In this patch’s Designer’s Notes, we are looking back at what has been shared earlier. Our Dev team had the pleasure of welcoming Prodigio Pete, Rogue-9 and Get Flanked into our Barcelona office, home of our balancing team. The discussion and data shared during the podcastt is available below, as well as the changes that will be implemented in the Y4S3.3 update.




Please note that we are using presence to gauge the popularity of an operator. This notion had to be introduced to reflect the implementation of the pick & ban.

Presence definition: “pick rate of an Operator when not banned.”





TWITCH

• F2 magazine capacity reduced from 30 to 25

Twitch is still one of the top performing Operators, and despite a minor recoil nerf in an earlier patch she remains a top attacker. We’re reducing her magazine capacity to lower her fragging ability, but no changes to her gadget as we feel her ability remains crucial to teamplay and is in a good spot now.

WARDEN

• Changing Warden’s from a 1 speed, 3 armor Operator to 2 speed 2 armor

Warden’s presence is quite low, and we want to address that. By increasing his speed, he will have more opportunities to use his ability effectively. This is a first step into increasing the potential surrounding Warden operator and his gadget. We are also taking larger changes to his kit under consideration for the future.

GLAZ

• Rate of fire increased for the OTs-03 by 33% (from 285 to 380 rounds per minute.)

We are still looking to calibrate the Russian sniper to find the right balance. We are quite happy about the previous work done to address the frustration stemming from his gadget but would like to increase his presence as he is the least played attacker now.


BLACKBEARD
Blackbeard’s win delta is currently on the rise. While we did not expect to see such a steep increase, we are following a few leads. We will continue to monitor his performance to see if tweaking is necessary to keep him on par with other attacking Operators.

NØKK
Nøkk has had a slow start and her pick rate is quite low. To make her a more attractive choice, we are currently reviewing some suggestions to improve her loadout. We feel it is premature to change anything regarding her as an Operator for now, so for the time being, we would like to keep monitoring her performance. The last few weeks of Pro League have shown a few interesting uses of her ability, and we would like to keep an eye on it to see how she can evolve.

KAID
We are exploring a few options for Kaid as we would like to offer the Moroccan defender more opportunity to use his secondary gadgets. We are not quite ready to give more details, as it is a work in progress.

JACKAL

• Added different coloured circles around the targeted footstep for better visual feedback. These circles also have varying pattern lengths to be Colour Blind friendly.

As the most banned attacker, Jackal is a high source of frustration for many players and one of our top balancing priorities.

The primary focus of our design with the Jackal changes were on his tracking ability. Jackal’s tracking ability should require a more active contribution from the player and should be overall less frequent and shorter for defenders. We want to reduce the number of pings, based on the “age” of the footprint. We would also like Jackal mains to decide if scanning footsteps is the correct choice to make, as it will make them disappear.

The new version of Jackal is currently available on the Test Server and our goal is to have his update go live next season.

Try out the latest Rainbow Six updates on the Test Server and earn and exclusive charm through the BugHunter program.

Follow us and share your feedback on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and on our forums.

The Y4S3.2 patch features an update to the surrender feature, a fix for a bug with attacker/defender side assignment bias, and various other bug fixes. The patch is scheduled to deploy to PC on October 8th.

• Surrender now requires a unanimous vote.
  
• Surrender feature is now only available if the team is currently losing in rounds.
  
• Surrender is still only available starting with the 3rd

In hostage mode, anyone who detonates a Volcan shield is now responsible for any explosive damage it does once the hostage is picked up. Prior to hostage pick up Goyo is still responsible.

• FIXED – Fixed an issue with Attacker side logic bias during lobby creation. Attacker and Defender side assignment is now completely random
  
• FIXED – Users are able to vault over an operator with extended shield if that operator stays between a player and a vault prompt.
  
• FIXED – Players can get stuck in the leaning position after ADSing when Lean to Hold is on.
  
• FIXED – Defenders can keep using their camera when a logic bomb is activated.
  
