As Rainbow Six Siege begins its transition from the burnt skies of Australia to Operation Phantom Sight, Ubisoft has shared its latest Designer Notes for gadget reworks coming in the near future. Most notably, Glaz’s powerful thermal scope will soon be modified to nerf his entry fragging power.

Glaz

Glaz will now have to stand completely still to get the most out of his thermal scope that highlights enemies through smoke. Moving his feet will progressively dim the the bright yellow highlight until it turns off completely, represented by the yellow notches on the side of the scope in the gif below.

Ubi initially designed Glaz as a long-range sniper, but quickly found that he was rarely used this way by players. To encourage this, they added the thermal scope, but this only made the problem worse. The scope “made Glaz frustrating to play against and became a very strong close-range operator,” Ubi wrote today.

Making Glaz less lethal while mobile is an interesting rework idea, but I’m skeptical about how much of an effect it’ll have. Glaz players will definitely be incentivized to move less through smoke, but entry fragging still seems at least party possible. If the yellow highlight returns as quickly as it fades, a Glaz could still step into a smoke cloud and spot an enemy through it. One interesting wrinkle to this equation will be the new defender Warden, who is rumored to have special hardware that lets him see through smoke and flash grenades. At the same time that Glaz’s scope is growing weaker, he’s got a new counter to deal with.

Deployable Shields

Ubi still isn’t ready to deploy the new deployable shield design shown off at the Year 4 reveal, but it did share an interesting update to the new design. The black mirror slits shown back in February have been tweaked to be normal bulletproof glass. The hope is to give defenders a better reason to use the deployable shield by allowing safe vision through it. The catch is that the attacker on the other side can see through it as well.

The two-way glass feels like a reasonable compromise. If left as one-way, it would act like a mini Mira window and give the defender way too big of an advantage. Now, it’ll take clever timing for a defender to peek up from a shield while an enemy can see them through it. No word on a release date, but Ubi said the new deployable shield will deploy “when they are ready.”

Smoke

After a successful rework to Capitão’s fire bolts ironed out their propagation issues (fire poking through walls and not spreading correctly), Ubi is exploring applying the same breakthrough to Smoke’s toxic babes. “Smoke’s gas clouds are sometimes clipping through objects, and we are looking to improve its interaction with the environment, and reduce the frustration stemming from misleading visual information,” the post reads.

Although the smoke canisters can be inconsistent, it’s worth noting that they’re far more reliable than Capitão’s original fire bolts. Ubi is also investigating how to tweak the rendering of Smoke’s gas and how much damage it deals. “Reworking a gadget in this way so as not to affect performance is a difficult and time-consuming task, so we do not have an ETA for when it will be complete.”

Shield operators

Addressing a growing concern that shield operators are kind of busted, Ubi says it's taking a hard look at shield operators, but didn't announce any changes coming immediately in this update. In theory shields encourage stronger team play, but inconsistencies with their performance and general balancing issues with melee is making some shield interactions frustrating. According to Ubi, “the frustration generated by certain shield operators is being investigated and we’re exploring possible solutions that still allow shield operators to feel like a solid frontline choice.”

Shield operators work best when their power comes from the teammates supporting them. As long as shield melee is an instant kill and Blitz is designed to completely blind his foes when they get close, shields will continue to be more frustrating than fun. They need a rework across the board.

Other changes

• The Desert Eagle can now be equipped with a muzzle brake or a suppressor. This seems to be in preparation for new attacker Nøkk, who is seen using the Desert Eagle in her reveal.
• Smoke’s FMG-9 has now the option to be equipped with Mozzie’s special holographic sight, apparently called the Vortex scope.
• Out of consistency, Finka's stim boost will alleviate the loud ringing noise caused by explosions.
• Ubi is still looking into Maverick’s blow torch and whether or not it’s too quiet or its audio is bugged.

Ubisoft has begun the ramp-up to Rainbow Six Siege Year 4 Season 2 with a Twitter tease asking a very simple question. Or is it? 

I'm not a Siege player so I can't be 100 percent about it, but I think I see someone who's about to get seriously ganked. Fortunately, while the details of the presumed gankage are elusive, we already have a pretty good big-picture idea of what's coming. Ubisoft revealed in the Year 4 road map that the second season will see the addition of two new Rainbow Six Siege operators, one from the US and the other from Denmark; subsequent leaks indicated that the US operator will be a defender from the Secret Service with an optical device that's immune to the effects of flashbangs and smoke grenades, while the Danish attacker—maybe Jaeger Corps—is silent and invisible to cameras.

