@disestablished – I totally understand where you’re coming from. I think it directly relates to why Siege is a tremendously popular game in terms of active games yet is very very small on Twitch - it is a game that does not stream well and is hard to demonstrate.
The core of Siege is position information. Death comes quickly once players engage, and since the maps are destructible and have quite a bit of verticality, the rounds play in a much more dynamic fashion than in CS. There is a constant push/pull of trying to gain information about where the enemies are without giving away too much information yourself. This can be gained gained through surveillance and through gadgets, but other cues – sound, environmental destruction, etc – are equally important. Even though you may go minutes before seeing and shooting someone, you’re stalking and scouting every other moment. And once you’re out for the round, you can still serve an active role by looking and listening through drones and cameras placed on the map.
It’s worth noting how detailed the sound modeling is; it works unlike any other game that I’ve played. You can read a deep dive at Gamasutra but the gist is that it not only plays with occlusiveness, but positions the sound based on the reflectance of sound waves traveling through open spaces in the environment. It takes a second to get used to, but the result is that you can tell quite a bit more from a given sound in Siege than you can in other games.
If you are looking lots of gunplay – that’s fine! – Siege may not be what you’re after right now. What I want to discourage is the view that Siege is a slow-paced game for campers.