• FIXED – Players sometimes do not receive a matchmaking penalty if they cancel right as the match begins.
  
• FIXED – Defuser can sometimes disappear if an attacker is killed immediately after it is secured.

ALIBI

• FIXED – Alibi’s Prisma animation outline remains after players collide with it.

ASH

• FIXED – Ash’s breaching round is not destroyed when used on barbed wire with an active Bandit Battery.

GOYO

• FIXED – Goyo can complete deployment of his Volcan shield before gauge bar has completed.
  
• FIXED – Goyo’s Volcan shield clips with operators when forcing collision with the shield while prone between the shield and other props/walls.

HIBANA

• FIXED – Replication for Hibana’s X-Kairos destruction pattern is inconsistent between clients.

KAID

• FIXED – Electricity VFX disappears when the reinforced wall on which Kaid’s Rtila is deployed is shot at.

MAESTRO

• FIXED – Maestro's turret movement SFX remains for users that are still spectating his camera after he leaves it.
  
• FIXED – Maestro’s Evil Eye will sometimes shift position if another player is moving and spectating another camera and suddenly switches to the Evil Eye.

MONTAGNE

• FIXED – Players can sometimes change between ADS and non-ADS when Monty’s shield is out.

MOZZIE

• FIXED – Mozzie drone SFX remains after being destroyed.

We have monitored an increase in the amount of DDoS and DoS attacks against our servers following the release of Operation Ember Rise. Below you will find our next steps for how we plan to address the situation and move forward.


BAN WAVES

We have identified the worst offenders perpetuating these DDoS/DoS attacks, and will be initiating a ban wave. This will apply to both PC and Console players.

Impact: Players that have been found to be initiating DDoS/DoS attacks will be banned.

Target: Next Week, will continue as needed

REDUCING MATCHES PER SERVER

We currently host 3 matches per server. When a server crashes, or when a DDoS/DoS attack occurs, this results in 3 matches being impacted and taken offline. We are splitting this to have each server host a single match to reduce the impact

Impact: 66% reduction in the impact of DDoS/DoS attacks.

Target: End of this week

REMOVE ESCALATING ABANDON SANCTION
We have noted the unintended consequences of the escalating abandon sanction on players impacted by DDoS/DoS attacks. We are disabling this feature to reduce the longer term impact that is felt by legitimate players.

Impact: Reduce impact felt by legitimate players after a match has been ended via DDoS/DoS/Soft Booting.

Target: End of this week

NETWORK TRAFFIC MONITORING/MANAGEMENT
We are making adjustments to how we manage and monitor network data, and how we accept packets sent to our servers. We cannot provide details on this topic, as it will expose information that can be used to circumvent the work we are doing. This will have a substantial impact on DDoS, DoS, Soft Booting, and server stressing.

Impact: This will have a substantial impact on DDoS, DoS, Soft Booting, and server stressing.

Target: Early October

LEGAL OPTIONS
We have discussed the current situation with our legal team, and assessed our options. We will be issuing cease and desists to websites and people hosting these services.

Legal action against prominent DDoS/DoS attackers is in progress.

Impact: Reduce the availability of DDoS/DoS service providers

Target: Ongoing

WORKING WITH MICROSOFT PARTNERS
Development is ongoing with our partners on the Microsoft Azure team, and we are working closely with them to develop both short and long term solutions.

Impact: This will have a substantial impact on DDoS, DoS, Soft Booting, and server stressing.

Target: Ongoing

These terms will be used regularly throughout this article:

DDoS – An attack on the server, or network, from multiple PCs/devices that overloads the network. This results in all players being disconnected and the match ending.

DoS – An attack on the server, or network, from a single PC/device that overloads the connection. This sometimes results in all players being disconnected.

“Soft Booting” – A DDoS/DoS attack that degrades the network/server to the point that some players are dropped from the match.

