Operation Heavy Mettle launches for Rainbow Six Siege

The war continues in Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege, with a new update that adds an operator, commendation system, and more.

Whoa, heavy

So why is the newest addition to Rainbow Six Siege called “Heavy Mettle”? We have no idea, though it might be in reference to a lil’ robot that’s included.

But even with the somewhat mysterious title, the August 29th download is a beefy one, that adds a good deal to the already chunky base game. Fans get a little of everything too, with an operator, a “new commendation system”, a reworking of the Quick Match option, and some bug fixes and balancing.

Here’s the full season overview (it’s a little over 25mins in length):

Prefer the highlights of Heavy Mettle? Cool, we’ve got those too.

The biggest piece of new content is definitely South Korean operator Ram. She comes equipped with something called the BU-GI, which more or less sounds like a small tank. It’s capable of breaching doors, and generally causing a bad day for anyone on the opposition.

Operation Heavy Mettle amps up the anticipation with new Attacker Ram and her BU-GI Auto-Breacher gadget. With an automated tank, Ram can take on the competition by destroying walls, floors, and other elements to offer new vantage points. One tank can shake up players’ strategies by destroying their gadgets and any soft surfaces in its path. Ram is a one speed, three health Operator, and her loadout features a R4C or an LMG-E as a primary weapon and a MK1 or an ITA12S as a secondary weapon.

Ubisoft press release

Past Ram, there’s also the new version of Quick Match. “Unranked” play has been renamed “Standard” and Ubisoft has added in an “Arcade” mode. The idea is that players can get even faster, round based play going as quickly as possible, depending on what they’re looking for.

Game modes receive several updates this season, including a Quick Match rework, a redesign of Unranked (now called Standard), and a brand-new Arcade game mode. Quick Match is faster than ever, with reduced round timers, objective locations automatically revealed, and bomb sites come set up with reinforcements to let Defenders focus on strategic defenses. For Attackers, a 10-second invulnerability at the start of Action Phase will prevent spawn peeking, giving them time to approach the building. The redesigned Standard playlist offers the core Siege experience without Operator or map ban phases and will offer another option for players besides the competitive Ranked mode. Also being introduced is Weapons Roulette, an all-new fast action game mode coming to Arcade playlist, which lets all players start with the same weapon that automatically swaps to a new one after a set amount of time.

Ubisoft press release

Also included…

Aside from the more fun stuff above, Heavy Mettle also includes some balancing and the all new Commendation System. On the balancing end, fans can expect to see “Operator Grim and major improvements to the in-game shotgun ecosystem”, according to Ubisoft. That’s plus a new ability for Fuze, who can “deploy Cluster Charges on Deployable Shields”, and there’s an update to Osa’s Talon-8 Shields as well, with an eye towards synergy. Rounding out the updates, one for Frost will arrive later this year too, and bring a few more operator mechanics.

As for the Commendation system, that’s an all-new way for players to leave feedback for each other. It shakes out to give Ubisoft a bit more control over what the company considers “toxicity” in the player-base, by up-ranking those who play nice, and giving a paddling to those who don’t.

The kick is that, while those who receive negative votes will get a warning and then possible penalties, those who get good grades will get rewards. While there’s always a possibility that some will abuse any system like this, Ubisoft adds that it will be closely monitored, to ensure as fair of an outcome as possible for all.