We want to thank you all for taking the time to test the new recoil values on the TTS, as well as provide us with your feedback. We discussed the new recoil system this morning with our Designers, and have a bit of insight to share with you.

Your concerns regarding randomness of bullet spray, as well as how the guns feel, have been heard by our developers and are being taken into account. You have also pointed out that this could potentially lead to a rise in macros, which we will also be exploring.

These changes to recoil patterns are one of the solutions we found that would result in correcting the alignment issue, but there may be other options to explore. We are going to continue looking at other ways to manage this, and will be testing those changes on future TTS builds. This is not the type of change that we are in a rush to produce, and are going to take our time to ensure that it will work well when it is deployed on the live servers.

Overall, we are very glad that we have been able to test this first iteration of the recoil changes on the TTS and gather feedback on it. The TTS is extremely valuable for testing gameplay changes of this nature, and we will be taking the feedback provided during this TTS phase and working on a second iteration of the recoil patterns.

We want to thank you all for taking the time to test the new recoil values on the TTS, as well as provide us with your feedback. We discussed the new recoil system this morning with our Designers, and have a bit of insight to share with you.

Your concerns regarding randomness of bullet spray, as well as how the guns feel, have been heard by our developers and are being taken into account. You have also pointed out that this could potentially lead to a rise in macros, which we will also be exploring.

These changes to recoil patterns are one of the solutions we found that would result in correcting the alignment issue, but there may be other options to explore. We are going to continue looking at other ways to manage this, and will be testing those changes on future TTS builds. This is not the type of change that we are in a rush to produce, and are going to take our time to ensure that it will work well when it is deployed on the live servers.

Overall, we are very glad that we have been able to test this first iteration of the recoil changes on the TTS and gather feedback on it. The TTS is extremely valuable for testing gameplay changes of this nature, and we will be taking the feedback provided during this TTS phase and working on a second iteration of the recoil patterns.

During Operation Health, we identified an issue with the L85A2 after analyzing a community submitted video from ExecCS. At first it seems like it was misaligned, but after further investigation we found out that this issue affected all weapons.

The issue comes from the fact that we displace the weapon sights from the center of the screen when we have recoil being applied to it. We did this to create a spray type system while still firing the bullet where the weapon appears to be aiming. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out the way we intended. The weapon offset in first person created a parallax issue between the gun and the world. The gun you are holding is rendered at a fixed 50 FOV (“Field of View”), but the world is rendered at 60 FOV for consoles and anywhere from 60-90 FOV on PC. Because of this, any amount of movement we do with the First Person visuals off the center of the camera will immediately cause alignment issues with the weapon.

This means that bullets did not always land exactly where the reticle is. Sometimes it was by a very small, almost negligible margin, but at other times, it was far from the reticle.


The first step we took was to remove the offset entirely. Unfortunately, a lot of the recoil was driven from the weapon offset, so the recoils were too easy to control. Having no solution to that issue, we felt that we had to tweak all of the recoils.

When attempting this, we immediately ran into another issue. The way the old recoil system used to work only let us define one recoil pattern definition.

So for example, say you fired a full magazine with the old system. The first bullet would go directly where you are aiming. To calculate where the second bullet would go, the engine would select a random point within a set of parameters shaped like a diamond. To calculate the third bullet the engine would take the position of the second bullet and take another point in the diamond shape using the second bullet position as the diamond’s origin (0, 0), and so on and so forth for the rest of the bullets.

That left us with a system that is still very random number generator (RNG) dependent that pulled hard on the camera and made the weapons feel erratic or unpredictable. This did not suit our needs, and we felt like it was a good opportunity to revise our recoil system.


Enter the multi-stage recoil. This let us define as many recoil data sets as we wish at any stage during a fully automatic spray. So let’s go back to our example. Obviously, the first bullet always goes exactly where you are aiming. The second one is driven by a simple left / right pull value. This time, we can say to the engine “For the second bullet use this recoil data set and for the third bullet, use this other data set” etc. That way, we can say where every bullet goes in relation to the previous one.

That means that we have a perfect control over where every bullet goes, with no other RNG involved. With this system, we were able to create much more precise recoil patterns.


Our vision is to have a recoil system that stays true to Siege and how it feels without ever making the player feel like they were cheated out of a skillful shot, or that they got lucky with a poor show of skill.



We do not want to overwhelm the players with an insane amount of recoil patterns to learn, so he have divided them into families. Each family will all have the same kind of pattern, while having small differences to make sure they still feel different from one another.

The weapons have been divided as such:

AUG A2, Type-89, F2, C7E, AR33, G36C, L85A2, 556xi, PARA-308

552 commando, AK-12, C8SFW, 416-C, R4C

G8A1, M249, 6P41, T-95 LSW, PDW9, P90, Scorpion EVO 3 A1

MP5k, MP5, FMG-9, T-5, MP5SD, MPX, 9x19VSN, MP7

MK17 CQB

SMG-11, Bearing 9, Vector .45 ACP

Shotguns, pistols, DMRs and some lower rate of fire SMGs have been excluded from this list because their recoil has not been reworked entirely. We have removed the small amount of weapon offset from them but it wasn’t affecting the recoil enough to warrant a change.


Obviously, this change is not one we want to implement without proper testing. The updated recoil system will be available on the TTS on September the 20th.

