Operation Blood Orchid
RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 5TH

In Operation Blood Orchid, two Special Duties Unit Operators join Team Rainbow to raid Theme Park. This third season will showcase a reworking of the Operators and maps following an optimization of our data, namely a rework of textures, polished dynamic and static lighting, richer sky domes, new customization, and much more.

2 NEW OPERATORS

+ 1

The new Operators are immediately unlocked for Season Pass owners, with exclusive access granted for seven days. All players can unlock the Operators with Renown or R6 Credits after the exclusive period ends.
(SEASON PASS: September 5 >> normal: September 12)

Ying, Lesion, Ela | Trailer | Ubisoft [US]

YING (ATK)

Born in the comfortable Central District of Hong Kong, Siu Mei Lin, codenamed Ying (firefly), was a close protection operative before joining the Special Duties Unit. Having developed explosive short-range power and combat skills, she joined an elite security service school right after high school. When she was tasked with a high-stakes money exchange during a kidnapping situation, however, she realized how limited her means were. Driven to have greater impact, she re-oriented her career to become an all-purpose operative. A year later, she joined a female-exclusive training in Tel Aviv, Israel, where she perfected her hand-to-hand combat skills and driving maneuvers.

SPEED: Medium
ARMOR: Medium

PRIMARY:
T-95 LSW
SIX12

SECONDARY:
Q-929

GADGET:
Claymore
Smoke Grenade

UNIQUE ABILITY:
Candela:
The Candela device releases a cluster of flash charges that can either be anchored on surfaces or thrown out as a grenade.

LESION (DEF)

Born in Junk Bay, Liu Tze Long, codenamed Lesion, was raised by his father, who worked for a ship breaking company. During these years, Lesion would stay at the shipyard, and help him dismantle obsolete ships for scrapping. Crumbling with debts after his father was injured, Lesion took on various hazardous jobs in demolition until he found an opportunity for mine clearance duty. Demonstrating a natural calm while handling highly corrosive substances, he joined the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Bureau. He is a known expert in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) terrorist threats.

SPEED: Medium
ARMOR: Medium

PRIMARY:
SIX12 SD
T-5 SMG

SECONDARY:
Q-929

GADGET:
Impact Grenade
Deployable Shield

UNIQUE ABILITY:
Gu mines:
Gu mines inject a toxin that injure your opponent and limit their speed.

ELA (DEF)

Elzbieta Bosak is the newest addition to Team Rainbow. Nicknamed Ela, this driven 30-year-old has had an unconventional progression. Having quickly risen among Poland’s Special Forces, she was deployed in six countries and active in Iraq for seven years. Her exploits should come as no surprise, considering that she is the youngest daughter of Jan Bosak, a former commander of Poland’s counter-terrorism unit GROM. Despite this legacy, Ela is not the stiff soldier one would expect.
Originally from Wrocław, Ela’s family history has deep roots within the city. Her grandfather was a Cichociemny, an elite paratrooper of the exiled Polish Army during WWII. After being captured during the Warsaw Uprising, he managed to escape and reach Wrocław, only to endure a three-month-long siege.
Ela shared that her grandfather had a significant role in her life. “I still carry a piece of his uniform everywhere I go.” Through his tales of war, he nurtured Ela’s defiant spirit and taught her that “higher damage is done by striking a supply chain than by neutralizing a man.” While these lessons made her a prolific Counter-IED Operator, Ela initially struggled to commit to the strict military lifestyle.

SPEED: Fast
ARMOR: Light

PRIMARY:
Scorpion EVO 3 A1
F0-12

SECONDARY:
RR15

GADGET:
Barbed wire
Impact Grenade

UNIQUE ABILITY:
Grzmot mines:
The sticky Grzmot mines can be anchored on surfaces, impairing hearing and causing a dizzying effect. These concussion mines are triggered upon proximity, affecting anyone within its radius.
True to her iconic defiant nature, Ela has a signature move when severely injured: the ability to trigger one last concussion mine.

