Rainbow Six Siege Players Can No Longer Ban New Maps in Operation Solar Raid

Ubisoft has fully revealed Operation Solar Raid, the next and final season for Rainbow Six Siege’s Year 7 and there’s a lot to take in. But one change stands louder than some, and that is the inability to ban new maps during competitive play. 

Why is this a big deal? For newcomers, not so much, but for veteran players, either in unranked or ranked competitive play, they get it - the community bans new maps. 

This has been a long issue for how many seasons. Originally, competitive play in Rainbow Six Siege started with both teams voting to choose one of the three maps available for the match. Almost every time, the teams will vote to ban the newest map in favor of a more familiar map.

Ubisoft responded by increasing the map ban pool from three to five. A band-aid solution as the most recent maps were still being targeted. 

Emerald Plains, one of the latest maps to arrive in Rainbow Six Siege back in April, was hardly seen. To this day I’ve only played the new map once in a competitive match, but have seen it banned almost all the time when it shows up as one of the options. 

One can say the hate towards the new maps is because of its design, but it’s hard to go behind that as a map can’t be addressed/fixed or experienced fully without actually playing it for long periods, especially before and after big balance changes.. Even the reworked maps, which can be considered new, also receive the mass new map ban treatment from the community. 

This behavior resulted in map pools feeling stale as you play the same maps constantly, which isn’t fun in the long run, or is even healthy for a live service game. And the fact that Ubisoft just straight-up no longer allows banning new maps shows how big of a problem it was for the game.

New content was being held hostage by the majority of the player base. 

It’s a necessary change and unique only because of the current behavior of the community. Timely as well as the new season, Operation Solar Raid, comes with a new map called Nighthaven Labs. 

Rainbow Six Siege – changes coming in Operation Solar Raid

Operation Solar Raid comes with a variety of big changes. You can have a look at all the changes in detail below, but here’s a quick breakdown of what you need to know. 

• New Operator - Solis 

• New Map: Nighthaven Labs

• New maps can no longer be banned

• Reputation system

• Added security measures

• Ranked 2.0

• Drone skins

• New and improved battle pass that is no longer linear, players can choose paths to get rewards they want

• Shooting range improvements

• Cross play between consoles and cross play between PC and streaming platforms (PC and consoles players will not mix), cross progression between all platforms

• Balance changes: all operators have the same ADS speed, plus op changes (example - Sens now 3 speed and 1 armor, Dokkaebi now a 3 speed 1 armor, and Osa now a 1 speed 3 armor. )

• Added accessibility: gadget colors can now be changed (for color blind), advanced aiming options

Operation Solar Raid and all the changes mentioned above will come to Rainbow Six Siege on December 6.

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