We are very excited for you to try out this new system, and we strongly encourage you to share feedback with us on the Rainbow 6 TTS subreddit.

During Operation Health, we identified an issue with the L85A2 after analyzing a community submitted video from ExecCS. At first it seems like it was misaligned, but after further investigation we found out that this issue affected all weapons.

The issue comes from the fact that we displace the weapon sights from the center of the screen when we have recoil being applied to it. We did this to create a spray type system while still firing the bullet where the weapon appears to be aiming. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out the way we intended. The weapon offset in first person created a parallax issue between the gun and the world. The gun you are holding is rendered at a fixed 50 FOV (“Field of View”), but the world is rendered at 60 FOV for consoles and anywhere from 60-90 FOV on PC. Because of this, any amount of movement we do with the First Person visuals off the center of the camera will immediately cause alignment issues with the weapon.

This means that bullets did not always land exactly where the reticle is. Sometimes it was by a very small, almost negligible margin, but at other times, it was far from the reticle.


The first step we took was to remove the offset entirely. Unfortunately, a lot of the recoil was driven from the weapon offset, so the recoils were too easy to control. Having no solution to that issue, we felt that we had to tweak all of the recoils.

When attempting this, we immediately ran into another issue. The way the old recoil system used to work only let us define one recoil pattern definition.

So for example, say you fired a full magazine with the old system. The first bullet would go directly where you are aiming. To calculate where the second bullet would go, the engine would select a random point within a set of parameters shaped like a diamond. To calculate the third bullet the engine would take the position of the second bullet and take another point in the diamond shape using the second bullet position as the diamond’s origin (0, 0), and so on and so forth for the rest of the bullets.

That left us with a system that is still very random number generator (RNG) dependent that pulled hard on the camera and made the weapons feel erratic or unpredictable. This did not suit our needs, and we felt like it was a good opportunity to revise our recoil system.


Enter the multi-stage recoil. This let us define as many recoil data sets as we wish at any stage during a fully automatic spray. So let’s go back to our example. Obviously, the first bullet always goes exactly where you are aiming. The second one is driven by a simple left / right pull value. This time, we can say to the engine “For the second bullet use this recoil data set and for the third bullet, use this other data set” etc. That way, we can say where every bullet goes in relation to the previous one.

That means that we have a perfect control over where every bullet goes, with no other RNG involved. With this system, we were able to create much more precise recoil patterns.


Our vision is to have a recoil system that stays true to Siege and how it feels without ever making the player feel like they were cheated out of a skillful shot, or that they got lucky with a poor show of skill.



We do not want to overwhelm the players with an insane amount of recoil patterns to learn, so he have divided them into families. Each family will all have the same kind of pattern, while having small differences to make sure they still feel different from one another.

The weapons have been divided as such:

AUG A2, Type-89, F2, C7E, AR33, G36C, L85A2, 556xi, PARA-308

552 commando, AK-12, C8SFW, 416-C, R4C

G8A1, M249, 6P41, T-95 LSW, PDW9, P90, Scorpion EVO 3 A1

MP5k, MP5, FMG-9, T-5, MP5SD, MPX, 9x19VSN, MP7

MK17 CQB

SMG-11, Bearing 9, Vector .45 ACP

Shotguns, pistols, DMRs and some lower rate of fire SMGs have been excluded from this list because their recoil has not been reworked entirely. We have removed the small amount of weapon offset from them but it wasn’t affecting the recoil enough to warrant a change.


Obviously, this change is not one we want to implement without proper testing. The updated recoil system will be available on the TTS on September the 20th.

We are very excited for you to try out this new system, and we strongly encourage you to share feedback with us on the Rainbow 6 TTS subreddit.

The full Operation Blood Orchid update will deploy on the Technical Test Server (PC) on August 29th, the release date on live servers will be September 5th


3 months ago, Operation Health was deployed as a major initiative to improve the game for the upcoming years. With the launch of Season 3, we are putting Operation Health behind us with our final update in Season 3, which is our largest patch we have ever deployed. In the future, we are still keeping the core pillars to focus on game optimization, top community issues reported by the community, and improving player experience. The groundwork in Operation Health will help us to continue to improve the game for the distant future.


The new servers will be deployed with the launch of Season 3. These new servers bring significant improvements to stability, connectivity, FPS, rubberbanding, and overall performance. On top of the new servers, we have a new physics system in the works, which should further address issues with players teleporting and rubberbanding.


Initially, we wanted to use realistic values to have contrasted and realistic lighting, which works in the same way as a camera would in real life. Additionally, the bloom was intended to limit the effectiveness of Defenders peeking outside.

We are excited to tell you that we have completely reworked how exposure is handled on all maps, and reduced the exposure values. Bloom issues are now a thing of the past.





We will now be using image based HDR skies. This allows us to have more artistic control of the ambient lighting, as well as increase the overall quality of lighting in general.




Updates are being worked on for our shading model, also known as Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function, which calculates reflections. It now matches the same model as our external texturing tool, which improves the workflow for our artists. What this means for you is that you will see an improved reflection quality in some materials, particularly in terms of glossiness.


Over the course of the next year, we will be reworking the textures of every single map. We are starting with Kafe Dostoyevsky, our most expensive map in terms of memory-budget. We have been going through all the textures and meshes of Kafe, smoothing, optimizing, and standardizing everything we could. In essence, we are streamlining and reducing its overall memory footprint.




