Ubisoft has revealed the roadmap for Year 4 of Rainbow Six Siege, which includes new operators from Demnark, Peru, Kenya and India, as well as reworks to the Kafe, Kanal and Theme Park maps.
Following the introduction of two Australian operators and the Outback map in Season 1, which Andy covered here, Season 2 will add a new operator from Denmark and one from the United States Secret Service. Instead of a new map, Season 2 will see the map Kafe reworked, Ubisoft announced at the Six Invitational 2019 today.
For Season 3, Ubisoft will introduce operators from Peru and Mexico, and rework the Kanal map, while Season 4 will add operators from Kenya and India and rework Theme Park.
That means that after Season 1, we won't see any new maps for the rest of Year 4. But there's still plenty going on: after tweaks to Capitão and Dokkaebi, outlined here, the dev team will nerf both Lion and Glaz. Lion will be able to scan for enemies quicker, but enemy positions will be visible for a shorter time, and only as red pings rather than full outlines. As for Glaz, his scope will only reveal enemies while you're stood still, which will make him less of an entry fragger.
Ubisoft is also trying to target toxicity and team killing during Year 4. Specifically, it plans to reverse damage you deal to teammates—after a certain level of friendly fire, you'll receive a sanction, and any more damage you deal to your teammates will be reversed onto you, chipping away at your health bar.
Year 4 will also see the introduction of a newcomer bomb-only playlist that's for players between levels one and 50, which will only offer three maps. The aim is to ease new players into the game, providing a bridge between casual and ranked play. In ranked play, Ubisoft will make the much-requested pick and ban system permanent.
Other changes include a big rework for deployable shields to make them a viable piece of equipment. They'll fully cover doorways, and they'll have small panels of one-way bulletproof glass in them, allowing defenders to see what's on the other side, almost like a mini Mira window.
Ubisoft also detailed the new tiered cost system for operators: they'll cost 25,000 renown for their first year, 20,000 renown for their second year, 15,000 renown for their third year, and 10,000 renown after that.
Lastly, the development team detailed their first attempt to target lean spam, which will go live on the test servers tomorrow. Basically, spamming lean will only move your head slightly side to side, rather than the wild flapping that happens currently and makes headshots near-impossible.
More details on the Aussie operators and the new map will arrive later today, so stay tuned.