The teaser would seem to bear that out, with the ganker sneaking up on the hapless gankee like a murderous wind that blows unseen. And then, pow! Just like that, it was all over. Which may not be the most incisive analysis of an animated GIF you'll ever get, but I'm not the only one who's lookin' but not really seein':

I love it when the brands come together. Catch up with everything we know about Rainbow Six Siege Year 4 Season 2 so far right here.

Rainbow Six Siege has been trying to figure out what to do about friendly fire and teamkilling for a long time now. This week, Ubisoft rolled out a solution it's been mulling over for a while: reverse friendly fire.

Simply put, reverse friendly fire (RFF) reflects damage done to teammates back onto the attacker. It’s activated when a player kills a teammate, and the downed player either confirms that the kill was done intentionally or "forgives" the attacker. A confirmed teamkill triggers the RFF effects, and further damage done to teammates by that attacker is absorbed by the source of the damage. So, after killing a teammate, if you shoot a friendly player, you’ll take whatever damage they would have taken, and if you use a damage-dealing gadget like Twitch’s Shock Drone or Maestro’s Evil Eye camera, the damage will reflect back onto the gadget.

This solves the problem of created by the system that automatically kicks players on their second team kill. In a 5v5 game, griefers were routinely able to effectively throw matches by killing two friendlies and then getting booted, giving the opposing team a 5v2 advantage. But accidents do happen, and not everyone is careful around other players’ fields of fire, and this new system allows for that.

It should be noted that the current RFF system automatically tallies total damage done to teammates, so it’s not strictly necessary for a downed teammate to validate a teamkill to activate the RFF effects. If a player passes a certain threshold of friendly damage, the RFF effects will kick in on their own.

Ubisoft says this isn’t the final version of the RFF system, and that they’ll continue to consider community feedback as they fiddle with it. The sheer number of different operators in Siege make this system fairly complicated in practice, and Ubisoft has a breakdown of how RFF works over at the official Siege blog.

Now, go out there and play nice.

Rainbow Six Siege has precise hitboxes, a brutal damage model, and tight controls. But I can find those things in other multiplayer shooters. Really, Siege’s secret sauce is its granular destruction engine and the gadgets that distinguish its 46 characters. 

Gadgets open up Siege's possibility space and make victory a matter of not just how well you click on enemies' heads, but how well you mess with them. They make Siege more than a shooter—it has pieces of detective mystery, information warfare, real-time strategy, even survival horror. The game is packed with these moments, but my favorites make me feel like I’m playing two games at once.

Playing detective as Jackal

While most attackers rely on droning to know where defenders are hiding on the map, Jackal sees what nobody else can—footprints. It’s a great tool for peeking down a hallway and quickly seeing if a roamer has been around. He can scan footprints to temporarily ping the current location of the target, but even more fun is following a footprint trail without alerting them with a scan.

Source: Serenity17 on YouTube

There’s a lot of smart design in Jackal’s Eyenox. Every footprint is colored according to how old it is (red being newest and blue oldest), so one glance can make you feel safe in room or terrified of what’s around the corner. He’s great for calling out areas of interest to teammates, but you have to look out for Jackal’s hardest counter, Caveira.

Cav’s Silent Step ability temporarily lightens her steps enough to avoid leaving footprints. A good Cav can play extra carefully and only move when her Silent Step is charged, or go prone to avoid footsteps altogether. Either Jackal uses his wits to follow Cav’s breadcrumbs, or he falls prey to her interrogation skills. It’s a wonderfully stressful meta game of cat and mouse within Siege. What other game provides these kinds of rich interactions without being face-to-face with an enemy?

Mastering the mind games of the Bandit Trick

I have a lot of respect for Bandit mains. On certain maps, picking Bandit carries a lot of responsibility, specifically because of the Bandit Trick. Bandit carries four car batteries that can be attached to reinforced metal walls to electrify them. This protects the wall against breachers that can penetrate metal, such as Thermite and Hibana. Though, if a battery is blocking the way, Thatcher can easily destroy it with his EMP grenades. This is where the Bandit Trick comes in.

Source: VarsityGaming on YouTube

Instead of electrifying walls in the prep phase and waiting for Thatcher to ruin his day, Bandit Tricking involves standing near a wall and waiting for the hard breacher to make their move. When Bandit hears the subtle sound of a breaching charge being placed on the other side of a wall, he places his battery and then picks it back up. The timing is tight, but pulling it up will zap away the breach and save your battery from Thatcher or Twitch.