In Operation health, we have done a complete pass on all of our Operators to make sure the total sum of their textures meet a consistent memory usage. This means that textures that were not adequately optimized are now remapped in the UV Mapping with greater efficiency so that they take up less amount of memory without reducing quality.

Because we’re meeting a consistent memory budget across all operators, it also meant that we could slightly improve the quality for some Operators. Lower budget Operators, like Sledge, will have a slight improvement of quality.



By doing a pass on the facial rigging of the Operators, it means that they now have a more consistent reaction with the shape of their face. This will result in more accurately aligned points of movement in the face.




After months of hard work, we’ve streamlined the handling of Hibana’s net objects. We started by reducing the overall number of net objects we need to monitor. By doing this, the potential conflicts between Host Authority and Local Authority timelines are reduced, and thus players will not run into the complications that result from a desync between the two.

Additionally, we’ve meticulously gone over the scenarios in which we saw other outlying issues occurring, such as pellet placement, and visual errors, and corrected those as well.


In the Y2S3.0 patch, we will be making some changes to how our data is organized, as well as how we generate patches moving forward. There is more information below on exactly what we are doing, and why, but we are currently looking at the following patch size breakdown:

• PC with Ultra HD - 42GB
  
• PC without Ultra HD - 26GB

The impact of this will result in a smaller overall footprint on your hard drive, taking up less space. By consolidating our patches and data players will see a reduction “seek time”, which means faster load times for all players.


Over Season 3, we will be testing fixes and improvements that will aim to address Hit Registration issues and poor network conditions. We are currently testing something we’re calling Latency Alignment, which will make 1v1 encounters feel more consistent. The result should be that the server will more accurately mirror the reaction time of players with unstable connections, giving a fairer reaction time to their opponents.

We are also working on adjustments to our shot validation to further favor players with more stable connections. This will be a lot more punishing on shots that happen far away. There are other improvements for hit registration, headshot registration, and ping that we will be trickling into deployment.




Smoke grenades and Capitao’s smoke darts have been fully revamped. They are now completely opaque and will be displayed the exact same way on every client, which will make them much more reliable and consistent. We’ve welcomed pro players to test them in our Montreal studio – they’ve found these new smokes to be so strong that we’ve decided to follow their recommendation and lower their amount to 2 per operators that can chose them. This change will also temporarily make Capitao’s smokes grey, instead of blue.


As a standard from now on there will not be a 2 or 3 speed Defender with the option of using the ACOG sight.

While we like the fact that defenders can challenge attackers on long distances on their approach, we believe this strategy should come with a higher risk. The possibility for 3 speeds operators like Jäger and Bandit to challenge on the longest distances while being able to relocate very quickly is currently too strong. As a consequence, Jäger and Bandit lose their ACOG, and the only new defenders that will get ACOGs will be the heavy armored ones. However, this does not mean all heavy armor operators will have ACOG’s and will be decided on by the Game Design team.


Our old damage model had several inconsistencies, which has made it hard for players to understand where each weapon loses damage efficiency. With the new model in Year 2 Season 3, we have tried to keep the weapon balance intact while setting hard values for where the damage falloff begins and where it ends per weapon category.

For example, let us compare the now old model for Capitao’s Para-308 and Buck’s C8SFW.

• C8SFW: From 0-18 meters, it deals its base damage of 41. It then falls off linearly from 18m to 30m to its lowest damage value, 24.
  
• Para-308: From 0-28 meters, it deals its base damage of 45. It then falls off linearly from 28m to 40m to its lowest damage value, 29.

As you can see, there is a 10m difference from where it starts falling off between the two rifles. That issue is across most of the guns. There is not a standardized value to encompass the fall-offs, which makes it hard to understand at which distances guns become less efficient.

With Season 3, we have standardized the fall-off value across all weapons classes; except for the shotguns and the sole sniper rifle for Glaz. We believe this will help everyone have a better understanding, of when their weapon loses efficiency.

• Designated Marksman Rifles: Fall-off starts at 25m and ends at 40m.
  
• Light Machine Guns: Fall-off starts at 25m and ends at 40m.
  
• Assault Rifles: Fall-off starts at 25m and ends at 35m.
  
• Sub-Machine Guns: Fall-off starts at 18m and ends at 28m.
  
• Machine Pistols: Fall-off starts at 18m and ends at 28m.
  
• Pistols: Fall-off starts at 12m and ends at 22m.

The reason why we did not want to give the shotguns the same treatment is that they need to have this level of granularity to balance them properly and have enough variation between each other to keep them interesting.

We hope this will improve the player’s understanding of weapon efficiency. Of course, we will be closely looking at that statistics to make sure that our game balance remains the same.


We have made a pass on the amount of ammo of every gun, and added a few magazines to several of them. Here is the complete change list:

• AR33 +1
  
• 417 +4
  
• 556xi +2
  
• C8-SFW +2
  
• MK17 CQB +2
  
• CAMRS +2
  
• PARA-308 +2
  
• Type-89 +2
  
• SMG-11 +2
  
• P9 +1
  
• P226 Mk 25 +1
  
• M45 MEUSOC +2
  
• P90 +1
• SASG-12 +1
  
• SPAS-15 +1
  
• ITA12S +2
  
• FO-12 +1
  
• T-96 LSW +1
  
• SR-25 +2
  
• OTs-03 +2

Attackers can now deploy a second drone without destroying the first one. This works just like Twitch who can already deploy her two shock drones. The mechanics are also the same where launching a new drone will place the attacker in the new drone’s camera, and they can re-access their first drone view by scrolling the observation tool list.

