Ubisoft just released its 17th free expansion pack, Year 5 Season 1 Void Edge, for Rainbow Six Siege. The update brings two new operators, Iana and Oryx, along with a rework for fan-favorite map Oregon. Multiple operators have also been tweaked for balancing reasons. Twitch and Lesion especially saw some heavy nerfs. You can learn all the balancing changes made over here.
That’s not all though, as Void Edge also added several new features in the game that aim to make the player experience a little bit better.
My personal favorite change is to Barricade Debris Consistency. Everyone who plays Rainbow Six knows how annoying those wooden barricades can be. Sometimes a wooden piece will get stuck on the window when you break it. This obscures vision and can even get you killed. I don't know how many times my spawn peaks with Doc have failed because of one stupid piece of wood that won’t go down. From now on, partially destroying a window barricade with melee or a weapon will break it into very small pieces, so the debris getting stuck effect should be minimized.
Also, given the fact that Barricade Debris in the game is handled client side, many times a broken window will appear broken for one player, but fixed for others. This can give some players an unfair advantage. The new system should fix this issue that plagued the game for over four years.
The game also updated attackers drone spawn. Previously, your first drone spawned randomly, but now players will have some power over it. From now on, your prep-phase drone will spawn where you first choose your character to spawn.
This is not the only change made regarding drones. Before the update, every time the prep phase was over, attackers were forced out of their drones. While this was not a problem for the majority of players, it did annoy some players who wanted to stay in the cam. This new update adds an option in the game’s settings that lets you decide whether you want to be pulled out of your drone after the prep phase.
Player Hub has been drastically updated. While Ranked, Unranked, New Comer, and Quick Match are still in the front. Situations and Tutorial Videos have been moved to a “Learning Area” column, Learning Area also has over 12 slides of tips that you can read whenever you want. New players should definitely spend some of their time here. Discovery Quick Match will only queue the Oregon map and will disappear after a few weeks. This mode was introduced to get players familiar with the reworked map.
Terrorist Hunt has been renamed to Training Grounds, probably because most of the players used THunt to warm up for ranked matches anyway. However, I won’t lie, when I first saw Training Grounds on the menu, I thought that Rainbow Six was finally getting a firing range. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Come-on Ubisoft, make it happen.
Additional tweaks have also been made. Night maps were removed from Custom games, although I don’t understand the reasoning behind it. Previously, players could choose the time of day in custom games. Devs have also made reporting hackers more satisfying. Ever wondered what happens to the hacker you reported earlier? From now on, you will get a notification if the player you reported has been banned.
Developers are also combating toxicity in the game. The new season added an option that lets players turn on text chat only for their team. Now you can choose between ALL, TEAM CHAT or NO CHAT. After the update Team Chat is the default option, so remember to change it if you want to chat with the enemy team. The game has also re-activated the escalating abandon penalty for both ranked and unranked mode.
Operator Bios for all the Year 1 and Year 2 operators have been changed, so if you care about the lore, do remember to read them. We now also know why the latest update was so massive in size. It not only adds new content, but also restructures game files. The overall size of the game should be smaller after the update.
Void Edge also makes several tweaks to explosion and shrapnel damage, Caster UI is also drastically updated, and now relays more information. You can read all the changes made on the official site.
So what do you think? Are you excited about Rainbow Six Siege Void Edge? What would you like to see in the next major update? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