“Stressing” – A DDoS/DoS attack that degrades the network/server to a lesser degree than “Soft Booting”. This results in all players maintaining their connection, but having a constant ping >1,000ms, making the game unresponsive.

Highlights of the Y4S3.1 patch includes an update to the Reverse Friendly Fire system with RFF Squad Management, and a change to how Goyo (and Capitao’s) fire interacts with Hostage under the RFF system.

The 3.1 patch is typically smaller as it focuses on addressing immediate issues and some lingering ones from season release as we prepare for the next patch. The Y4S3.1 patch will be deployed Thursday Sep. 19th for PC, we will update you on the dates for consoles as soon as possible.

BALANCING

GOYO
Hostage has evolved.

• Hostage is now immune to fire (both Goyo’s Volcan and Capitao)
  
• To prevent incidences of team griefing towards Goyo under the RFF system, we’ve decided to make hostage immune to fire.

RFF SQUAD MANAGEMENT

• We have now expanded the RFF system to squads. If players of the same squad damage or TK other team members, RFF will be activated for all members of that squad.

• FIXED – Crashing issues on PS4

We are also in the midst of investigating crashing issues reported for PC and XBONE as well, and will update when we have more.

GAMEPLAY

• FIXED – Player exploit to vote on themselves when a Vote Kick is triggered and they are the ones being kicked
  
• FIXED – If player crouches or goes prone and then falls, their upwards view can be obstructed by their character model.

LEVEL DESIGN

BORDER

• FIXED - Operator's shield clips through the wall at 2F Offices on Border

COASTLINE

• FIXED – Inconsistent wall destruction in 2F hallway on Coastline

FORTRESS

• FIXED – Players can barricade a door behind the boxes in 1F Hannam Hallway of Fortress
  
• FIXED – Flickering wall texture in EXT Garden Path of Fortress
  
• FIXED – Small texture gap on Central Stairs of Fortress
  
• FIXED – Players can clip through the ceiling domes in Fortress
  
• FIXED – Misaligned wall in 2F Bathroom on Fortress

KAFE

• FIXED – Missing visual texture on walls in 3F Cigar Lounge on Kafe.

PLANE

• FIXED – Mira’s black mirror can clip through an unbreakable surface if deployed at the West wall of 2F Staff Section on Plane.

USER EXPERIENCE

• FIXED – Level skybox sometimes visible when loading in on the first boot
  
• FIXED – Stat tracking issues when using Twitch drones to destroy gadgets
  
• FIXED – Various minor visual cosmetic fixes on headgears and uniforms.
  
• FIXED – Phone reset animation plays on the wrong side when getting a call from Dokkaebi.
  
• FIXED – [Caster] Operators are detected on the basement level instead of the first floor in spectator mode.

When we announced our Y4 roadmap, we revealed several major playlist changes with the addition of the Newcomer Playlist, updates to Ranked Playlists and Casual, and more. For this purpose, we created the Playlist cell, a multidisciplinary team dedicated to working on the Playlists. With the playlist changes, our goals were to provide more guidance in the onboarding experience for new players, foster a healthier competitive scene at the higher ranks of play, while also finding better ways to disseminate information to ease the leap between casual and Ranked.

This dev blog aims to provide insight on the changes and improvements that have been made to Playlists throughout Y4, and will shed some light on the decision process that goes into helping us look for ways that we can improve the player experience for all types of players in our community.


Rainbow Six Siege is a complex game to pick up. Even for experienced FPS players, Siege requires more than just shooting, as there is an expanse of game knowledge that can and should be learned as you grow as a player. As the game continues to grow, we realized that we had to begin developing initiatives to ease the learning curve and better guide our players.

Entering a casual PvP game as your first Rainbow Six experience is daunting and can easily turn into a frustrating experience for new players. The creation of the Newcomer playlist aimed to offer a compact experience for new players. So with only three bomb-only maps, and a maximum Clearance Level of 50, we sought to create a space for newer players to learn among themselves in a more controlled environment.