We hope that this change will reinforce the importance of the preparation phase by making it possible to position a drone inside the building, and then deploy a new drone during the action phase to scout ahead without losing this first drone.

We will monitor closely the impact this will have on global win rates of attackers and defenders, as we expect this to give an additional edge to attackers since they can now have up to 10 active cameras at a time.


Using the shield vault exploit, Defenders can place themselves on the windowsill of North windows of Control Room aiming at Floating Dock spawn location, and North windows of Server Room aiming at Construction Site. We have fixed this so defenders can no longer use this spawn kill exploit.


We identified and fixed several cases where players’ first person camera position did not match third person eyes position. This sometimes led to getting killed by opponents that you couldn’t see.


The shooting feedback systems like bullet tracers, hit reactions like decals on the environment, and threat indicators in the UI were based on a trajectory that started from the weapon muzzle. This led to inconsistencies, as the real bullet trajectory in Rainbow starts from the 1st person camera. Shooting feedback systems are now fully consistent and based on real bullet trajectories. We need to make a shoutout to ExecCS, who is the community member who alerted us on that with a youtube video.


There are often times when there is a piece of debris that can be viewed by one player, and not the other. This will no longer block sightlines when shooting.


Debris from the wooden windows frame can hinder or block deployment of gadgets. Sometimes the debris will get stuck in the Armor Panel of Castle and are impossible to be destroyed blocking completely the deployment of any gadgets. This fix should allow for more consistent debris physics.



We have removed the red filter that make defenders’ vision uncomfortable when they run outside the building. We think the red warning in the middle of the screen should be clear enough feedback that you are doing something dangerous.


If an alive player browses the observation tool list, he will now have priority over dead players for camera controls (in attack and defense). While this should not make much of a difference in organized matches, we think it should help in public matchmaking in case a dead player is AFK while controlling a camera and prevents alive players from getting info.


It could sometimes happen that you spotted an enemy because your crosshair turned red – not because you actually saw them.

Finding our enemies is core to Siege gameplay, so we have decided to remove this mechanic. Note that your crosshair will still turn green when aiming at a teammate.


Similarly to the crosshair turning red, it happened sometimes that you spotted an enemy because you triggered the “enemy ID” event, which reveals an operator’s identity in the HUD header and gives score points. This was problematic for the same reasons: it could tell you that an enemy was in your field of vision, even if you had not actually seen him.

The “enemy ID” event will now only trigger from scanning successfully with drones, cameras, Valkyrie Black Eyes or Jackal footsteps scanning.


In order to allow our players to hone their skills in the most competitive environment available, we are reducing the total number of maps in the Ranked map rotation. The following maps will be included in the Ranked playlist rotation for Season 3:



Beginning this season, the Ranked playlist will include the same nine maps that we selected for the Pro League. Moving forward, we will introduce the new Ranked and ESL Pro League playlists at the same time we perform the rank reset – and all of that will occur at the start of the new season. The Ranked playlist, much like the ESL playlist, will be rotated each Season, offering a different selection of available maps.

Additionally, we will exclude maps added in the new season from both Ranked playlists and Pro League selection. This is being done to ensure that players have time to explore and learn the new maps in Casual and in Custom Games, and to make certain that we are able to eliminate any glitches or exploits prior to entering new maps into the competitive map pool.


In Season 3 we will be reducing the Casual map playlist to fifteen maps. Reducing the total number of maps available for play in the Casual playlist make the process of learning the maps that Rainbow Six has to offer easier for new players. We have identified the steep learning curve that our new players face in terms of map knowledge, and this is one of the ways that we plan on addressing it.

Additionally, some of the maps that are removed will be reworked by our Level Design team. To be clear, not all maps that are removed from the Casual playlist will be reworked, but some of them will be over the course of the years to come.

We are quickly approaching the limit of our data sizes, and this will require a rework of how our maps are stored. As a result, we are currently planning on removing maps from the game entirely down the road (not in Season 3).

Here are the maps we will have available in Casual playlist rotation for Season 3:




After revisiting the mechanics of the Map Preference system, we have elected to deactivate this system for all PvP Multiplayer (we will keep it for Terrorist Hunt so you and your squad can select specific maps). We don’t have an ETA for the return of this feature to PvP as we are exploring some alternative implementations we believe can improve the experience.



The Game Design team considers Barbed Wire to be a problem in the current meta-game. Barbed Wire is a great standard gadget, but it has gotten to a point where any solid defense needs to pick at the very least four of them, often six or eight.

This seems problematic for two reasons. For most defense operators that can pick barbwires, they are a must-pick. Must-picks is something we try to limit, as they do not provide real choices for players. Secondly, Barbed Wires are so efficient at what they do that they need to be hard countered (i.e. broken from a distance) by attackers. That also contributes to reducing choices on the attacker’s side, as it gives too much importance to frag grenades and operators like Ash.

Barbed Wires still prevent sprinting, but they now slow down walk speed by 45% down from 50% and they are destroyed with two melee hits down from three.


