Operation Blood Orchid Live on Test Servers, Patch Notes Released

Rainbow Six Siege Patch 3.0 is currently available to preload on the Technical Test Server. The patch mainly features the new season of Operation Blood Orchid as well as the finishing touches on the Health Program. Players can expect a bevy of new content and gameplay improvements in this upcoming patch.

Per Ubisoft’s blog post, “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.”

Aside from the major additions of Ying, Lesion, and Ela as operators, as well as the new map Theme Park, the Health Program brings countless updates to the game, like much needed lighting improvements and upgraded servers.

The upgrading of lighting issues also comes with shading upgrades, making the maps and characters themselves appear more realistic. “Facial rigging” also promises more consistent reactions. The team is also working on hit registration and high ping inconsistencies, making 1v1 situations more consistent, giving the advantage to those with better connections.

Higher speed defense operators now lose their ACOG scopes, as the team felt it was too easy to peek out on attackers from distance and relocate quickly. Weapon damage falloff is also being addressed, and many weapon’s clip sizes are being increased slightly. Players can now deploy two drones at once, unlike previously where deploying a second would destroy the first.

Ranked play is also adding a map rotation, a total of nine altogether, the same rotation used in pro league play. The maps are: Bank, Clubhouse, Oregon, Kafe, Consulate, Chalet, Border, Coastline, and Skyscraper. Casual mode is also getting a map rotation, so some maps will not be playable in matchmaking anymore. The team says some of these maps are getting reworked, with the possibility that some will be removed from the game altogether down the line. The two maps currently unavailable are Yatch and Favela.

There are also a few operator bug fixes in the works, like a more consistent sledgehammer for Sledge and IQ’s gadget being able to read Echo’s arm pad.

The full list of fixes and improvements in on the Ubisoft devblog. The patch is set to release September 5th.