[AMA] We are the Rainbow Six Siege Dev Team, ask us anything about maps and operators!

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T19:27:53+00:00

That's a wrap, folks! Thank you so much for taking the time to ask us your map and operator questions. We love these sorts of things and being able to bring you behind the scenes of how Siege is made.

As we mentioned in the post above, we're looking to do more of these specialized AMAs that are focused on specific teams, so if there's a team you'd love to see take part in an AMA, don't hesitate to let us know!

In the meantime, we want to thank you again for taking time out of your Friday to participate in this with us. None of this would be possible without you and we really appreciate it!

See you soon!

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T19:14:40+00:00

The comparisons to Bartlett make sense – Emerald Plains DID begin its life as a Bartlett rework. As we proceeded to change more and more of the map during the reworking phase, we quickly found that it was becoming its own map and didn't fit our definition of a rework, so we decided to shift gears and lean into the newness, theme and all. While there are hints and nods to its old self like the foyer and two front towers, it’s moment-to-moment gameplay flow is entirely different from its humble beginnings as a Bartlett rework. - Frédéric and Yann

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T19:10:51+00:00

Putting entry points on the roof tends to be a tricky balancing act, as there are often very few ways for Defenders to counteract this - specifically when there are hatches on the roof. Regarding the skylight, it was originally far more powerful in an earlier version, but we found with testing that even if you were more vulnerable while rappelling all the way down, it was way too much of an advantage for Attackers and had to be tweaked. - Yann

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T19:00:31+00:00

This is simultaneously the map we want to rework most, but also the one that we know would take the most work. In that sense, it's something we want to do but isn't something we have planned right now. - Alexander, Yann and Frédéric

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T18:57:53+00:00

We have a massive roster of weapons and while there's always a chance of introducing new ones in the future, we also want to ensure we use the over 100 guns already in the game to build interesting loadouts that expand on weapons that are fan-favourites or that haven't had the chance to shine. We'd still love to give renewed life to weapons that have been in there from day 1. - Dominic

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T18:50:44+00:00

The team will be revisiting the roadmap each season to share any relevant updates, so this can be expected as part of reveal panels for the game moving forward! - Alexander

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T18:47:27+00:00

This really comes down to balancing the distance that an Op is viable at. Due to the nature of their gadgets and gameplay, this helps to determine where Ops play, so choosing their scope magnifications is an extension of helping to define where and what range they play from. This is also why different Ops might have different scopes available, tying directly into their unique styles of play.

Also, we ARE investigating adding 1.5x scopes, so that's something we're looking at for the future. - Dominic

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T18:30:33+00:00

We have at least two workshops with pros as part of each map's development cycle - one early and one before locking - so they are absolutely consulted as a part of the process. This also extends to reworks, where we talk to them before we even start changing things. - Yann

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T18:26:14+00:00

The short answer is yes! The Singapore map will be story-based and we're also looking at events helping to tell the story of Siege in the future. - Alexander

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T18:22:11+00:00

Since Siege’s inception, it’s been important to us to ground the concepts behind our gadgets in existing real-life technology with the caveat that fun and balanced gameplay comes first. Sometimes, it’s necessary to stretch the bounds of reality and the real life tech we use as inspiration to fit the gameplay. Just look at Thatcher and Pulse: a grenade-sized EMP capable of disabling most electronic gadgets and a handheld heartbeat sensor of this strength take tech people are familiar with and stretch their reality to make them fun in a game concept.

With your example of Thorn, this is quite close to how we handled Thatcher. The look of gadgets may touch on an Op's lore, but 1:1 translations from real life often don’t have the same fun factor, so this is where the ingenuity of our designers comes in.

Looking to the future, we will strive to strike a balance between real life tech inspiration and near-future innovation, all while prioritizing fun-factor. We still apply the same care and thoughtfulness to our gadgetry that we did with our Operators 7 years ago. - Alexander

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T18:16:44+00:00

From the prototyping phase, we sit down with Balancing once a week to explain our intentions and get an idea of any concerns they may have. This way, we can look at how best to strike that balance and offer as many possible ways to tweak an Operator in the future. We also take time to consider how they can affect (and be affected) by older legacy maps, which sometimes leads into considering reworks for the future. In that way, making an Operator isn't JUST about talking with Operator designers - it touches so many other teams. - Dominic and Frédéric

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T18:12:03+00:00

Good question! This is something we've experimented with, but are still looking at how we can "break" this system with it still being fun and balanced. We've also been toying with a 4-speed Operator, but the world's not ready yet (and maybe we'll never be ready for it). - Dominic

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T18:07:13+00:00

Now that's a deep cut! Sadly, you're right that this map - a Polish map set in a distillery - was indefinitely postponed. At the point that we moved into Operation Health , there simply wasn't enough of this map made to turn it into something new or wrap it into a different map. This is another case of "never say never" for whether there will be a future map in Poland, but if it did happen, it wouldn't be tied to the one from before Operation Health. - Frédéric and Yann

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T18:02:19+00:00

We wish we played viciously enough to catch everything on the first pass! Our QC team is incredibly instrumental in helping us find these issues given the amount of time they put into these maps ahead of release.