NEW MAP

THEME PARK
Team Rainbow has been called to raid an abandoned theme park on the shores of Hong Kong. Two of S.D.U.'s most resourceful Operators were chosen to lead a lethal raid in this challenging perimeter. Get ready to discover a colorful and eclectic new map filled with dynamic and fast-paced face-offs.

Theme Park | Trailer | Ubisoft [US]

BLOOD ORCHID WEAPON SKINS

Get Year 2 Season 3 underway with four fresh Blood Orchid weapon skins and feature one representing Poland, the Alembic. Dynasty, Red Silk, White Dragon and Plinky’s Arcade can be applied to the weapons available until the end of the current season.

THE HEALTH PROGRAM

NEW UPGRADED SERVERS DEPLOYMENT
The new servers will be deployed with the launch of Season 3. These new servers bring significant improvements to stability, connectivity, FPS, rubberbanding, and overall performance. On top of the new servers, we have a new physics system in the works, which should further address issues with players teleporting and rubberbanding.

IMPROVED LIGHTING WHEN LOOKING FROM INSIDE TO OUTSIDE AND VICE VERSA.
Initially, we wanted to use realistic values to have contrasted and realistic lighting, which works in the same way as a camera would in real life. Additionally, the bloom was intended to limit the effectiveness of Defenders peeking outside.
(OFF)(/OFF)We are excited to tell you that we have completely reworked how exposure is handled on all maps, and reduced the exposure values. Bloom issues are now a thing of the past.

SKY MODEL UPDATE (ALL MAPS)
We will now be using image based HDR skies. This allows us to have more artistic control of the ambient lighting, as well as increase the overall quality of lighting in general.

BDRF UPDATE (ALL MAPS)
Updates are being worked on for our shading model, also known as Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function, which calculates reflections. It now matches the same model as our external texturing tool, which improves the workflow for our artists. What this means for you is that you will see an improved reflection quality in some materials, particularly in terms of glossiness.

DATA CLEANUP ON MAP TEXTURES AND MESHES (KAFE)
Over the course of the next year, we will be reworking the textures of every single map. We are starting with Kafe Dostoyevsky, our most expensive map in terms of memory-budget. We have been going through all the textures and meshes of Kafe, smoothing, optimizing, and standardizing everything we could. In essence, we are streamlining and reducing its overall memory footprint.

OPTIMIZING OPERATORS
In Operation health, we have done a complete pass on all of our Operators to make sure the total sum of their textures meet a consistent memory usage. This means that textures that were not adequately optimized are now remapped in the UV Mapping with greater efficiency so that they take up less amount of memory without reducing quality.
(OFF)(/OFF)Because we’re meeting a consistent memory budget across all operators, it also meant that we could slightly improve the quality for some Operators. Lower budget Operators, like Sledge, will have a slight improvement of quality.

FACE RIGGING CLEANUP MEANS MORE CONSISTENT FACIAL REACTIONS
By doing a pass on the facial rigging of the Operators, it means that they now have a more consistent reaction with the shape of their face. This will result in more accurately aligned points of movement in the face.

HIBANA’S GADGET WILL NOW BE MORE CONSISTENT.
After months of hard work, we’ve streamlined the handling of Hibana’s net objects. We started by reducing the overall number of net objects we need to monitor. By doing this, the potential conflicts between Host Authority and Local Authority timelines are reduced, and thus players will not run into the complications that result from a desync between the two.
(OFF)(/OFF)Additionally, we’ve meticulously gone over the scenarios in which we saw other outlying issues occurring, such as pellet placement, and visual errors, and corrected those as well.