The Newcomer playlist is just one step in our plans for improving the onboarding process, and we are continuing to search for more ways to inform, guide, and educate players. The Operator selection screen now contains difficulty ratings and full loadouts. We also added in default loadouts for new players as well. Furthermore, we have been monitoring feedback and understand that the Clearance Level cap prevents new players from playing with their friends. Part of the solution to this is the upcoming Unranked Playlist (read for more on this below), but we are continuing to look into ways we can improve the Newcomer playlist further while keeping our core purpose of the playlist intact.



At the other end of the spectrum, we also wanted to focus more on creating a better Ranked experience for our highly dedicated competitive players. We wanted to provide an experience that more closely mirrored Pro League, improve Ranked competitive balance in all aspects, and develop long-term engagement with players and Ranked. It was time the Beta tag came off ranked.



We first began with the introduction of Ranked Pick and Ban as a first step to bring Ranked closer to Pro League. A logical next step with our pool of Operators increasing season by season, Pick and Ban has helped to shift the meta, act as a balancing check, and refresh gameplay experience from one match to another. With the next season, we’re taking one more step closer to Pro League by changing the plant and defuse timer to 7 seconds, forcing teams to plan and commit more in order to plant.



Next, we turned our eyes towards shaking up the Rank distribution. While the average player placed in Gold, what we knew from feedback and what our data was telling us were that progression in lower ranks felt very difficult and led to diminished motivation to rank up. As a result, we added an additional fifth Rank to Copper, Bronze and Silver and removed the fourth Rank in Gold - making movement for players at lower Ranks feel more progressive as they climb up the ladder.

Additionally, we’ve added a new Rank for our top skilled players. Any player that reaches 5000 MMR will enter the Champions Rank and maintain a leaderboard position. The more MMR you have, the higher your Champions positions. We believe this will help ignite the competitive spirit at the top, and drive our best players to show they are at the top.

Further changes coming to Ranked in Y4S3 bring the focus on improving competitive health, balance, and integrity. The Rank restriction will prevent players with greater than a 1000+ MMR gap from playing with each other as a means to prevent boosting, and the new Ranked map pool will be reduced from 14 to 12. We will be looking at feedback on these changes with the new season to see what tweaks and further improvements can be made.



The leap from Casual to Ranked can be overwhelming due to the stark difference between competitive and casual players in terms of mentality, playstyle, and even personal comfort level. This gap was the driving motivation behind the new Unranked playlist.

The Unranked playlist maintains all the same rules and settings of Ranked, but without the pressure of Ranks, MMR, and importantly, no Rank restrictions. Players can warm up in a more focused environment, create pre-made squads with friends without restriction, and familiarize themselves with Ranked to prepare themselves for the next step up.

Unranked is a new playlist, and we hope it will be the answer to players’ needs. We will be gathering data during this Season to see if we achieve the results we are aiming for!



Finally, information and knowledge is everything in Siege, but sometimes finding that information can be difficult. To better disseminate this wealth of information and to keep our players updated on any and all changes, we’ve made a couple of improvements.



In the Casual Playlist, we’ve enhanced player comprehension by adding the “Locations” screen by allowing players choose their Attack spawn point and highlighting the objective room for Defenders. For Ranked, we’ve created the Ranked Guide which provides Ranked rules, ban policies, the current map pool rotation, information on ranks and rank distribution, and more to prepare and inform players before queuing up for Ranked.

With all the Playlist changes, we feel that they will all contribute to improving player experience, no matter what type of player you are. These changes are by no means the end and we look forward to your continued feedback as we move towards even more improved Playlists.


Stay tuned for more future updates from our Playlist cell!

"I was two years old when Papá first took me to the museum. I asked to visit my ‘yaya’ so often that we went every Friday, rain or shine. I think it helped him to get me out of the garage! But as I grew up, those visits became less and less important."


“They say time heals all wounds. What does it do for those that never began to close in the first place?”

