To celebrate the start of Year 2 of Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft have released a new developer diary to highlight some of the new elements and features which are coming to the squad based shooter in the coming year.
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First off is the refinement of its content schedule, which is now split into four seasonal content updates, along with an additional four mid-season ‘Reinforcements’. This results in eight new Operators, four new free maps and new primary and secondary weapons. These new Operators are “more representative of [Ubisoft]’s vision” for Rainbow Six Siege, with there also being plans to rework and remodel old Operators to fit with the studio’s new design direction.
With Year 1 focusing around creating a robust anti-cheat system, one of the major milestones for Year 2 is a significant overhaul of Siege’s matchmaking via one-step matchmaking. This new system should grab the ten players required for a match in the background, allowing players to check their equipment and rifle through menus as Siege is actively gathering a group. This should fix the old problem of players being locked into the matchmaking menu and waiting for ages as the game tries to gather a group to play.
As for more quality of life improvements, Siege’s main menu has been radically overhauled into a player hub, where everything should be accessible without being hidden in sub-menus at corners of the screen. This new player hub is also designed to have new features easily slot into it, making everything that players want easy to find.
Ubisoft are also planning to add a loot box system to Rainbow Six Siege. Before you go running for your pitchfork, it promises to be only for cosmetic upgrades like new gun camos or outfit pieces for your Operators. Every cosmetic item in the game will be accessible through these loot packs and they should work similar to Overwatch’s loot boxes, where you can buy them for real world cash or get them free after leveling up or playing for a certain period.
Finally, the competitive aspect of Rainbow Six Siege is getting a slight tweak with its new three league system. You still have the Pro League at the very top, followed by the Challenger and now the GO4 League, which is designed for “community and grassroots” level competition.
Rainbow Six Siege has matured into one of the best competitive shooters on PC at the moment and based on these Year 2 plans, it’s only going to get better at 2017 goes on. If you are looking to give Rainbow Six Siege a go, it is still free for the rest of today and has a 50% discount if you decide to buy.