Jackal’s Hunter’s Mark now marks a target’s position every 5 seconds (down from 10) for 20 seconds (down from 30), for 5 position pings (up from 4).
Hibana is probably too good of a choice right now, for several reasons. We have deeper modifications planned for reinforced wall breaching operators in the long term, but we are not ready to share those details. For now, we hope that making the Bandit trick much easier against Hibana will make the strength of her gadget a bit more situational than it currently is.


Objects electrified by Bandit’s batteries used to 1-shot drones when they made contact with them. This was changed a few patches ago two be 2-3 hits, and we are reverting the change. Drones will be 1-hit when interact with electrified objects.


IQ’s sensor detecting friendly gadgets caused all kinds of confusion, so we are removing friendly objects from her hub. Additionally, when Echo is using his yokai Drone, IQ will now be able to detect this, similar to Pulse.


The path taken by Fuze’s cluster charge pellets was calculated by precomputing the whole trajectory, but then switching to a physics driven model as soon as a puck hits an object and disregarding the remainder of the precomputed trajectory. This, as we all know, translated to unpredictable and desynchronized behavior across clients. The new version ensures that the pucks follow the precomputed trajectory until the end, which should yield a much more reliable (and teammate friendly) behavior.


Shooting at Blackbeard’s shield doesn’t trigger hit markers anymore. On some occasion this mechanic allowed defenders to spot his position without seeing him, which was not the intended behavior.


All drones can now pitch their camera to a higher vertical angle, which mostly impacts Twitch: it’s now easier for her to shoot at high cameras with her shock drones.


Blood spatters are now correctly displayed when using the thermal scope. They used to not display in red when they displayed above the yellow bodies.

Additionally, dead enemies do not display as highlighted any more.


It should now be easier to connect where you want with the sledgehammer, especially on windows while rappelling.

The full list of Bug Fixes can be found here.

The full Operation Blood Orchid update will deploy on the Technical Test Server (PC) on August 29th, the release date on live servers will be September 5th


3 months ago, Operation Health was deployed as a major initiative to improve the game for the upcoming years. With the launch of Season 3, we are putting Operation Health behind us with our final update in Season 3, which is our largest patch we have ever deployed. In the future, we are still keeping the core pillars to focus on game optimization, top community issues reported by the community, and improving player experience. The groundwork in Operation Health will help us to continue to improve the game for the distant future.


The new servers will be deployed with the launch of Season 3. These new servers bring significant improvements to stability, connectivity, FPS, rubberbanding, and overall performance. On top of the new servers, we have a new physics system in the works, which should further address issues with players teleporting and rubberbanding.


Initially, we wanted to use realistic values to have contrasted and realistic lighting, which works in the same way as a camera would in real life. Additionally, the bloom was intended to limit the effectiveness of Defenders peeking outside.

We are excited to tell you that we have completely reworked how exposure is handled on all maps, and reduced the exposure values. Bloom issues are now a thing of the past.





We will now be using image based HDR skies. This allows us to have more artistic control of the ambient lighting, as well as increase the overall quality of lighting in general.




Updates are being worked on for our shading model, also known as Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function, which calculates reflections. It now matches the same model as our external texturing tool, which improves the workflow for our artists. What this means for you is that you will see an improved reflection quality in some materials, particularly in terms of glossiness.


Over the course of the next year, we will be reworking the textures of every single map. We are starting with Kafe Dostoyevsky, our most expensive map in terms of memory-budget. We have been going through all the textures and meshes of Kafe, smoothing, optimizing, and standardizing everything we could. In essence, we are streamlining and reducing its overall memory footprint.




In Operation health, we have done a complete pass on all of our Operators to make sure the total sum of their textures meet a consistent memory usage. This means that textures that were not adequately optimized are now remapped in the UV Mapping with greater efficiency so that they take up less amount of memory without reducing quality.

Because we’re meeting a consistent memory budget across all operators, it also meant that we could slightly improve the quality for some Operators. Lower budget Operators, like Sledge, will have a slight improvement of quality.



By doing a pass on the facial rigging of the Operators, it means that they now have a more consistent reaction with the shape of their face. This will result in more accurately aligned points of movement in the face.




After months of hard work, we’ve streamlined the handling of Hibana’s net objects. We started by reducing the overall number of net objects we need to monitor. By doing this, the potential conflicts between Host Authority and Local Authority timelines are reduced, and thus players will not run into the complications that result from a desync between the two.

Additionally, we’ve meticulously gone over the scenarios in which we saw other outlying issues occurring, such as pellet placement, and visual errors, and corrected those as well.


In the Y2S3.0 patch, we will be making some changes to how our data is organized, as well as how we generate patches moving forward. There is more information below on exactly what we are doing, and why, but we are currently looking at the following patch size breakdown:

• PC with Ultra HD - 42GB
  
• PC without Ultra HD - 26GB

The impact of this will result in a smaller overall footprint on your hard drive, taking up less space. By consolidating our patches and data players will see a reduction “seek time”, which means faster load times for all players.


Over Season 3, we will be testing fixes and improvements that will aim to address Hit Registration issues and poor network conditions. We are currently testing something we’re calling Latency Alignment, which will make 1v1 encounters feel more consistent. The result should be that the server will more accurately mirror the reaction time of players with unstable connections, giving a fairer reaction time to their opponents.

