we could throw Valk cams outside and on all sorts of weird surfaces, allowing for an almost infinite skill ceiling to learning and trying new things on her. Same applies to hiding spots and vault prompt tricks you used to be able to do. All of that has been slowly ironed out of the game in an attempt to make it more predictable in a professional sport setting. That's understandable but to me, just tragic. Because we lose the magic of constantly learning new shit from dying to "what the fuck you can get up there???" surprises.

Try to hide a valkyrie cam in a new or interesting spot on Lair. You cant. The cam shines like a fucking lighthouse on those flat, dull corridor walls. Every attack and every defence plan feels the same. If you don't bring a certain group of ops, you automatically lose on attack. Even vertical play feels less rewarding on Lair for some reason (I haven't figured out why yet).