Posted in: Games, Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft, Video Games | Tagged: eSports, rainbow six: siege, Six Invitational, ubisoft

Rainbow Six Siege Reveals Roadmap For Year 8 Content

Ubsoft revealed their plans for Year 8 content coming to Rainbow Six Siege during the Six Invitational 2023 in Montréal.

During the Six Invitation 2023 in Montreal, Ubisoft unveiled their plans for the content to come in Rainbow Six Siege throughout Year 8. The company has been doing a phenomenal job over the years, keeping the content rolling in seasons after dedicating themselves to making it the best they can. Year 8 is no different, as they are implementing a number of changes that are far more focused on the community and overall enjoyment of the game than just adding content and characters. Yesterday the team revealed their latest Operator and a few new additions to Season 1 of Year 8, and today before the finals of the event kicked off, they laid out everything you'll expect over the next calendar year. Which includes a new yearly pass, console improvements, anti-cheat initiatives, and balancing. We have the developer notes for you below of what is on the horizon for 2023, and you can get details about the roadmap on the game's website.

Rainbow Six Siege – Year 8 Roadmap

Commanding Force, the first season of Year 8, will bring the Brazilian Attacker Brava and important updates, including an immersive reload rework. Season 1 also adds the groundbreaking anti-Mouse & Keyboard solution on Console, Mousetrap, which will prevent cheaters from using an unfair advantage when playing against players with controllers. Season 2 will introduce a Swedish Operator, an immersive rework of the Consulate map, and the launch of Permanent Arcade Playlist. In addition, the Shooting Range will receive an update to add new target modes to assist new and returning players in practicing before matches.
Season 3's Operator arrives from South Korea, bringing an in-depth rework of Quick Match – more details below. The last Operator of the year will be from Portugal alongside a brand-new map and a vital onboarding feature: the Defender AI playlist, offering a new way for players to practice Operators, test strategies, and perfect their approach on different maps.

Player Protection

Continuing from Year 7, the development team will continue prioritizing player protection and further anti-cheat efforts. Initiatives being introduced include the new QB security system, which aims to increase the difficulty of producing cheats; and Mousetrap, launching in Season 1, a new security measure aiming to reduce the impact of Mouse & Keyboard cheaters on consoles. This game-changing feature intends to remove the advantage that those cheaters have on the gameplay experience and to make the experience fairer for everyone. Mousetrap will receive iterations [from] season to season and will stand out as the first notable example of a feature like this in the competitive gaming industry.

Alongside the Reputation System released in beta last year, the team is working on a new initiative. The Player Commendation System will introduce an appreciation system allowing players to rate other players on the experience they had playing together. This system will be monitored to ensure it will be fair for everyone. There will also be new requirements to play Ranked that aim to reduce inadequate accounts during your play experience and smurfing. In addition, Privacy Mode, introduced for PC last year to protect creators, will be launching later on console for all players. Overall, in Year 8, the development team seeks to make Rainbow Six Siege a more cooperative, welcoming, and safe game for everyone. Further anti-toxicity measures include a new Reputation Penalty for abusive voice chat. While active, this penalty mutes repeat offenders by default to prevent hateful and disruptive content in voice chat. Muted players can still use voice chat but will only be heard by players who manually unmute them.

Year 8 Pass

From February 20 until March 20, players can purchase the limited-time Year 8 Pass for $30 to unlock the four seasonal Battle Passes, 14-day early access to new Operators when they launch, a 10% VIP discount on the shop, a full Operator bundle for Ace, up to 2,400 R6 Credits, and more. For $60, the Premium Year Pass offers all the before-mentioned perks plus 20 extra Battle tokens that players can use to unlock rewards faster.

Console & Player Comfort Improvements

Following Year 7's updates, further dedicated updates will launch this year for console players – alongside Mousetrap and Privacy Mode for console, controller layout flexibility, and controller remapping will also arrive this season. Quick Match will also receive an extensive update to make it stand out as much as Ranked and Unranked. This will cut down on the amount of downtime that players have in Quick Match and reduce the amount of repetition so players can get into the game quicker and experience Siege's action at its best. Players can expect a refresher coming to the Play section menu UI: three categories – Competitive, Quick Play, and Training – that will contain existing and new playlists. There will also be a dynamic pattern for each of those categories below the tile, allowing players to directly access their last played playlists inside that category. For the playlists that have different game modes, a settings button will let players select the game modes directly instead of having to go through the global settings button. Throughout Year 8, further improvements to increase player comfort will continue being added in-game.

Onboarding & Practice Features

To better introduce new players to Rainbow Six Siege, Year 8 will prioritize onboarding in a different way each season. Season 1 will add Beginner Challenges, a new progression tool allowing new players to learn how to play and unlock new Operators as they play. Season 2 adds the Aiming Lane to the Shooting Range, letting players customize skills, movement, quantity of targets, and numerous customizations, including advanced techniques like headshots only. Season 3 brings Playable tutorials – brand-new maps for the player to learn different gameplay elements like destruction, verticality, droning and repelling, etc. Finally, Season 4 introduces the Defender AI playlist – a safe place to teach others how to play new Operators and maps. This playlist will use a machine learning algorithm informed by current players.

Balancing & Playlist Updates

The development team will continue reworking several Operators this year, including Zero, Frost, and others. Year 8 will add an immersive reload update, a tactical mechanic, an Observation blocker that lets Defenders control what intel is given to Attackers, and a full rework of shield Operators to improve players' experience while playing them.

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