"Now, looking back on her life, I realise I know so little. My earliest memory is of her smile, but her dreams, her desires – her fears – those are all missing. What I love most is the light her memory brings to my father’s eyes. She is still very much alive in his heart. Now, whenever I visit, I spend hours listening to him talk about her, trying to capture that light for my own.

The death toll of a war never tells the whole story. It says nothing of the casualties that occur after the treaties are signed. Bad habits, old wounds, memories – these kill so much more slowly. We can never understand, but we can remember and maybe, God willing, we can keep such a tragedy from ever happening again."

-- SPECIALIST ELENA “MIRA” MARÍA ÁLVAREZ


“The past gives us a lens through which to view our future. Inspiration and opportunity come from introspection and observation.”

With Ember Rise release, comes the latest balancing changes. Our goal is to offer you a list of what has been adjusted for the new season and to share our thoughts on these tweaks.


SOFT WALL DESTRUCTION

Shotgun destruction
We are continuing to improve the reliability of soft wall destruction with shotguns. Our goal is to make sure that any wooden beam preventing the creation of rotation hole is consistently destroyed. By doing so, we hope to make site preparation easier for defenders.

Keratos .357 and LFP 586.

The Italian and the French revolvers destruction output will be on par with the D-50. We expect this minor improvement to offer more viable loadouts and increase their attractiveness.

WEAPON BALANCING

G8A1 LMG
Added 100 extra bullet to the G8A1 LMG.
IQ’s LMG, which will also be Amaru’s is receiving more ammo to be on par with other weapons of the same class as this LMG had even less ammo than most of our assault rifles.

417 DMR
Expanded magazine capacity by 10 rounds.
To try and make the 417 a more appealing option, we have decided to increase the number of bullets per magazine. Twitch and Lion will be able to rely on 10 extra bullets per mag with this DMR upgrade.

PDW9
Base damage: 34.
Damage at 18m: 34.
Damage at 28m: 26.
The SMG will now boast regular damage drop-off, like any other weapon of its class. It will still remain a completely viable option for the Spanish Operator.

AUGA3
AugA3 damage increased from 33 to 36.
The TCSG12 continues to be Kaid’s weapon of choice, but we would like the Aug A3 to be a viable alternative. Now that the Moroccan defender has received a C4 and impacts, he is able to remodel any site to his convenience, even without a shotgun. Increasing the AugA3 damage should bring the SMG on par with the TCSG12.

OPERATOR BALANCING

WARDEN
Penalty on posture change: 30%
Penalty on movement: 20% per meter
Time before penalty removal is set to 0.1s
Full recovery is changed from 1s to 0.5s
Penalty on rotation is removed
Penalty on lean: 20%
Following last season changes brought to Glaz, we are looking to implement a similar system to Warden’s ability. The system used for the Russian sniper enables us to have more options to tweak Warden’s vision.

This modification is also a good opportunity to reduce his movement penalty. The greatest mustache in Siege should now be more comfortable to play with, have more mobility and be a bit more powerful.

CAPITÃO
Improved visual and sound effects for Capitão’s Fire Bolts.
Fire bolts will now have the same visual and sound effects as Goyo. This change is primarily made for consistency but will also increase the visual feedback of his ability. It should now become easier to figure out if you are going to roast your toes.

FUZE
Changed fuze deploy speed from 2 seconds to 1.6 seconds.
Fuze’s ability is very risky to use, especially on windows. With an improved deployment speed, his gadget should be safer to use and more likely to surprise an unsuspecting enemy. Our goal here is to try to find a way to increase Fuze’s attractiveness and boost his pick rate.

SHIELD OPERATORS
Increase the ADS time when the shield is equipped from 0.4s to 0.6s.
Operators using shields were too complicated to take down and the window of vulnerability they offered when switching to ADS was limited. We hope that increasing the time needed to ADS when using a shield will result in more fair gunfights.

OPERATORS LOADOUT CHANGES

• Smoke: Impacts replaced with a Deployable Shield.
  