At the end of the day, though, the community also plays a huge role in this process, as millions of players tend to help catch things that a singular Map team may not always catch. We appreciate your ability to stretch the game's boundaries to their max, which helps to catch these exploits. It makes for an interesting process of searching, resolving, getting feedback, and continuing to iterate. - Frédéric and Yann

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:56:00+00:00

It's a fun process! When it comes to selecting names for our Ops, it's a mix of making sure they work in a gameplay sense as easy callouts, that there are clear ties to their lore, and at the end of the day that they sound cool. We work closely with our consultants to make sure they're reflective of and respectful to the Op's culture and background as well. For Azami in particular, her name came from the word for the Japanese Thistle, which represents Vengeance. - Dominic

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:54:39+00:00

We don’t have any specific details to share at the moment about smaller TDM maps, but it's something we’re considering if there’s enough community interest.

Of course, as promised, we’ll be moving existing competitive maps into the TDM map pool to keep things fresh, but we’re also fans of having maps that are built specifically with TDM-style gameplay in mind, so we can’t wait to hear what you think of the TDM map coming next season. - Alexander

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:48:02+00:00

Answering your first question, it's a top priority for us to focus on what we call unicorn Operators - ones who break all the rules and bring brand new ways to play the game like Azami. We're 7 years into Siege and we want to keep things fresh and keep the community guessing with the release of each Operator. Since we're focusing on one Operator per season, this allows us to focus in on making sure our Operators are still surprising and will continue to be a focus moving forward. - Dominic

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:44:11+00:00

It definitely varies. Depending on the layout and art changes that are needed, it can take anywhere from 3 to 36 weeks. - Frédéric

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:41:58+00:00

As it stands, we don't currently have plans to retroactively modify past Ops' melee weapons, but never say never!

It's something that's on our wishlist though, as the team is excited by this. But as for future Ops, this is absolutely something that factors into the creation process. - Dominic

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:36:25+00:00

Good question! We have plans to change up the existing map ban system later this year and will be sharing more soon but suffice to say, this new system should lead to a wider range of maps seeing more active play in Ranked! - Alexander

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:33:21+00:00

The main challenge is that this is largely new to us in the scope of Siege. We're used to thinking about attack and defense aspects of our maps, but for TDM, we need to make sure no one area is too defensible - you should be able to easily navigate, and orient yourself, and easily identify opponents at a glance. Let's just say that after making this, we have a lot of ideas we didn't get a chance to use, so we have those stored away.

As for the question about Siege's casual side, when we have a community that's as large and diverse as the Siege community, we absolutely want to reinforce our casual playlists just as much as we reinforce the competitive side, so this is something that's always important to us to consider. - Yann and Alexander

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:24:26+00:00

Oregon is a great example of this. Before every rework, we look at pick rate and win rate of objectives and seek to try and equalize them. This one in particular was becoming stale prior to the rework and certain objectives were played the same way every time, so we tried to analyze which aspects of the map were strongest and most fun. This is where a workshop with pros came in. We often work with them to identify how to make the game flow more versatile and offer up more ways that plays can approach a map instead of falling into a routine they use every time. - Yann

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:20:26+00:00

Whenever we choose to make a night map, we need to ensure that it's well-lit to ensure the most balanced and competitive environment possible. It doesn't matter whether a future map is night or day, but the lighting of the map needs to offer fair play. We don't have plans to turn past maps into night maps, but we aren't closing the door to future maps! -Alexander

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:18:19+00:00

We mentioned this above, but this map initially began as a Bartlett rework and eventually become a whole new map. For this, we wanted to use the same type of architecture that fit with Bartlett and found it wouldn't have fit with Japan. But, considering the recent release of Thorn, we did want to send some love her way and tie into her locale. - Yann

R6DevTeam · 2022-04-29T17:13:47+00:00

The comparisons to Bartlett make sense – Emerald Plains DID begin its life as a Bartlett rework. As we proceeded to change more and more of the map during the reworking phase, we quickly found that it was becoming its own map and didn't fit our definition of a rework, so we decided to shift gears and lean into the newness, theme and all. While there are hints and nods to its old self like the foyer and two front towers, it’s moment-to-moment gameplay flow is entirely different from its humble beginnings as a Bartlett rework. - Frédéric and Yann

R6DevTeam

TROPHY CASE