Sep 16, 2019

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege - Ubi_Aspira

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.

GUIDING NEW PLAYERS

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.

FOSTERING COMPETITION

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.

BRIDGING THE GAP

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!

PROVIDING MORE AND BETTER INFORMATION

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!

Sep 13, 2019

Thanks, Goyo: Rainbow Six Siege's new gadget keeps killing friendlies

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege

Rainbow Six Siege’s new operators, Amaru and Goyo, are officially out in the wild. I’ve spent the last few days (and weeks on the test server) wrapping my head around them. It’s been a rough road. The Amaru's Garra grapple hook and Goyo's Volcan shield are cool gadgets, but they both feel uneven in completely different ways.

Defending has never felt more dangerous. I’m constantly a little worried that I’ll be burned alive thanks to Goyo, because his Volcan deployable shields hide an explosive charge that spreads fire around it.

Ideally, the Volcan shield is a powerful tool for defenders to deny a crucial door or hallway during a defuser plant or the last seconds of a round. But so far, it’s been difficult to use Goyo in that way. What sets the Volcan shield apart from other traps is that anyone can activate it (even attackers) by shooting it or tossing an explosive grenade, so it’s incredibly important for Goyo to place them carefully.

If it’s too out in the open, an attacker can flank from the opposite direction and easily shoot the red box. If it’s too close to where defenders are anchoring, a frag can blow it up from far away and burn the defenders it was supposed to help. No matter how well Goyo places them, he’s still at risk of hurting the team.

I’ve already been roasted a few times because I was standing too close as Zofia suddenly blew up the shield. If it were any other gadget, bad placement wouldn’t be a big deal. Randomly placed Mute jammers are a waste, but they don’t directly hinder teammates. The Volcan shield, on the other hand, is incredibly lethal. In the wrong spot, it’s a huge liability.

Gif by dtv20 on Reddit.

That’s not to say his shields go poorly every time. If they’re placed reasonably well, they work as advertised. Just this week, Tyler used my Volcan to get a double kill by combining it with Kapkan’s EDD trap. Ember Rise adds more attackers with frag grenades than ever before in Siege, so it’s no surprise that one or two Volcans are usually destroyed before they can be useful. But even that is fine, because they still force attackers to waste explosives on shields instead of more important targets.

Grappling with Amaru

Whereas Goyo can sometimes get his teammates killed, I’m struggling to not get myself killed as Amaru. Part of the problem is Amaru’s loadout: her LMG or shotgun combos don't really work for me. With an angle grip and ACOG sight, the G8A1 starts to feel somewhat like an assault rifle, but its high recoil gives me trouble. Alternatively, I could go with the Supernova shotgun and use the SMG-11 as my main weapon, but I feel naked without anything that works at long range.

The other problem is combining her awkward loadout with the Garra Hook. Despite Amaru being billed as an effective rusher (with weapons that support that role), her hook makes that job extremely hard. The zipline process is slow enough that anyone within earshot of the loud hook can easily blast her away before she can re-ready her weapon.

To avoid this, I have to choose less populated areas to use her hook or carefully drone out a window or hatch I’m planning to zip through. Once inside, the only place I can use her hook are hatches. If you’re not attacking an objective where climbing up a hatch is useful, there’s little purpose in playing her. Many maps have interior balconies that could be a cool way for Amaru to flank from unexpected places, but they are inexplicably incompatible with the hook.

There are some moments of magic when playing Amaru, they’re just hard to achieve. Planting the defuser and zipping away to the floor above is legitimately powerful. And if my droning is on point, I can catch defenders by surprise. But most of the time, I simply feel nervous using the hook because it’s so loud and I’m so vulnerable. Which is a shame, because it's gratifying as hell to use well.

Both Amaru and Goyo need some tweaks, in my view. Amaru should be able to ready her weapon much faster after using the hook. It’s comically slow right now. She is inherently a niche pick (which is fine), but she’s not even good at the few things she’s supposed to excel at.

Goyo feels mostly good, but an adjustment could discourage bad shield placement. He has three shields right now, which feels like a lot. On most objective sites, two can cover the most important choke points. The third one is often placed somewhere less thoughtful and often problematic. If he lost one shield, I think it’d help. But I also hope the problem fixes itself with time as players simply learn how to best use all three.

On the loadout side, Goyo’s TCSG 12 slug shotgun feels a bit too dominant. Its power is more noticeable at higher ranks against players with steadier hands. Combined with his speed with the gun’s ACOG sight and high damage, it’s a spawn peek-friendly weapon. Spawn peeks are already annoying in Siege, so anything that makes it easier is a problem.

Sep 12, 2019

Everything we know about the Rainbow Six Siege Battle Pass

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege

It seems like you can’t be a service game in 2019 without some sort of battle pass. Ubisoft has become aware of this and is correcting it by introducing the Rainbow Six Siege Battle Pass. The pass is a new progression track for players that unlocks cosmetic and lore rewards just for playing the game. That is after the initial buy-in, of course.