We are also working on adjustments to our shot validation to further favor players with more stable connections. This will be a lot more punishing on shots that happen far away. There are other improvements for hit registration, headshot registration, and ping that we will be trickling into deployment.




Smoke grenades and Capitao’s smoke darts have been fully revamped. They are now completely opaque and will be displayed the exact same way on every client, which will make them much more reliable and consistent. We’ve welcomed pro players to test them in our Montreal studio – they’ve found these new smokes to be so strong that we’ve decided to follow their recommendation and lower their amount to 2 per operators that can chose them. This change will also temporarily make Capitao’s smokes grey, instead of blue.


As a standard from now on there will not be a 2 or 3 speed Defender with the option of using the ACOG sight.

While we like the fact that defenders can challenge attackers on long distances on their approach, we believe this strategy should come with a higher risk. The possibility for 3 speeds operators like Jäger and Bandit to challenge on the longest distances while being able to relocate very quickly is currently too strong. As a consequence, Jäger and Bandit lose their ACOG, and the only new defenders that will get ACOGs will be the heavy armored ones. However, this does not mean all heavy armor operators will have ACOG’s and will be decided on by the Game Design team.


Our old damage model had several inconsistencies, which has made it hard for players to understand where each weapon loses damage efficiency. With the new model in Year 2 Season 3, we have tried to keep the weapon balance intact while setting hard values for where the damage falloff begins and where it ends per weapon category.

For example, let us compare the now old model for Capitao’s Para-308 and Buck’s C8SFW.

• C8SFW: From 0-18 meters, it deals its base damage of 41. It then falls off linearly from 18m to 30m to its lowest damage value, 24.
  
• Para-308: From 0-28 meters, it deals its base damage of 45. It then falls off linearly from 28m to 40m to its lowest damage value, 29.

As you can see, there is a 10m difference from where it starts falling off between the two rifles. That issue is across most of the guns. There is not a standardized value to encompass the fall-offs, which makes it hard to understand at which distances guns become less efficient.

With Season 3, we have standardized the fall-off value across all weapons classes; except for the shotguns and the sole sniper rifle for Glaz. We believe this will help everyone have a better understanding, of when their weapon loses efficiency.

• Designated Marksman Rifles: Fall-off starts at 25m and ends at 40m.
  
• Light Machine Guns: Fall-off starts at 25m and ends at 40m.
  
• Assault Rifles: Fall-off starts at 25m and ends at 35m.
  
• Sub-Machine Guns: Fall-off starts at 18m and ends at 28m.
  
• Machine Pistols: Fall-off starts at 18m and ends at 28m.
  
• Pistols: Fall-off starts at 12m and ends at 22m.

The reason why we did not want to give the shotguns the same treatment is that they need to have this level of granularity to balance them properly and have enough variation between each other to keep them interesting.

We hope this will improve the player’s understanding of weapon efficiency. Of course, we will be closely looking at that statistics to make sure that our game balance remains the same.


We have made a pass on the amount of ammo of every gun, and added a few magazines to several of them. Here is the complete change list:

• AR33 +1
  
• 417 +4
  
• 556xi +2
  
• C8-SFW +2
  
• MK17 CQB +2
  
• CAMRS +2
  
• PARA-308 +2
  
• Type-89 +2
  
• SMG-11 +2
  
• P9 +1
  
• P226 Mk 25 +1
  
• M45 MEUSOC +2
  
• P90 +1
• SASG-12 +1
  
• SPAS-15 +1
  
• ITA12S +2
  
• FO-12 +1
  
• T-96 LSW +1
  
• SR-25 +2
  
• OTs-03 +2

Attackers can now deploy a second drone without destroying the first one. This works just like Twitch who can already deploy her two shock drones. The mechanics are also the same where launching a new drone will place the attacker in the new drone’s camera, and they can re-access their first drone view by scrolling the observation tool list.

We hope that this change will reinforce the importance of the preparation phase by making it possible to position a drone inside the building, and then deploy a new drone during the action phase to scout ahead without losing this first drone.

We will monitor closely the impact this will have on global win rates of attackers and defenders, as we expect this to give an additional edge to attackers since they can now have up to 10 active cameras at a time.


Using the shield vault exploit, Defenders can place themselves on the windowsill of North windows of Control Room aiming at Floating Dock spawn location, and North windows of Server Room aiming at Construction Site. We have fixed this so defenders can no longer use this spawn kill exploit.


We identified and fixed several cases where players’ first person camera position did not match third person eyes position. This sometimes led to getting killed by opponents that you couldn’t see.


The shooting feedback systems like bullet tracers, hit reactions like decals on the environment, and threat indicators in the UI were based on a trajectory that started from the weapon muzzle. This led to inconsistencies, as the real bullet trajectory in Rainbow starts from the 1st person camera. Shooting feedback systems are now fully consistent and based on real bullet trajectories. We need to make a shoutout to ExecCS, who is the community member who alerted us on that with a youtube video.


There are often times when there is a piece of debris that can be viewed by one player, and not the other. This will no longer block sightlines when shooting.


Debris from the wooden windows frame can hinder or block deployment of gadgets. Sometimes the debris will get stuck in the Armor Panel of Castle and are impossible to be destroyed blocking completely the deployment of any gadgets. This fix should allow for more consistent debris physics.