Y2S3.0 PATCH SIZE
In the Y2S3.0 patch, we will be making some changes to how our data is organized, as well as how we generate patches moving forward. There is more information below on exactly what we are doing, and why, but we are currently looking at the following patch size breakdown per platform:

Platform >> Patch Size

PC with Ultra HD >> 42GB
PC without Ultra HD >> 26GB
Xbox One >> 15GB
Playstation 4 >> 15GB

HIT REGISTRATION, AND HIGH PING
Over Season 3, we will be testing fixes and improvements that will aim to address Hit Registration issues and poor network conditions. We are currently testing something we’re calling Latency Alignment, which will make 1v1 encounters feel more consistent. The result should be that the server will more accurately mirror the reaction time of players with unstable connections, giving a fairer reaction time to their opponents.
(OFF)(/OFF)We are also working on adjustments to our shot validation to further favor players with more stable connections. This will be a lot more punishing on shots that happen far away. There are other improvements for hit registration, headshot registration, and ping that we will be trickling into deployment.

GENERAL TWEAKS & IMPROVEMENTS

GAME HEALTH

INTRODUCING NEW SMOKE GRENADE & BOLT ANIMATION – DUAL PERSPECTIVE REPLICATION
NEW GAME DESIGN UPDATE ON ACOG’S FOR DEFENDERS
WEAPON FALLOFF DAMAGE REDESIGN
AMMO BALANCING
TWO DRONES DEPLOYED AT A TIME FOR ATTACKERS
KANAL SPAWN KILL EXPLOIT
FIRST-PERSON CAMERA POSITION WILL NOW BE CLOSER ALIGNED TO THIRD-PERSON
SHOOTING FEEDBACK SYSTEMS IS NOW MORE ACCURATE
NON-REPLICATED DEBRIS
DEBRIS WILL NO LONGER BLOCK THE DEPLOYMENT OF GADGETS.

PLAYER COMFORT

DEFENDER VISION FILTER IS REMOVED WHEN GOING OUTSIDE
PRIORITY ON OBSERVATION TOOLS FOR ALIVE PLAYERS
CROSSHAIRS DON’T TURN RED ON ENEMIES ANYMORE
ENEMY ID ONLY TRIGGERS ON SUCCESSFUL SCANS

PLAYLIST CHANGES

RANKED PLAYLIST BECOMES MORE COMPETITIVE
In order to allow our players to hone their skills in the most competitive environment available, we are reducing the total number of maps in the Ranked map rotation.

NEW CASUAL MAP PLAYLIST
In Season 3 we will be reducing the Casual map playlist to fifteen maps. Reducing the total number of maps available for play in the Casual playlist make the process of learning the maps that Rainbow Six has to offer easier for new players. We have identified the steep learning curve that our new players face in terms of map knowledge, and this is one of the ways that we plan on addressing it.
(OFF)(/OFF)Additionally, some of the maps that are removed will be reworked by our Level Design team. To be clear, not all maps that are removed from the Casual playlist will be reworked, but some of them will be over the course of the years to come.
(OFF)(/OFF)We are quickly approaching the limit of our data sizes, and this will require a rework of how our maps are stored. As a result, we are currently planning on removing maps from the game entirely down the road (not in Season 3).

MAP PREFERENCES
After revisiting the mechanics of the Map Preference system, we have elected to deactivate this system for all PvP Multiplayer (we will keep it for Terrorist Hunt so you and your squad can select specific maps). We don’t have an ETA for the return of this feature to PvP as we are exploring some alternative implementations we believe can improve the experience.

GAME BALANCING

BARBED WIRE EASIER TO WALK THROUGH AND ONE LESS HIT
JACKAL’S HUNTER’S MARK PINGS LOCATION MORE FREQUENTLY
BANDIT CAN NOW DESTROY HIBANA PELLETS WHILE THEY FUZE.
BANDIT’S BATTERIES 1-SHOT DRONES
IQ DOESN’T DETECT FRIENDLY GADGETS ANYMORE & DETECTS ECHO’S ARM PAD WHILE USING THE YOKAI
FUZE’S CLUSTER CHARGE PATHING IS MORE PREDICTABLE
NO MORE CROSSHAIR HIT MARKERS ON BLACKBEARD’S SHIELD
ALL DRONES AND TWITCH’S DRONE CAN AIM UPWARD MORE EASILY
GLAZ’S BLOOD SPLATTERS ARE NOW MORE CORRECTLY DISPLAYED
SLEDGE’S HAMMER IS MORE CONSISTENT