In an action-packed developer’s panel yesterday, Ubisoft revealed the new Year 6 roadmap for Rainbow Six Siege.
As confirmed by Ubisoft earlier, in Year 6, each season will only see one new operator added to the game. This lets the developers focus their energy and time on reworking the core gameplay features.
Ubisoft has also confirmed that instead of adding new maps, they’ll be reworking the old, less viable maps to bring them in line with the game’s competitiveness.
Year 6 Road Map: Operators and Maps
- Season 1 Crimson Heist: New Operator Flores from Argentina and Border map rework.
- Season 2: New Operator from the Nakoda- indigenous people of Canada and Favela map rework.
- Season 3: New Operator from Croatia and smaller changes to multiple maps.
- Season 4: New Operator from Ireland and Outback map rework.
Accompanying all these four seasons will be one big in-game event such as the Sugar Fright event, multiple smaller arcade events, and seasonal Battle passes.
We’ve already covered all the new changes coming with Operation Crimson Heist, including new attacker Flores, new Gonne-6 secondary weapon, border rework, and more.
Operator Reworks: Melusi, Goyo, and more
- Goyo rework: canister will not be attached to shields anymore.
- Melusi rework: Banshee devices will open based on proximity, removing their bulletproof characteristic.
- Mira nerf: Black Mirrors can be meleed to remove vision.
- Maestro nerf: Evil Eyes can be meleed to remove vision when closed.
- Bulletproof Camera rework: can rotate and shoot EMP dart.
- Finka change: will be able to self-revive.
- Unspecified changes to Fuze announced.
Goyo’s explosive canister will now be separated from the shield, meaning only the canister can now be deployed, but the canister’s final shape has not yet been finalized. Melusi’s banshee device has been another source of frustration as it is bulletproof and slows down the attackers completely. To mitigate some of the frustrations, the banshee device will now open when activated, so attackers will now have the opportunity to destroy it with a single shot.
- Read More: Rainbow Six Siege surpasses 70 million players
Future Gameplay Changes
According to Ubisoft’s data, Rainbow Six Siege has been defender sided for a while now. So to shift the balance to the attacker side a little, the devs will be introducing the ‘Attacker Repick‘.
Attacker Repick
This means, after selecting an attacker, players will now get another chance to change their operator selection during the drone phase. This will allow the attackers to react to the defender’s setup and choose their operators accordingly.
In-Game Downtime
Players will now be able to control cameras and gadgets even after their death. This change has been made to intensify the support phase in a game and make sure players that are out can better help their team. This feature is planned to release later in Year 6 and should reduce the downtime while waiting for the next round.
QUALITY OF LIFE
The year pass in R6S will be no longer be available, instead the new operators will now be available as the first item in the seasonal Battlepass. And now after a two-week quarantine period, the new operators can be bought with renown.
In addition, quality of life improvements are planned during Year 6: DDoS attacks, already down by 90% this year, will still be a major focus to improve players’ experience. The technical team is working closely with their partner Microsoft Azure to reduce matchmaking time and improve the servers’ stability. Lastly, the development team is making a strong effort to reduce the game size in general. This is an ongoing effort already running, which will be more and more visible for players this whole year.
CUSTOMISATION
In Year 6, players will now have more customisation options for their Operators: players will be able to adapt elite skins and add other gears in the outfit for a fully customised set.
Last but not least, Ubisoft announced a partnership with Capcom® and its survival horror franchise Resident Evil™. An Elite skin of Resident Evil series veteran Jill Valentine Elite will be available for Zofia, with an additional Resident Evil x Rainbow Six Siege skin coming in Year 6. Ubisoft has also partnered with Creative Director Ikumi Nakamura to release a series of skins, starting with Echo and Dokkaebi releasing on 2nd March.