We have removed the red filter that make defenders’ vision uncomfortable when they run outside the building. We think the red warning in the middle of the screen should be clear enough feedback that you are doing something dangerous.


If an alive player browses the observation tool list, he will now have priority over dead players for camera controls (in attack and defense). While this should not make much of a difference in organized matches, we think it should help in public matchmaking in case a dead player is AFK while controlling a camera and prevents alive players from getting info.


It could sometimes happen that you spotted an enemy because your crosshair turned red – not because you actually saw them.

Finding our enemies is core to Siege gameplay, so we have decided to remove this mechanic. Note that your crosshair will still turn green when aiming at a teammate.


Similarly to the crosshair turning red, it happened sometimes that you spotted an enemy because you triggered the “enemy ID” event, which reveals an operator’s identity in the HUD header and gives score points. This was problematic for the same reasons: it could tell you that an enemy was in your field of vision, even if you had not actually seen him.

The “enemy ID” event will now only trigger from scanning successfully with drones, cameras, Valkyrie Black Eyes or Jackal footsteps scanning.


In order to allow our players to hone their skills in the most competitive environment available, we are reducing the total number of maps in the Ranked map rotation. The following maps will be included in the Ranked playlist rotation for Season 3:



Beginning this season, the Ranked playlist will include the same nine maps that we selected for the Pro League. Moving forward, we will introduce the new Ranked and ESL Pro League playlists at the same time we perform the rank reset – and all of that will occur at the start of the new season. The Ranked playlist, much like the ESL playlist, will be rotated each Season, offering a different selection of available maps.

Additionally, we will exclude maps added in the new season from both Ranked playlists and Pro League selection. This is being done to ensure that players have time to explore and learn the new maps in Casual and in Custom Games, and to make certain that we are able to eliminate any glitches or exploits prior to entering new maps into the competitive map pool.


In Season 3 we will be reducing the Casual map playlist to fifteen maps. Reducing the total number of maps available for play in the Casual playlist make the process of learning the maps that Rainbow Six has to offer easier for new players. We have identified the steep learning curve that our new players face in terms of map knowledge, and this is one of the ways that we plan on addressing it.

Additionally, some of the maps that are removed will be reworked by our Level Design team. To be clear, not all maps that are removed from the Casual playlist will be reworked, but some of them will be over the course of the years to come.

We are quickly approaching the limit of our data sizes, and this will require a rework of how our maps are stored. As a result, we are currently planning on removing maps from the game entirely down the road (not in Season 3).

Here are the maps we will have available in Casual playlist rotation for Season 3:




After revisiting the mechanics of the Map Preference system, we have elected to deactivate this system for all PvP Multiplayer (we will keep it for Terrorist Hunt so you and your squad can select specific maps). We don’t have an ETA for the return of this feature to PvP as we are exploring some alternative implementations we believe can improve the experience.



The Game Design team considers Barbed Wire to be a problem in the current meta-game. Barbed Wire is a great standard gadget, but it has gotten to a point where any solid defense needs to pick at the very least four of them, often six or eight.

This seems problematic for two reasons. For most defense operators that can pick barbwires, they are a must-pick. Must-picks is something we try to limit, as they do not provide real choices for players. Secondly, Barbed Wires are so efficient at what they do that they need to be hard countered (i.e. broken from a distance) by attackers. That also contributes to reducing choices on the attacker’s side, as it gives too much importance to frag grenades and operators like Ash.

Barbed Wires still prevent sprinting, but they now slow down walk speed by 45% down from 50% and they are destroyed with two melee hits down from three.


Jackal’s Hunter’s Mark now marks a target’s position every 5 seconds (down from 10) for 20 seconds (down from 30), for 5 position pings (up from 4).
Hibana is probably too good of a choice right now, for several reasons. We have deeper modifications planned for reinforced wall breaching operators in the long term, but we are not ready to share those details. For now, we hope that making the Bandit trick much easier against Hibana will make the strength of her gadget a bit more situational than it currently is.


Objects electrified by Bandit’s batteries used to 1-shot drones when they made contact with them. This was changed a few patches ago two be 2-3 hits, and we are reverting the change. Drones will be 1-hit when interact with electrified objects.


IQ’s sensor detecting friendly gadgets caused all kinds of confusion, so we are removing friendly objects from her hub. Additionally, when Echo is using his yokai Drone, IQ will now be able to detect this, similar to Pulse.


The path taken by Fuze’s cluster charge pellets was calculated by precomputing the whole trajectory, but then switching to a physics driven model as soon as a puck hits an object and disregarding the remainder of the precomputed trajectory. This, as we all know, translated to unpredictable and desynchronized behavior across clients. The new version ensures that the pucks follow the precomputed trajectory until the end, which should yield a much more reliable (and teammate friendly) behavior.


Shooting at Blackbeard’s shield doesn’t trigger hit markers anymore. On some occasion this mechanic allowed defenders to spot his position without seeing him, which was not the intended behavior.


All drones can now pitch their camera to a higher vertical angle, which mostly impacts Twitch: it’s now easier for her to shoot at high cameras with her shock drones.


Blood spatters are now correctly displayed when using the thermal scope. They used to not display in red when they displayed above the yellow bodies.

Additionally, dead enemies do not display as highlighted any more.


It should now be easier to connect where you want with the sledgehammer, especially on windows while rappelling.

