Year 6 is the first full year of Rainbow Six Siege’s renewed annual content plan and, as announced, is replete with changes in quality of life and major feature reviews. There are four new operators, some map rework and many events promised in the official roadmap – toys just enough to keep things fresh from one season to the next – but what’s missing from this roadmap is Ubisoft’s plan to fundamentally change the way in each round he plays away.
During the Year 6 reveal, Ubisoft announced its intention to reduce the amount of downtime in Rainbow Six Siege matches, giving attackers more to do during the preparation phase and allowing eliminated players to contribute directly to the outcome of a round. In addition, Year 6 will feature rework for Mira, Maestro and Goyo, making health and armor more transparent and generally rebalancing the game so that the attack looks as viable as the defense.
Join us as we recap each announcement of the Crimson Theft and Year 6 revelation.
We’ll start by looking at the changes to the headlines that will come with the release date of Operation Crimson Heist, from Flores to the secondary Gonne-6, and then move on to the Year 6 script and some of the gameplay changes Ubisoft is preparing.
Flowers
The first season of Year 6, Operation Crimson Heist, features Argentine striker Flores, a medium-speed striker with four special drones loaded with explosives. Flores has ten seconds to place each RCE-Ratero drone in position. After that, the drone anchors at its location, becomes bulletproof and explodes after a few more seconds. Each explosion appears to have a blast radius similar to that of a nitro cell, but defenders receive many warnings to clear the area thanks to an audible siren that sounds when the drone anchors.
Flores can manually trigger the anchoring phase of each drone at any point during the countdown, and if you activate that drone in the air, the drone will anchor the next surface it touches. This allows you to ‘cook’ the drone a little if you drop it from a height, giving defenders less time to react. Ultimately, drones are useful for opening hatches and destroying devices such as shields and Maestro cameras than killing enemies.
Flores can choose the AR33 or SR-25 as his primary weapons, but he can only bring the GSh-18 as his weapon. Finally, your choice of secondary devices is between stunning grenades and a claymore.
Frontier rework
Flores arrives along with a rework of the popular Border map, which was recently removed from the competitive game because it has become obsolete. The rework is similar in scale to the Club House rework and maintains the identity of the map, its main locations and flow.
What’s new? Bathroom and enclosures are now a viable goal with a large expanded bathroom and less room for vertical play. The waiting room now has an internal balcony that connects the break room to the east stairs. The file was opened, making it much easier to defend against a North Counter and Vehicle outlet. There are a lot more minor revisions, but it’s also worth noting that the map is now much more organized with less debris and clutter obscuring the lines of sight – hopefully that means not dying for bizarre pixel peeks.
Gonne-6 and replay
Y6S1 also adds a new secondary weapon for attackers called Gonne-6, which is a single-shot weapon that can destroy defense devices, and the early game replay system for PC players. Ubisoft says it is not yet available for console players as it is still in beta.
Year 6 operators and maps
Although much less is known about the remainder of Year 6, we know that the second season operator is from Nakoda, an indigenous people from the Great Plains. This operator is accompanied by a favela rework with a casual focus. In season three, we have a Croatian operator and three smaller map buffs instead of large-scale rework. Finally, Siege gets an Irish operator in season four, as well as rework for Outback.
Operator reworks
Operator reworks are also promised, and they all target public service-based advocates. Goyo is losing his explosive shields. They will be replaced by a similar explosive device that can be mounted on the floor or against walls, such as the Jäger ADS. Like the previous design, they also have a metal case that gives them about 270 degrees of protection.
Related: Here are the best Rainbow Six Siege operators
Mira and Maestro are receiving rework that affects their ability to provide information. The plan is that attackers who are able to attack these devices break the glass, obscuring the view of the defenders – Mira and Maestro would then be forced to open their respective devices to make them useful again or simply lose their usefulness. Melusi’s gadget is also being nerfed. When you activate a Banshee, it opens and you can shoot and destroy it.
Few details have been provided, but the panel also mentions rework for Fuze and Finka. Fuze’s gadget will become more useful and Finka will be able to revive with a Nanoboost.
Bulletproof Cam Rework
The bulletproof cams will now have full rotation and an EMP dart that they can fire to disable the attacker’s gadget and drones. An earlier version must be available on the Y6S2 test server.
Reduce downtime
One of the main goals for year 6 is to reduce downtime and Ubisoft intends to achieve this through two changes. The first, called the ‘attacker’s raise’, will allow anyone on the attacking team to change operator and payload during the preparation phase so that they can react to the defending team’s configuration.
The second, called ‘activities after death’, allows players to use any remotely controlled utility after being eliminated. It is not clear if there are any limitations, but the basic idea is that a dead defender like Castle can jump on Maestro’s camera and start shooting at an attacker. For an attacker, that would mean flying your own drone across the map if you have been eliminated and have a spare drone still deployed.
Armor and health
To help with transparency, the armor system is also being slightly adjusted so that you can clearly say how much extra health your armor status is giving you. An operator of an armor still has 100 health, but an armor of two has 120 health and an armor of three has 140 health. This doesn’t change anything in terms of how many shots you can take, but it does make the difference between low and high armor more transparent to players.
Reputation system
The last major update is the total arrival of the player behavior system that has been running in the background for a few months, although with limited capacity. Ubisoft does not go into details about which actions affect your ranking, but there are five levels in the reputation system and players can move levels up and down based on their actions. At Level 0, there will be messages and warnings about the player’s actions, and there may be repercussions, such as not being able to line up for classified matches. On the positive side of the scale, at levels 3 and 4, there will be rewards for players, although we don’t know what those rewards will be.
Streamer mode and menu review
A streamer mode is arriving at the test server at Y6S1. This mode hides the player’s region, name, authorization level, profile image and other players in your lobby. This mode also adds a matchmaking delay to avoid cutting lines.
The UI and Rainbow Six Siege presentation are also being revised, which promises to make the game’s menus faster and easier to navigate. The rookie combination, rating and experience also emerged during the panel, but Ubisoft did not provide any real details on how it plans to change these parts of Siege.
Battle Pass
Year 6 also eliminates the annual pass, including the new operator for each season in the seasonal battle pass at no additional cost. There is a strange problem: the exclusivity window for accessing new operators is being extended, so if you don’t buy the new battle pass, you’ll have to wait two weeks before you can buy the operator with R6 Credits or Renown.
Skins and crossovers
Finally, there are several changes to how skins work in the game. Elite skins will soon feature some customization so that you can mix pieces of an Elite skin with other skins of your choice, including the MVP animation and the gadget skin. Some new partner skins will be featured in Year 6, too, including a Zofia skin inspired by Jill Valentine from Resident Evil and what appears to be a collaboration from Rick and Morty. A new Elite Skin for Kali is also coming with Y6S1. Finally, the Queen of E3 2019 Ikumi Nakamura is working on some cosmetics for the 6th year, which is unexpected, but very cool.
Siege board game ???
Ubisoft introduced this at the very end, but yes, there is a board game Rainbow Six Siege being developed by Mythic Games, and it will be released this summer.
Keep an eye on the site for more Rainbow Six Siege news in the coming days as we chat with the Ubisoft team about the future of the game.