Rainbow Six Siege Operation New Blood breathes new life into an old operator

The Year 9 roadmap for Siege was very telling in how the ongoing development cycle of the game has been changing over the years. We’re seeing less “new” and a lot more “refreshing” in a game that has managed to accomplish what few other shooters have, and that is its ongoing relevance after being released nearly a decade ago. CSGO is one of the first to maintain such longevity. Rainbow Six Siege joined the roster in late 2015, shortly followed by Overwatch in 2016, and then Fortnite and Apex Legends. It turns out that ‘competitive shooter’ is the most viable Games as a Service model out there — it just works.

That being said, none of the games mentioned above are free from the effects of time, and sometimes you have to step back into the boots of the newcomers to see where to go next. Rainbow Six Siege’s Year 9 Season 2 update takes this literally with the first major change of the season coming to the Recruit operator. I might be alone in this, but I am genuinely excited for this rework of the most baseline operator in Team Rainbow. Just because you’re not a specialist with some fancy schmancy gadget doesn’t mean you have nothing to contribute in counterterrorism efforts. Our new and improved operator — correction, OPERATORS — are going to breathe new life into the early game but also give veterans of the siege another viable option in the stadium.

You read that correctly, we are getting two new Recruit operators, Striker and Sentry. Striker is the new attack recruit, armed with either the M4 or M249 as a primary, the 5.7 USG or the ITA12S for the secondary, and then a combination of any two gadgets. Striker can pick any two of the gadgets available on the attacking side, whether that be hard breach charges and impact EMPs or stun grenades and smoke or claymores and frag grenades. Any combination is allowed, but they cannot select two of the same gadget. Sentry, the new defense recruit, uses either the Commando 9 or the M870 for primaries, the C75 Auto or Super Shorty for secondaries, and, again, any combination of two gadgets. If you want to go full lethal, equip a Nitro Cell and an impact grenade, or equip a Proximity Alarm and barbed wire if you want to both annoy and slow down the enemy. Again, any combination is allowed, but no duplicates.

I feel like I’ll be using these two quite often going forward, especially on days where I just don’t feel it for any of my main operators. Sometimes I just want to be that free spirit, not held back by the limitations of any particular operator’s kit. Striker and Sentry present that alternative with the most dynamic loadout options. These new recruits will give players more autonomy with how they choose to play. Obviously, there’s some drawbacks to this perspective. This is a team shooter and this thought process is very “lone wolf,” but the flexibility Striker and Sentry will have, especially from round to round, will make for very interesting match developments, just wait and see.

I don’t see any part of this becoming overpowering. In the “old days” you could do a five stack of recruits and just mow a lobby down with the Recruit Rush. For this upcoming season, our new recruits play by the same rules as every other operator — only one can be active at a time. Just like any other attack or defense operator, only one person can play as Striker and only one person can play as Sentry, so there’s no worry of either team being able to spam any of their gadgets. They can sure try by choosing operators with similar gadget options, but I feel like we’ve managed to balance those out fairly well, which leads me to the next big change coming this season.

Two operators are getting tweaked, Solis and Fenrir. This may come as a surprise since both of these operators are still pretty new to the game, but I honestly think these changes will be a good thing.

To start, Solis will no longer be able to use her SPEC-IO Electro-Sensor during the preparation phase, meaning more drones should, in theory, survive to the action phase. The device will also only be able to detect active gadgets, meaning if your drone has been hidden away in a god-tier drone spot, she won’t be able to find it with her device unless you or a teammate is using it. The scan will also have a shortened duration and must be fully recharged before it can be reactivated. (The recharge time isn’t too bad, maybe around 5 seconds at max.) Unfortunately, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time checking out Solis’s rebalancing. Honestly, I was more interested in what’s changed with Fenrir.

Fenrir’s F-NATT Dread mines have been a menace since the operator was introduced, but some of the upcoming changes will help remediate some of that stress. To start, Fenrir will only have 4 mines available (down from 5) and only 2 can be active at a time now. On top of that, an inactive mine is no longer bullet proof, so shoot them down as soon as you see them, closed or open. However, to counter these changes, whereas an activation code would be fully deleted if an active mine was destroyed, now the code is essentially refunded, able to be applied to a new mine. Fenrir will also be losing his barbed wire, instead having an observation blocker in its place. I like these changes to Fenrir a lot, but he’ll probably still get banned in nearly every Ranked match. He is getting a new elite set, though, so no hard feelings, right?

Two maps are making a comeback this season, Stadium Alpha (Hereford Base x Oregon) and Stadium Bravo (Coastline x Border), and they’re getting a little refresher of their own. It’s nothing major, the bulletproof glass that looks into an objective from outside the structure is being replaced with solid walls to make it a little more secure for defenders. Any bulletproof glass inside the structure will remain, however. The Stadiums are also being added to Standard as well as Quick Play. Additionally, map filtering is also being introduced to Standard, which is kind of nice since they did away with map voting outside of Ranked. Now if I get sick of seeing the same map 15 times in a row, I can just turn it off in my settings. Of course, that could also be remedied by increasing the map pool in Standard to include all maps instead of catering to the pro scene, particularly those who think they could toooootally go pro. (*wink wink* sure thing, sport!) Also making a limited time comeback is Attrition, a mode where a random operator from each side is banned every round. You’ll be able to hop into this limited-time mode from June 8 through July 2.

Outside of the gameplay, there’s some other features getting attention this season as well. First off, there’s going to be a new membership feature introduced where players can pay a monthly fee to get access to the battle pass and other perks. The membership is $9.99 per month, which has faced backlash by much of the core fanbase since the game isn’t free to play and already has a ton of microtransactions, including the seasonal Battle Pass, a regular store rotation, and more. I find this to be an entirely unnecessary addition as well. It shines such a negative light, looking pretty scummy to want to ask players to fork out even more cash for stuff that could simply be incorporated in other monetization options already present in the game. On another note, the Marketplace is officially launching this season, immediately available to anyone with a clearance level of 25 or higher. This is where players will be able to buy and sell cosmetics such as skins for R6 Credits. I wasn’t able to get into testing of this feature leading up to this, so I’m curious as to how it actually works out.

There’s also some changes coming to spectator mode for custom matches that drastically improves the viewing experience, particularly for commentators and those keeping an eye on the esports scene. Match replay is also getting its own tweaks and improvements.

For the most part, this season is looking pretty good. I do hope they backtrack on the membership if there’s enough push back from the players. It’s just too much.

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