The pass isn’t coming out all at once, though. Ubi is dropping it in phases and it is slightly confusing. Here’s everything we know about the Rainbow Six Siege Battle Pass so far.

What is the Rainbow Six Siege Battle Pass?

Battle passes are the new-ish popular way for service games to make more money while giving players new progression paths for the game. Ubisoft hasn’t shared many details about Siege’s upcoming battle pass, but we know that players will earn “Battle Points” for completing matches that unlock rewards.

The Rainbow Six Siege battle pass has two tiers

Siege’s battle pass is releasing in two phases. The first phase is a free pass titled Call Me Harry. The free pass sounds more like a test than a proper release. It’s only seven days long and appears to only have one tier of rewards.

Rainbow Six Siege Battle Pass release date

There is no exact release date for the battle pass, but we know that the free Call Me Harry pass is releasing sometime during Operation Ember Rise. The full pass will release sometime during Year 4 Season 4, which will begin around December.

What rewards are unlocked in the battle pass?

From the brief battle pass trailer, we can glean three types of rewards players can earn: cosmetics, Renown boosters, and concept art (which will also come with lore about Siege’s operators).

Cosmetics in Siege range from headgears, uniforms, weapon skins, and weapon charms. Ubi already gives away weapon charms by completing weekly challenges, so it’s safe to assume charms will be a common reward in the battle pass. If you don’t have every operator, renown boosters are handy for quickly grinding the hefty pile of currency needed to unlock them.

The star of this collection will likely be the concept art and lore. Siege doesn’t currently have many avenues to tell stories with its operators, so this is a good chance to do that without impeding its multiplayer focus. Much of the existing lore comes from the in-game bios for operators. It’s often a little cheesy, but it’s fun to read about an op’s personality and interactions with other characters. Did you know that Mira helped Nøkk develop her stealthy gadget? Or that Finka got her face scar in a knife sparring match with Kapkan?

What’s the price of the Rainbow Six Siege Battle Pass?

Siege’s battle pass is following the lead of other popular games in many ways, so it’s not crazy to assume the same will go for its pricing model. The full-fledged Rainbow Six Siege Battle Pass coming later in the year will likely cost around $10. If Ubi decides to only make it purchasable with its premium currency, that converts to 1200 R6 Credits (which you can buy in a bundle without purchasing extra credits).

The Call Me Harry pass coming in Ember Rise will be free for all players, but it will also only last one week.

Will the rewards be any good?

Since we are talking about Rainbow Six Siege, that question is a tossup. Ubi releases new Siege skins every week and their quality is... inconsistent. Even the real-money-only cosmetics exclusive to limited time events often fall flat, so I don’t have much faith in the overall quality of the battle pass. On the bright side, that Dokkaebi watch charm is pretty neat.

There are a lot of ways to throw money at Siege nowadays

With the introduction of the battle pass and an expansion into limited-time events in 2019, it’s time to take an inventory of all the ways you can throw money at Rainbow Six Siege.

Siege Year 4 Pass ($30)
Operators ($2 to $5)
Cosmetics ($3 to $15)
R6 Credits ($5 to $100 bundles)
Limited-time event alpha packs ($2.50 each)
1-30 day Renown boosters, the benefits of which can unlock operators and alpha packs (~$1 to $45)
Battle pass (Unknown, but likely $10)

Rainbow Six Siege makes a lot of money for Ubisoft, so it’s not surprising that the company is looking for new ways to monetize that growth without appearing too money-hungry. Whether or not Ubi is pulling is pulling off that balancing act is up for debate. I’m just glad I can choose to ignore it all and play Siege as it suits me.

Sep 12, 2019

MIRA 'INSPIRACIÓN': REMEMBRANCE

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege - Ubi_Aspira

"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.”

Sep 11, 2019

PRE-SEASON DESIGNER'S NOTES Y4S3

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege - Ubi_Aspira

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.

GENERAL CONTENT

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.

Sep 10, 2019

Is KFC about to announce a Rainbow Six Siege competition?

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege

KFC's weird attempt to corner the gamer market continues. Recently the company ran a "World Cup of Games" competition on social media, asking people to vote for their favorite games. With almost 100,000 votes the winner was Rainbow Six Siege, beating out Minecraft in the final round. As the KFC Gaming Twitter account said at the time, "The turnout from the community was huge… guess we'll have to put together a reward for the R6 Siege family".

Now we've got a hint what that reward might be, with a video that shows competitive Rainbow Six players fragging each other to a soundtrack of loud guitar and growling, accompanied by the words, "Cash and chicken to be won", "See you there #KFCR6", and "September 23".

Sure sounds like there's going to be an esports event sponsored by KFC announced on September 23. How will Colonel Sanders find time for this and starring in his own dating sim?

What an odd turn of events. I do feel like some fried chicken now, but admittedly that's my default state and I'd rather have Korean fried chicken, which is the best kind and would also make way more sense as an esports sponsor.

Aug 28, 2019

DEV BLOG: CASUAL PLAYLIST ROTATION

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege - Ubi_F4nch

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.