The big old Russian defender is getting some much needed changes. His stationary turret is being taken away from him, but they’re replacing this by giving him a hefty LMG as his primary weapon. The poor guy needed some more mobility, particularly in high level play, as he’s a bit of a sitting duck on that old turret. He’s also getting an incendiary grenade launcher as his new gadget. In the Twitch clip below you can have a look at how said launcher can be used to bounce grenades off of walls and around corners, then explode leaving pools of fire that will damage enemies that get too close.
Tachanka has been a meme for as long as I can remember, so it’s nice to hear he’s being made into a viable character now. We don’t know exactly when his rework will be released, but it should be sometime before the end of Year 5. But, that’s not all there is in store for Siege’s reworks. Speaking about Years 5 and 6 of the game’s content, game director Leroy Athanassoff said they want to rework entire parts of the game - and in Year 5 that starts with changes to maps like Oregon and House. These will be followed by core gameplay reworks in Year 6. There’s no set date just yet for when Year 5 Season 1 will start, but if it follows the same pattern as Year 4, it’ll likely begin next month. You can check out what’s planned for each season in the content roadmaps below.
Athanassoff told PCGamesN that no new maps were going to be added to Siege until reworks of the old ones had been done to make sure they’re more “interesting and satisfying”. “When we create something new, we always expose ourselves to unbalancing, overstretching, stuff like that,” he said. “When we take a map that’s already existing, we are able to discuss with our community, we are able to pinpoint exactly what are the problems… what should we do to fix an otherwise very competitive map?” On top of all that, Ubisoft said they’re adding in little bits and pieces to help the core gameplay feel that much better. This includes things like more ways to communicate with your team and more standard gadgets for operators to choose from at the start of matches. They’re even adding a reputation system (that looks a bit like Overwatch’s endorsement system), that will either reward or penalise players depending on whether or not they’re being a good team player. Some other operators will be getting changes too, though this will be a mixture of reworks and small changes to rebalance the characters as the seasons progress. And last but not least, they released a very cool cinematic short called the Tournament of Champions. In it a couple of squads go head to head in a match while being cheered on by a crowd (it’s not a real match, nowhere near enough blood), and we get to hear from the operators themselves in some post-match interviews.
Nat reported over the weekend that Ubisoft have introduced us to Iana and Oryx, the new operators that will drop with the Void Edge event sometime soon. For now though, they’ll be available to try out on the test server starting today. That’s about it for the big announcements from the Rainbow Six Siege Invitational. If you want to have a watch of all the chatter about Years 5 and 6 yourself, it’s all available to watch over on Twitch.
