Ubisoft has announced more details about competitive Rainbow Six Siege content for year three.
For the players
Currently, there are a few different ways to earn operators: you pay with the in-game currency (renown), spend real money on R6S tokens, or buy the yearly passes to get permanent unlock of the heroes released that year.
Instead, Ubisoft has now decided that all classical operators will be free-to-play for all editions, except the starter version of the game.
Starter edition accounts will now have the cheap character cap raised to 6, with the rest of the operators being purchased through the extremely increased renown cost.
In addition, all game versions will receive completely free attachments for all weapons when Year 3 starts.
This allows everyone to spend their hard-earned renown on the new(er) operators, buying packs, or buying skin and outfit customisation options from the in-game store.
More data centres will be launched in Southern France and in South Africa to compensate for the game growth and to create better server stability in Europe.
Year 3 content cycle
Ubisoft plans to continue its three-month content cycle of new operations, which introduce two new operators and one new secondary project. These are normally new maps. Ubisoft also plans on bringing the operator count to 100 within the next few years.
The first operation starts in the coming weeks with Operation Chimera which introduces two new operators and a brand new PVE game mode.
The second season will introduce a new country into the Rainbow line-up. The Italians will join the playable roster by June. Presumably, they will be two defenders to contrast the two new attackers.
Year 3 Season 2 is also expected to release an Italian themed map to go alongside the two new Italian Operatives.
Season 3
Season 3 is perhaps going to be the biggest season to date. Rainbow will enlist another American and British operative to join their ranks.
The biggest project of season 3 though is the plans to reinvent older maps.
Hereford Base is getting a complete rework. We do not know the full details, but it looks like it will remove how linear the map already is. The before and after video suggests additional new rooms, and it looks like they have changed the outside stairs for easier escalation.
– New Maps and Operators.
– Pick and Ban System.
– Hereford Base Map rework.
– Map buffs starting with Clubhouse.
– A new and improved Pro League format.All this and MUCH more will be coming during Year 3. For now, let’s take a look at the new Hereford Base ? pic.twitter.com/NnPZKvQvSD
— Rainbow Six Siege (@Rainbow6Game) February 18, 2018
Ubisoft also demonstrated a before and after map change to Club House. On the roof sections above the garage and to the side of the bedroom, they have built a new room that connects both ends of the map.
Map designs like this aim to reinvent new ways to approach these maps, and improve the competitive feel to older maps.
The final part of the year will introduce yet another country that two new operators will hail from: Morroco.
Pick and Ban
Finally, Ubisoft has enabled the use of a pick and ban style veto system for its competitive environment.
The Pick and Ban system will be available in custom games and uses a competitive standard for all Rainbow 6 Siege competition.
Each team will be able to ban two operators, which will be outlawed for both teams for the duration of the map.
The teams will then pick their five operators, which will then be revealed to their opponents.
When both teams rosters are revealed, each team can then swap one operator out for another – this is what Ubisoft calls fake strategies.
Balancing
The Invitational stream had a number of sections that invited members of the Siege design and developer team to the stage.
They spoke about their attention to balancing operators for the next year, by looking back on Year 2 Season 4 win rates and pick rates.
Developers displayed some images on stream highlighting examples where they think the ‘sweet spot’ of the ideal balanced operators are.
Ubisoft has shown specific examples of operators in that sweet spot, such as Sledge and Thermite, whilst showing the extreme cases of Ela being a high pick high win, and Castle being a low pick low win.
Ubisoft have been planning ways to improve Castle’s quality of life and gameplay mechanics for a while now.
Expect to see further gameplay changes in Year 3 like what was done with Glaz and Kapkan in recent updates.
Meanwhile, Ela has been nerfed due to her high pick and high win rate in the recent operation Chimera patch notes.