Sounds simple enough, but there’s a lot of factors that crank up the difficulty. First, Bandit has to listen carefully and guess which wall they’re going to breach. If he gets that right, he still has to worry about the timing. If he happens to be near a drone hole, the attackers can guess he’s there and roll a frag in at his feet or flush him out with Capitão’s fire bolt. If done correctly, he can lock down an objective and make the attackers’ jobs harder before a single bullet is fired.

Hide & Seek: Drone Edition

Siege is at its scariest when controlling a drone in the prep phase. It’s like David and Goliath, except Goliath has a gun. The odds are stacked, but sly maneuvering can be my savior. After hundreds of hours, I can get into the enemies' heads and juke around them, maybe even making them shoot their own teammates while raining hellfire around me. Mid-chase, I’ll often turn at a corner and wait for them to follow. As they’re rounding the corner I dart under their legs and escape before they realize what happened.

I get the most satisfaction out of finding a great drone hiding spot. Since every object in Siege has a precise hitbox, if my drone will fit, I can hide there. Inside a bowl, in a narrow crevice, among the records of a jukebox, nothing is off-limits. For extra stealth, I turn my drone to face the wall until the round starts to hide its red light from the giants. Siege’s newest defender Mozzie makes droning even more dangerous. His Pest robots can literally dive onto my drone and hoist control away from me. If droning wasn’t scary enough, now I have to worry about Alien facehuggers.

Being in four places at once with Alibi

Unlike the responsibility of Bandit, I pick Alibi when I want to mess with attackers’ heads. She can place three holographic Prisma decoys that look just like her. If an attacker falls for the ruse and shoots it, they become tracked for a few seconds and their identity is revealed. Seasoned players know pretty well how to look out for decoys by now, but there are some tricks to make them look even more convincing.

Source: MacieJay on YouTube

My favorite way is to use the enemy’s map knowledge against them. Slotted behind cover watching common angles, a peeking enemy is much more likely to shoot first and ask questions later. With Kapkan or Frost, the goal is to hide their traps as best as possible, but Alibi is all about making them noticeable in smart ways. In the clip above, Alibi has two decoys set up in the room. When the Hibana pops the hatch, she shoots the decoy that is positioned realistically and doesn’t react to the true Alibi in time. Decoys also work great as motion alarms. Placed right in front of a window, they can catch the bullets of an attacker who was only trying to break the barricade.

The truest Alibi bamboozle happens when she can assume the role of her decoy and go unnoticed among foes. This one is difficult, but extremely satisfying when it works, as you can see below.

Source: MacieJay on YouTube

Other fun meta game moments

• Deciding the side/height of a doorway to place Kapkan traps. Most expect them to be placed low, but keeping them varied can really throw off enemies.
• Combining the power of Dokkaebi’s Logic Bomb and IQ’s electronics scanner to spot enemies as they’re hanging up their phones. 
• Creatively placing Mute’s jammers to disable drones/gadgets while keeping the jammer hidden.
• Tossing Valkyrie's sticky cams outside to gain secretive surveillance on attackers as they rappel up windows.

For those who’ve made extra room on their hard drive for Rainbow Six Siege’s 60GB test server, Ubisoft has launched a new Bug Hunter program aimed at rewarding players that proactively report new Siege bugs in need of squashing.

Any player who reports three “acknowledged” test server bugs to R6Fix, Siege’s official bug support portal, is eligible to earn unique in-game items. For a bug to be acknowledged by the developers, you must be the first to report it and it has to be reproducible. Three bugs may seem like a lot of work to earn a prize, but the scale of Siege's maps, characters, gadgets, and modes practically makes it an ant hill—give it a few kicks and a bug will surely emerge.

The first reward is a new weapon charm that might earn a chuckle from players familiar with the early days of Siege. The “raptor legs” charm is a reference to the infamous bug of the same name that caused an operator’s legs to grow and bend in ways that legs never should. A dark time from which we will hopefully never return. Raptor-legged Frost is the charm on offer for now, but Ubi has more prizes planned for the future.

The Bug Hunter program is a cool idea to encourage more players to use the test server for its intended purpose and not just trying out new operators or balance changes (guilty! 🙋‍♂️). Since the program is limited to test server bugs only, it seems the rewards are PC exclusive for the time being. More details about the program can be found in Ubi’s official blog post.