As part of Ubisoft's ongoing efforts to combat toxic behavior, Rainbow Six Siege is getting a reputation system that will reward positive behavior and discourage jerks. In fact, Ubisoft revealed today that it already has one: It's just running in the background right now, where nobody can see it.
The system was first announced early in Year 5, which began in March, with a planned rollout at the end of 2020. That schedule was suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic; instead, developers have quietly deployed parts of the system with every seasonal launch since Shifting Tides, and now—surprise!—the whole thing is live.
"Our goal is to discourage toxicity and promote positive behavior while giving more feedback to players so they can have agency over their reputation," Ubisoft said in a new devblog. "We want to help players prioritize healthy interactions, improve cooperation, and reward positive behaviors so those creating a safe atmosphere feel recognized and valued as key members of the Rainbow Six Siege community."
"Newcomers, pros, casual players, and streamers alike all deserve to feel safe while playing Siege, and this system intends to help enforce that."
Of course, since it's all still running in the background, it's effectively invisible to players and so isn't having any impact on how they behave. That'll change next year, and for now It allows developers to see how the system handles live-fire conditions, so to speak, and to continue iterating on it to ensure "that it treats all players in a fair way."
The system assigns players a "reputation score" based on their in-game actions and "branches." A sufficiently low score leads to sanctions, while high-scoring players will be rewarded. Reputation scores are an ongoing thing, so can always go up (or down), but Ubisoft said the system is also designed to deal out "preventive sanctions and warnings" based on immediate actions in order to combat actively toxic players.
The first half of Rainbow Six Siege Year 6 will focus on preventive sanctions, "which will allow us to detect repeated in-game abuses related to griefing and harassment," and will also see work on the player-facing aspects of the system.
"In addition, the Player Behavior team will continue to develop a series of short, medium, and long-term plans for various ongoing initiatives. These range from detecting and preventing player toxicity to strengthening our Anticheat operations," Ubisoft said. "We will continue to take feedback and make improvements to ensure that our system is efficient, as transparent as possible, and aligned with players’ expectations."
Rainbow Six Siege Year 6 will be formally unveiled in February, during the Six Invitational 2021.
