Now in its eighth year of service, Ubisoft has today confirmed details on the first season awaiting players of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege on all supported platforms, including the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC. Titled ‘Operation Commanding Force’, the incoming season introduces Brava, a new Brazilian Operator, along with gameplay updates, the Mousetrap feature to address players using mouse and keyboard on consoles, and what is pitched as further ‘anti-toxicity measures’.
Meet Brava
Commanding Force unleashes Brava, an invaluable new Attacker equipped with the Kludge Drone gadget. This drone disrupts hostile surveillance and provides counter tactics, like repurposing the technology for her squad. An extremely adaptable Operator, Brava can gain an advantage in any environment by accessing electronic resources available to her. Brava is a three speed, one health Operator, and her loadout features a PARA-308 or a CAMRS as a primary weapon and a USP40 or a Super Shorty as a secondary weapon.
A New Battle Pass
Season 1’s Battle Pass introduces the Bravo Pack Ticket, a rare item that lets you pick an exclusive reward from the latest Bravo Collection. This ticket will be awarded to Premium players who reach level 100 in this season’s Battle Pass.
Mousetrap
Players who use mouse and keyboard on consoles will activate a penalty that adds lag to their inputs. The goal of this penalty is “to encourage fair gameplay by removing the unfair advantage that mouse and keyboard players have on consoles”. While active, continued use of mouse and keyboard gradually increases the lag over several matches, making it harder to aim and shoot. Completing matches with a controller will gradually reduce the lag back to normal. It will be interesting to see how the console community respond to this once implemented.
Anti-Toxicity Measures
Ubisoft are implementing new anti-toxicity measures, including 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 unmute them.
Onboarding Features
To assist new players in learning how to play Rainbow Six Siege, new onboarding features are being implemented this season titled Beginner Challenges and Specialty Challenges. Beginner Challenges identify an Operator’s playstyle in-game. All Operators have one to two specialties which can be checked during the Planning Phase, in the Operators section, and in Operator Guides. Specialty Challenges aim to help beginner players learn the various Operator specialties and what they contribute to a match.
By completing challenges, players can earn a variety of rewards, including an Operator after finishing all challenges for a single specialty. If the Operator is already owned, players will earn their value in renown instead. All players can be complete the challenges and earn all rewards, not just beginners.
Balancing and Other Amendments
In Commanding Force brings a balancing update to Zero, improvements to the Play Section UI, balancing change on weapon attachments, and a new immersive reload system: interrupting the animation will leave the player without a magazine, but closed bolt weapons will have a single round for the player to use at any point during the reload.
