As part of the ongoing Six Invitational this weekend, Ubisoft just announced an avalanche of content and changes for Rainbow Six Siege in the fourth year of the game. Ubisoft has been making huge headway in terms of new content, balance and ongoing development for the FPS, and these recent announcements continue that trend. There’s tons here, so let’s get going.
The developer has put a lot of effort into making sure that Rainbow Six Siege is as welcoming as possible to new and returning players, and a big part of that has been things like introducing price cuts, but also balancing gameplay and community experience to reduce toxicity and negative experiences. And with so much to work on with this massively popular game, the teams are being refocused so that they can better work on specific areas. Ubisoft is now dedicating specific teams to various areas of work on Siege. Hopefully this means Year 4 is the best the game has had in terms of content.
One interesting aspect of these new teams is the creation of a new player behavior segment. We’ve already seen some attempts to reduce negative player behavior, like introducing bans for using extreme language like hate speech in-game, but now the devs want to target teamkilling. A new feature which is going live on the test servers for the game is one where any fire against a teammate will now reflect back to the shooter, meaning teamkillers will only end up hurting themselves.
Various maps are also getting some attention from the developers, with each season in the new year of content bringing reworks from the top to bottom of an existing map. The first map getting the treatment will be Kafe, and it will get tons of focus on changing map layouts to improve player movement. For example, the bomb site on one side of the map has been moved to make defense easier on this map. Next up is Kanal. This map is getting a new series of opportunities for both sides by opening up the maps traditionally tight quarters. The final rework is Theme Park, coming in Season 4 of Year 4. This rework is still in the very early stages, but we do know that lighting and layouts are being tweaked. The company is also introducing a new map called Outback this year.
Check out the gameplay video of this series of reworks from the development livestream down below.
Following those announcements of map reworks, the team began discussing Operators and other balancing issues. Lion, Glaz, Ying, Dokkaebi, and Capitao are a few you can expect to get reworks in the coming year.
Next up was talk about playlist and other gameplay changes aimed at bringing in newer players and making sure the game is fun for everyone playing. A new playlist which includes the Bomb game mode and three maps — Bank, Consulate, and Chalet will be introduced in Year 4. There’s also a new version of the Casuals playlist coming.
First, the Action Phase timer will now be reduced from 4 minutes to 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Attackers will also be able to choose their spawn point like in Ranked, and Defenders can now pick their team compositions from the beginning because they’ll now know where on the map they’re defending.
We’ve also included a Developer Diary that recaps these changes a bit more down below.
