Rainbow Six Siege’s Year Four, Season 2 update, Operation Phantom Sight, will bring with it significant changes to ranked play. Two game modes, Hostage and Secure Area, have been removed from ranked queues, meaning that you’ll have to play Bomb if you want to play competitively.
Ubisoft is also introducing penalties for leaving matches early. Starting in Year 4, Season 2, if you drop out of a match before it’s concluded, you may face a temporary ban and/or a renown gain penalty, and the match will count as a loss for ranking purposes. Presumably, continued offences will eventually make for more severe punishments, although that’s not currently clear.
The changes to ranked play also herald the arrival of a pick and ban phase to the mode. The feature, which allows teams to take turns picking certain operators and removing others from the available pool, has been in place in Pro League and custom games for around a year, but the new update will now allow players in the ranked queue to duck some of the game’s more troublesome characters.
The new season will also include ongoing changes to Reverse Friendly Fire. The system, which gives players the option to forgive team-killing offences, preventing players who accidentally shoot their buddies from getting kicked from the game, went live earlier this month. The new feature seems to have been well-received, but Ubisoft says it’ll be tweaking based on community feedback.
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Of course, Operation Phantom Sight will also introduce new operators Nokk and Warden, who Jordan reckons are the perfect thing to help slow down the meta, and a reworked version of the Kafe map. The Operation Phantom Sight release date is expected to be June 11, but the TTS version is likely to arrive tomorrow, offering your first look at the new content.