Recently, Montreal hosted the 2020 Rainbow 6 Siege invitational and it went down swimmingly.
That’s actually a bit of an understatement. In all honesty, the invitational is probably the event that gives Siege that push to top tier Esports, especially if the prize money was anything to go on. Around three million dollars to be exact, with a sizable chunk of that being siphoned from the Road to SI event that was live for all players.
But let’s skip back a bit. For those of you that don’t know what the Invitational is. This is Rainbow 6 Siege’s premier international event where 16 of the best teams from all over the world compete to determine who is the world number 1 team and who gets to lift the Sledge hammer trophy. Ultimately, it would be Canadian and Spacestation Gaming that would take it down, closing out two years of choking from Canadian at the final hurdle. The event was a blast and it seems that everyone loved it but that wasn’t the only big news to come out of Montreal.
Operation Void Edge was dropped and we got to see the two new operators that will be making their way in Team Rainbow in a few weeks time along with an Oregon map rework, - that not everyone is completely happy with I might add - a tonne of big fixes and an elite skin to boot.
The new Operators on the block
Let's start with the new attacking operator, Iana. Iana was always a dreamer and had her sights set on touching down on another planet. Her way of doing this? Creating a hologram of herself that isn’t susceptible to that pesky lack of oxygen us stupid humans have to deal with.
Iana’s gadget is a nifty one, allowing you to remotely control a hologram that looks exactly like Iana, sounds exactly like Iana but with the downside of not being able to shoot, melee or anything besides seeing things really. Think of her kind of like an Alibi on the attacking side (for those of you that don’t know Alibi, she can throw three hologram of herself that give away the position of any attacks if shot.), though she won’t give away the defenders position. Great for scouting ahead and uncovering the defending operator’s positions and possibly even getting them to waste utility though. Of Course the hologram has a cooldown time and that extends if the hologram is destroyed, all in all however I think this is a great addition to Team Rainbow and will have a lot of players in a flap for the first few weeks of her release.
Let’s move onto her load out. She’s equipped with the ARX200 and Ash’s G36C for primary’s, which will give her good long range versatility while also allowing for closer range combat for those points when you’re droneing yourself in. Her secondary is the MK1 9mm which is pretty standard and comes with Smoke grenades but it doesn’t matter because everyone now has Frag Grenades so who the hell cares. At 2 speed/2 armour Iana won’t fold to just any gun fight, unlike her hologram, and can still nimbly make her way around the map.
Onto Oryx.
This is another one of those operators that we know little about before their inception into Team Rainbow. All we know is, he turned up to Kaid’s door one day and proved his worth, somehow.
Oryx isn’t a complicated fellow, he does what he likes and he likes what he does and what he does is smashing. Unreinforced wall? Smashed. Shield operator? Smashed. And he doesn’t just do knocking down walls and big boys, he likes hatches too. You see, an open hatch is traditionally used to rotate downwards but Oryx ain’t like that. Oryx sees an open hatch and flips the meta by jumping through it from underneath. He’s able to hold onto an open hatch and pull himself through it, increasing both rotation/flank ability and general surprise factor of a very large, angry Jordanian man popping out of nowhere and charging you down.
Oryx has a hard hitting set of guns to go with his hard hitting nature.
A SPAS-12 Shotgun for those close quarters fights and quick way to tidy up a knocked down opponent, and an MP5 for those mid-range engagements and increased fire rate. His secondaries pack a punch as well starting with the Bailiff 410, a gun rocked by Alibi and Maestro also on the defence that more resembles a handheld shotgun than your everyday pistol. You have the alternative option of the USP40, again the fire rate is taken into account but I’ve always prefered the versatility of the Bailiff in terms of creating rotation and peak holes. Lastly, he’s packing Barbed Wire and a Bulletproof Camera, both of which are very useful in different situations even if they aren’t the most interesting of things to talk about. Another 2 speed/2 armour operator gives you more adaptive capabilities and plus the fact that Oryx can dash about the map and really catch any attackers unawares, I can see him being a very effective pick and possibly even a staple defensive operator.
From Boregon to Moregon?
Onto the Oregon Map rework.
Oregon was a map that didn’t really need a rework in all honesty. It was a nice, smallish map that was a fan favourite especially for the more casual of players. That being said, it’s always nice to switch things up every now and again.
The new Oregon will have a more open feel to it with rooms feeling more connected and rounded. The doors between Kitchen/Bathroom Corridor and Dining Hall/Outside are gone as well as the ladder in Meeting Hall. There will be a new connection leading between Dining Hall/Small Tower with Attic opening straight into Dorm Main Hall thanks to a brand new door. This is all to give both sides better rotation options and generally give the map a more accessible feel.
Ubisoft also announced the House map rework, which was received with mixed reactions. House is loved by a lot of players, mainly on the casual side of things, and has found a great niche in the casual queue from time to time. The rework almost doubles the size of House, adds another set of stairs for ease of rotation and roaming and adds in a bunch of new, wide open rooms.
Both Tower and Chalet map reworks were announced, unfortunately with no visuals to accompany them. Neither map is particularly “loved” and Tower is almost universally hated but both could do with a freshen up.
