Rainbow Six Siege to overhaul casual matchmaking and add Theme Park map to ranked play

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Easier ride for beginners

Ubisoft has overhauled Rainbow Six Siege's Casual matchmaking system ahead of the game's new season. For the last four months the game grouped players for Casual games based on their Ranked matchmaking rating (MMR) but Season 3 will introduce a separate MMR for Casual play. Ubisoft says it will provide "better quality matchmaking".

There's also changes to make the game friendlier to new players, who will now start with a lower MMR than before. "A lower starting point for beginners means that they will be able to increase their MMR in a pool of players with a comparable skill level. This lower MMR rating will be erased over time as they win more matches, eventually placing them where they truly belong based on their skill level," Ubisoft explained in a Reddit post yesterday.

Lastly, Ubisoft announced that Siege's new Theme Park map will be included in Ranked play for Season 3. The map was only supposed to be for Casual or private matches, but after "passionate" feedback from fans it will now feature in Ranked game modes.

The publisher is still evaluating player feedback on the Season 3 map playlists, announced last month, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are further changes ahead. "In the coming weeks, we will be working to address your concerns with more information on our future plans for the matchmaking map rotations," it said another Reddit post.

Season 3 and the accompanying Operation Blood Orchid—which will add three new operators—is launching September 5. 

Cheers, PCGamesN.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.