• Rook: Deployable Shield replaced with Barbed Wire.
  
• Jager: Deployable Shield replaced with Bulletproof Camera.
  
• Frost: Barbed Wire replaced with Deployable Shield.
  
• Mira: Deployable Shield replaced with Barbed Wire.
  
• Lesion: Deployable Shield replaced with Bulletproof Camera.
  
• Maestro: Deployable Shield replaced with Impact Grenades.
  
• Warden: Impact Grenade replaced with Deployable Shield.
  
• Dokkaebi: Stun Grenades replaced with Frag Grenades.
  
• Glaz: Claymore replaced with Frag Grenades.
  
• Nøkk: Stun Grenades replaced with Claymore.

The arrival of the updated Deployable Shield has forced us to rethink the utility used by all our operators. We want attackers to have the right tools to counter any defence relying heavily on these shields. Also, Warden and Nøkk will finally receive their initial secondary gadgets, which were temporarily replaced.

DEFUSING TIME INCREASE

• Defusal planting or deactivation increased from 5 secs to 7secs.

Planting or deactivating a bomb defuser proved to be too short. To try and reward effective control over a bombsite more fairly we have decided to increase the planting or the defusing of the device to 7 seconds. We hope that this change will give more time to both teams to react accordingly.

Full Ember Rise patch notes are available here.

Try out the latest Rainbow Six updates on the Test Server and earn an exclusive charm through the BugHunter program.

Follow us and share your feedback on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and on our forums.

With Operation Ember Rise coming to the live servers, we wanted to shed some light on the Casual Playlist changes coming at the launch of Year 4 Season 3, and around the 3.3 patch.

We currently have a total of 22 maps; 14 in the Ranked Playlist and 20 playable in Casual. As announced on the Seasonal Patch Notes, we will implement a new Casual map pool rotation. This Playlist will now have 14 maps instead of the current 20. Moving forward we will rotate 4 maps in and out of the playlist with each rotation.

With the release of Operation Ember Rise, this is what the Casual map pool will look like:



In a mid-season patch, we will replace Skyscraper, Hereford, Fortress, and Chalet, with House, Plane, Favela, and Tower. We will post updates on social media channels before it reaches the live servers.

Bartlett University and Theme Park will not be playable during Season 3. The latter will be receiving a rework with the release of Y4S4 and won’t be available throughout this season.

Our goal is to give players the ability to familiarize themselves with a more curated selection of maps. We are also aiming to make the playlist more dynamic and enjoyable. Remember to follow us and share your feedback on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and on our forums.

Something new is on the horizon, and Operation Ember Rise will shed light on it. Two operators, Amaru and Goyo, were recruited from Peru and Mexico, bringing with them innovation and change to Rainbow Six, along with a thrilling rework to Kanal.

Besides that, numerous changes and new features are on their way. As you scroll through the Patch Notes below, you’ll find more information on our plans for a Battle Pass, the new Champions rank and Unranked playlist, our new Operators menu, changes to the Shop interface and Player VS AI, and which Operators are getting a price decrease.

View Patch Notes

“Save you once, shame on me. Save you twice? Well. You’re family now, and we don’t keep count.”

"They said I’d never make anything of myself. They said that if I couldn’t be taught, I’d never learn anything worth knowing. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s all rubbish. You’ve had to sit through years of them filling your heads with what they want you to think, all for a fancy bit of paper. Worth it, was it? I’ll tell you what. You get out there, you never hold back, and someday some professor who doesn’t remember tossing you out of his class will ask you to come and inspire the next generation. Lucky for all of you, I’ve got a bit of skin in the game as far as young whippersnappers go, so you’d better shape up to be something pretty bloody marvelous.



- PORTER, J., RECIPIENT OF AN HONORARY DOCTORATE IN PHYSICAL AND THEORETICAL CHEMISTRY


“Anyone who says you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure has never made friends with a chemist.”