Rainbow Six Siege Update 4.0 Today Adds Operation Skull Rain Content, Improves Game Health

With the maintenance complete, Rainbow Six Siege update 4.0 should now begin rolling out on PlayStation 4. The Xbox One and PC versions of the update will be available within the next couple of hours.

Adding the Operation Skull Rain content, a new weapon attachment, numerous game enhancements, counter-measures for toxic behavior, customization content, and more, here’s what to expect from today’s Rainbow Six Siege update:

Operators

Capitao

Born and raised in Nova Iguacu outside of Rio de Janeiro, Vicente “Capitão” Souza was recruited by the Cooredenadoria de Recursos Especiais (CORE) soon after high school. After being ambushed as he cleared a house, Souza was captured and tortured for two months. While Souza endured his ordeal with stoicism, he had irreversible damage done to his person. From there Souza developed unprecedented tactical strategies and caught the attention of BOPE.

Caveira

Known as a brutal interrogator, Taina “Caveira” Pereira’s makes for a fearless Operator on the field. Originally from a small town on the outskirts of São Paulo, her life could have taken a turn for the worst when she was arrested at 16 on robbery charges. Her promising profile allowed for an exception, giving her the option between entering a juvenile reformatory and working with BOPE.

Map

Favela

Team Rainbow has been called to pacify and regain control of the Favela. Two BOPEs stationed in the area have been enlisted to provide their tactical expertise of the terrain to Team Rainbow. Mixing colorful and narrow streets with high vantage points, this map supports exterior shell destruction which renders it as the most destructible to date. The new Favela map is available for free for all players.

Skull Rain Weapon Skins

Kick off the new Season with the four Skull Rain signature skins: Amazônia, Ceifador, Azulejos, the Piranha, and Skull Rain. These weapon skins are available in the shop exclusively for Operation Skull Rain. Visit the Shop section for more details.

Health Program

To make sure the new content in upcoming seasons would be built on solid foundations, we decided to dedicate Season Three to improving the health of the game. As you may know, we supplemented the server-side FairFight anti-cheating engine with BattlEye, an active client-side system.

To improve overall gameplay experience, we also enhanced an array of features. We created a dynamic body part clipping solution, which serves to prevent revealing the limbs of your Operators through walls. For more enhancements, please refer to the General Tweaks & Improvements section below.

New Features

New Attachment

To cater to a variety of playstyles, we created a new attachment: the angled grip. We had the opportunity to have Serenity 17, a R6 top level player testing it at our Montreal studio. Here are the observations and tips he had to share with us: “The angled grip accelerates the transition between hip fire and ADS, which allows for an aggressive and fast-paced playstyle. However, make sure to take into account that the angled grip is less stable in terms of recoil than the standard grip, so holding your angles might be tricky with this one.”

New Custom Game Mode (Beta)

We’re glad to finally introduce the Tactical Realism, which will add a new gameplay mode to Custom Games. Inspired by your enthusiasm towards getting a ‘Hardcore’ mode, we created the Tactical Realism mode to foster a better immersion by relying less on the in-game feedback. We endeavored to offer a realistic experience via several modifications, namely, limiting the HUD to only display the Round Timer, Compass, Gadget & Weapon Panels; preventing you from marking your enemy; removing the kill confirmations; providing a realistic Magazine Management for ammo; and much more. This is a first step toward immersion, and we wish to gather your feedback in order to improve this iteration.

By implementing this mode we tried to simulate a real tactical experience. Its most unique aspect is the ironclad team spirit it fosters. You must now entirely rely on your teammates and their skills to figure out who and what is around that corner. For instance, communication is your only tool to keep track of both your teammates (avoiding team killing) and the enemies eliminated, which is tricky without the help of the kill confirmation. With Tactical Realism the tension runs high as you must carefully assess, coordinate, and communicate your movements to your teammates—and so at all time.

Surrender System

If the field becomes too rough for your team, you can now cut it short and move on to another match. The objective was to accelerate the process by allowing a team to forfeit if they do not wish to be forced to play the match through the end. You can now cast a vote to surrender during a Ranked match. You will need the majority on your side for your team to forfeit. Please note that this new feature is only available prior to the 3rd round.

General Tweaks & Improvements: Game Health (Highlights)

Client side anti-cheat implemented to combat cheaters

Not only have we implemented a client side anti-cheat, we have also been working with our partners at FairFight to improve their detection methods too. We are excited about the changes that our efforts will bring in Season 3. You can read more about our client side anti-cheat test here.

Additional team killing countermeasures added

After monitoring the adjustments that were made with Patch 3.3 and 3.4, we have taken steps to improve the methods that we are using to detect excessive team killers, and punish them accordingly. As a reminder, when players are removed from a match for team killing, they will suffer the following punishments:

• First offense: Casual- Kicked from match; Ranked- Banned for 15 minutes, 50% Renown penalty for 30 minutes.
• Second offense: Banned from Matchmaking for 30 minutes.
• Third offense: Banned from Matchmaking for 2 hours.
• Fourth offense: Banned from Matchmaking for 24 hours.
• Fifth offense: Banned from Matchmaking for 7 days.

Improved vote to kick flow

Steps have been taken to improve the Vote to Kick feature, and improve the overall experience for players. Players will now be met with a walk through for how to vote kick another player on their respective platform. Additionally, once a vote has been initiated, all other players who are eligible to take part are presented with a notification, as seen in the top left corner of the screenshot below. Once you have voted, the notification is removed. Also noted in this screen shot is the updated scoreboard that you will see in Patch 4.0.

Field of View is now standardized for all players when using cameras and during the Kill Cam

Prior to this patch, making adjustments to your FOV would allow defenders to gather more intel than originally intended for cameras. This has now been standardized, and the same FOV will be applied to all users while they are using cameras, and will then be reverted back to their chosen FOV setting upon exiting the camera. This will also apply to Kill Cams. In the past, this could lead to discrepancies on the Kill Cam versus what players were able to see due to their personal FOV settings, and accusations of misconduct were made based on these erroneous replays.

Kill Cam is now a more accurate representation of what happened

Prior to Season 3, the Kill Cam has been used as a tool to identify specific tactics utilized by the enemy to circumvent your team’s defense, or as a way to identify a particularly suspect play. After Season 3 releases, the Kill Cam will provide more clear insight as to how a player was killed. Improvements have been made to bullet trajectory replication, camera offset, blood splatter effects, and Operator movements during the Kill Cam replay. Not only will this improvement allow players to learn their enemy’s movement more accurately, but it will also cut down on the number of plays that look a little too incredible to be real.

While we are very happy with the progress we have made in this patch, we will continue to work on improving this feature to provide the most accurate information possible.

Another improvement Ubisoft made to Rainbow Six Siege is increasing the value of the Season Pass. Now, Season Pass owners will find a 10% VIP discount for all content in the Shop. This applies to both Renown and R6 Credit purchases.

For a full list of all the tweaks and improvements, head over to the Skull Rain website.

As a reminder, Season Pass owners get the two new operators first, while non-Season Pass owners can unlock them beginning on August 9.

The fourth and final Rainbow Six Siege expansion this year is expected in October 2016.

[Source: Rainbow Six Siege]