The full list of Bug Fixes can be found here.

Originally from Wrocław, Ela’s family history has deep roots within the city. Her grandfather was a Cichociemny, an elite paratrooper of the exiled Polish Army during WWII. After being captured during the Warsaw Uprising, he managed to escape and reach Wrocław, only to endure a three-month-long siege.

Ela shared that her grandfather had a significant role in her life. “I still carry a piece of his uniform everywhere I go.” Through his tales of war, he nurtured Ela’s defiant spirit and taught her that “higher damage is done by striking a supply chain than by neutralizing a man.” While these lessons made her a prolific Counter-IED Operator, Ela initially struggled to commit to the strict military lifestyle.

https://youtu.be/-6TtPYYSo_w

You can find all informations about the newest Operator on our website.

Originally from Wrocław, Ela’s family history has deep roots within the city. Her grandfather was a Cichociemny, an elite paratrooper of the exiled Polish Army during WWII. After being captured during the Warsaw Uprising, he managed to escape and reach Wrocław, only to endure a three-month-long siege.

Ela shared that her grandfather had a significant role in her life. “I still carry a piece of his uniform everywhere I go.” Through his tales of war, he nurtured Ela’s defiant spirit and taught her that “higher damage is done by striking a supply chain than by neutralizing a man.” While these lessons made her a prolific Counter-IED Operator, Ela initially struggled to commit to the strict military lifestyle.

https://youtu.be/-6TtPYYSo_w

You can find all informations about the newest Operator on our website.

In Operation Blood Orchid, two Operators from the Special Duties Unit (S.D.U.) join Team Rainbow to raid the criminal organization squatting our new free map, Theme Park.
Nicknamed the “Flying Tigers,” the S.D.U. has been listed among the most potent Special Forces in the world ever since its activation in 1974. The unit leads both police and military operations, over sea, air, and land.

To showcase our new Operator, Scriptwriter Farah Daoud-Brixi discussed what inspired Lesion’s character: “Originally modeled on the British Special Air Service, the S.D.U. has since developed their own training and methods. It is this edge that we wanted to capture with Lesion, who strikes unexpectedly and gains intensity with time.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpdnv7kIIhA

Liu Tze Long, codenamed Lesion, is the latest addition to Team Rainbow. His resilience to physical hardships is what set him apart from other candidates. “He was one of the three Operators who was able to withstand an extreme version of the S.A.S.’ Resistance to Interrogation Program,” said Daoud-Brixi.

Lesion is known to take his work seriously, and to expose himself to high-risk situations on a daily basis. This lack of consideration for his well-being has been judged as arrogant by some, and has often alienated him from his peers. But this natural drive to withstand difficult situations is also what pushed him to volunteer for mine disposal duty, which launched his career.

Lesion’s first operation was lead in Indonesia, Op. Green Viper. The laptop of a Malaysian physicist, who had recently joined an extremist group, was found in Macau. Its data revealed research on a biological weapon consisting of a bubonic plague bacteria obtained from animals. Liu teamed up with two S.A.S Operators, codenamed Smoke and Thatcher, to infiltrate the physicist’s laboratory and neutralize every trace of the substance. As this was Lesion’s first successful mission, the trio stayed an extra day in Macau and filed the event as an off-duty bonus.

Representing Hong Kong’s Special Forces, Lesion will be wielding the T-5 SMG and SIX12 SD as primary weapons, and the Q-929 as a secondary weapon.

In Operation Blood Orchid, two Operators from the Special Duties Unit (S.D.U.) join Team Rainbow to raid the criminal organization squatting our new free map, Theme Park.
Nicknamed the “Flying Tigers,” the S.D.U. has been listed among the most potent Special Forces in the world ever since its activation in 1974. The unit leads both police and military operations, over sea, air, and land.

To showcase our new Operator, Scriptwriter Farah Daoud-Brixi discussed what inspired Lesion’s character: “Originally modeled on the British Special Air Service, the S.D.U. has since developed their own training and methods. It is this edge that we wanted to capture with Lesion, who strikes unexpectedly and gains intensity with time.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpdnv7kIIhA

Liu Tze Long, codenamed Lesion, is the latest addition to Team Rainbow. His resilience to physical hardships is what set him apart from other candidates. “He was one of the three Operators who was able to withstand an extreme version of the S.A.S.’ Resistance to Interrogation Program,” said Daoud-Brixi.

Lesion is known to take his work seriously, and to expose himself to high-risk situations on a daily basis. This lack of consideration for his well-being has been judged as arrogant by some, and has often alienated him from his peers. But this natural drive to withstand difficult situations is also what pushed him to volunteer for mine disposal duty, which launched his career.

Lesion’s first operation was lead in Indonesia, Op. Green Viper. The laptop of a Malaysian physicist, who had recently joined an extremist group, was found in Macau. Its data revealed research on a biological weapon consisting of a bubonic plague bacteria obtained from animals. Liu teamed up with two S.A.S Operators, codenamed Smoke and Thatcher, to infiltrate the physicist’s laboratory and neutralize every trace of the substance. As this was Lesion’s first successful mission, the trio stayed an extra day in Macau and filed the event as an off-duty bonus.

Representing Hong Kong’s Special Forces, Lesion will be wielding the T-5 SMG and SIX12 SD as primary weapons, and the Q-929 as a secondary weapon.