Upcoming fixes and improvements
One thing that has always plagued Rainbow 6 Siege, especially when you’re not playing on a Lan server, is client side debris. The long and short of this, when someone breaks a boarded window, the wood in that window may be in a different condition to two different players: One player might see a hole to shoot through and the other may see a plank of wood still stuck in the window obscuring their view. Ubisoft has come out and said that this is all being fixed by having most of the debris that shatters when you hit a boarded window just evaporating and leaving as little debris as possible, functionally reducing the amount that can get stuck.
Drone spawning is being smoothed out with it no longer being random and instead they will now spawn near your actual spawning location. This does mean that you can get your bearings a bit quicker when flicking from drone to operator and vice versa, but does come with the downside that the defence may be able to predict your movements a little easier when they know what spawn you’re coming from.
There’s a player hub redesign that will make it easier for players to navigate as well as show off more than just the latest operators doing bugger all in the background.
Everything’s labelled very nicely with some lovely operator art for each tab as well as some small tabs down the side - Training grounds and Learning Area are more than likely Terrorist Hunt and the Situations we had previously.
Definitely not preferential treatment
One of the OG’s of the game, Ash, is getting her third elite skin, just in case the majority of the other operators weren’t pissed enough already for not even having one.
I’m not a massive fan of this skin but I’m more confused as to why they’ve done this, it doesn’t look bad but it doesn’t evoke the sense of Counter Terrorism Unit either.
This new elite skin comes with a new animation of Ash Croft spinning around shooting her guns in typical Tomb Raider fashion, it’s pretty standard and in my mind betters her other alite animation but it’s still pretty meh.
Problem gamers
Toxicity will always be a problem for online games. No matter what game or platform, there will always be offensive idiots out there. Ubisoft has set its targets on that group of people again by giving you better options with in game chat. Chat is now set to Team Only by default with the option to see all chat or none of the chat. This is intended to give players a better experience when playing rather than just getting flamed by the opposing team for being a n00b.
Operation Renovation
Lastly, there are a fair few changes coming to operators.
There is a lot to get through with these changes so get ready because they’re coming at you thick and fast.
Twitch, Warden and Lesion’s gadgets are being balanced: Lesion’s Gu mines will no longer be visible through obstructions such as walls, instead you will have to have line of sight of at least eight meters. The initial damage of triggering a Gu mine is being taken away but the damage tick is being increased from 4 damage per tick to 6 damage. Downed enemies won’t take damage from a triggered Gu mine either, no longer resulting in death but instead triggering a Gu mine to no effect.
Twitch’s Shock Drone rework will now see it start with three charges but is now equipped with a cooldown system to allow the charges to recharge during the round. The damage output has been reduced to one damage per shock and the reason for this is to try and ensure players attack the defenders utility rather than driving around tagging every that gets in your way.
Warden’s Smart Glasses are definitely being fiddled with though I’m not sure if it’s a buff or a nerf, honestly it doesn’t feel like either. The glasses now run on a charge system similar to Cav’s lurking ability and will allow you “juggle” his ability as long as it has at least 20% charge. Each activation lasts ten seconds and takes ten seconds to fully recharge, though now you can turn it off manually the recharge time will more often than not be reduced. What I would like to see is Warden able to use his glasses while moving, it feels like they should work that way and sometimes the most obvious answer is the best.
Everyone’s favourite operator, Recruit, is getting a rework in an attempt to make him more user friendly to newer players by equipping him with premade loadouts for the attack and defence. This will hopefully give newer players a more consistent learning curve by sticking to similar guns round after round rather than bouncing from gun to gun with different recoil patterns and nuances, leaving all of that jazz until they are more confident to step out of the Recruit comfort zone.
There are a couple of changes coming in the gun department with Castle losing his M45 secondary and picking up the Super Shotty instead, Frost can now pop a Holographic Sight on her C1, DMRs are getting an increase in soft surface breach damage and the Vector .45 got a damage increase from 21 to 23.
Other than the guns there are some more changes to loadouts and gadget tweaks, including: Dokkaebi losing her Frag Grenades and having them replaced with Stun Grenades. Maverick is having his Stuns replaced with Frags, with both Nokk and Ying losing their Claymores and picking up Frags. Sucks to be Dokkaebi I guess.
Goyo’s Volcan Shield will no longer detonate if an operator falls on it, instead it will just collapse and IQ’s gadget will now reveal objects such as bombs or biohazard containers to her entire team rather than just keeping that sort of important information to herself.
So that rounds out all of the information dropped at the Rainbow Six Siege Invitational 2020. There’s a lot to take in and process but the TLDR of this is mostly good stuff. A whole load of refinement happening to maps, operators and gadgets should hopefully set Rainbow Six Siege up for even more new players, even bigger tournaments and above all, the community becoming bigger, better and more together.
What are you looking forward to over the coming months with everything dropping around Operation Void Edge? Why not let me know by leaving a comment or hitting us up on Twitter @gcgamingtank.
Happy gaming guys!
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