rainbow6

What are your thoughts? Concerns? Hesitations? Things to get excited about?

New operator: Ram [3armor 1speed] Gadget - Death roombas that destroy soft walls and floors

Grim Buff: Kawan launcher can now be set to an alt fire that makes hives bounce off walls before deploying

Fuze Buff: Fuze charges can now be deployed on deployable and talon shields

Lesion Nerf/Buff: Gu mines are no longer cloaked, cannot be hacked by Brava, do 5 initial damage and 12 damage per second

Frost Nerf: trapped attackers can self-revive at the cost of a massive debuff that prevents sprinting and leaves a blood trail (coming mid-season)

Quick Match/Unranked Changes: Quick Match now has sites pre-set-up for defenders, and attackers cannot be killed for a short period while approaching the building. Unranked has been renamed to Standard, no longer has the pick/ban phase, and now has only 1 overtime round.

Player Commendation System: Post-match you can commend 2 of your 4 teammates in 1 of 3 categories to say that you appreciated them as a teammate. It won’t affect player reputation yet but will likely in a later season.

Tower gets a face-droop: Cosmetic rework that makes it look more like a battleground.

I have an idea for a gadget and I'm curious to know what you all would think about it, particularly about whether or not it would be balanced. It's been on my mind essentially since Siege released almost 8 years ago when I saw this was a competitive tactical shooter with an op named "Mute."

The Gadget:

This gadget's primary effect would be reducing the volume of all sound for anyone within range of its effect. The amount by which all sounds would be reduced would depend on how close the player is to the gadget, but to make this gadget worth it, there must be a significant amount of distance between the gadget and a player before the player could regain any hearing at all (think like if the gadget was in the middle of the library on Chalet 2F, the player would have to be in either the hallway or on the fireplace stairs to regain any hearing). Lorewise, this gadget would emit a sound so loud that it deafens characters.

Primary mechanics of usage:

The gadget would be placeable (not throwable) on floors and walls, and manually activated and deactivated by the operator who placed it (like Fenrir's or Smoke's gadgets). When activating, there would be a short warm-up period (think 1 second) during which the device would make a distinctive noise and, if it was placed on a soft wall, burrow through the softwall so it can directly affect the rooms on either side of the wall. The effect would remain active, deafening all players in range, until the gadget is either destroyed or deactivated by the operator. Before the gadget is activated, it is indestructible. While it is active, it exposes weakpoints but can only be destroyed by explosives. After it has been deactivated, it closes up and is again indestructible.

Balance notes:

Attacker only gets one of these gadgets to place The deafening affects both teams Can be countered by: Mute jammers - active state cannot be toggled if it is within range of a jammer Melusi's wub-wubs - the sound waves of the two gadgets would cancel out. Melusi's gadgets, if within range of the new device, would activate exposing their bullet-susceptible weakpoints and also providing anyone (attack or defense) within their range with a bubble of deafen-countering sound-waves so they can still hear. Why I think this gadget fits well into the game:

If you ask me, there are essentially 5 pillars of Siege that combine to make it a unique game to play

Destruction Team-play/Cooperation Intel Movement Sound There's obviously a good deal of crossover between each of these categories, but I think they're defined well enough to discuss operators and gadgets in terms of how they play on each of these mechanics. We've had a wide variety of operators and gadgets introduced who deal with the first four of these mechanics:

Destruction:

On attack, we have many operators and gadgets designed around destroying soft walls and defender utilities in order to weaken defenses and reinforcements. Sledge, Buck, all soft breach charges, Hibana, Ace, Thermite, Maverick, and hard breach charges are the obvious examples. On defense, we have fewer destructive ops, but still enough to make it fun to re-shape maps to create unexpected angles of defense to catch attackers off-guard. All explosives and shotguns and Oryx's massive shoulders are the obvious examples here.

Team-play:

There are countless elements of this game designed to make sure no one player is too powerful, but instead combinations of players who know what they're doing can be unstoppable. Examples of this are combinations like Thermite and Thatcher, Mira and Azami, smokes and Glaz, Montagne (with a mic) and any 3-speed operator, Smoke and Warden, Mute and Bandit. This list literally goes on and on. Siege is nothing if not a team game.

Intel:

I don't even think I need to describe this. Any gadget with a controllable camera is there for gathering intel, and we've got many gadgets designed to counter these cameras. Furthermore, mechanics like the Ping 2.0 system, IQ's rework, and Solis' ping tool make it much easier to share intel from player to player without using a microphone. Hell, even Osa's shield is useful for gathering intel without putting yourself in too much danger.

Movement:

It should go without saying, but one of the core features that defines every operator is their ratio of speed to armor (and I'm still waiting for Ubi to break with tradition to introduce a 3-speed 3-armor operator but that's a different conversation). Furthermore, we have two operators whose entire identity is based around their unique means of traversal: Amaru and Oryx are the only two operators capable of climbing floors through hatches which make them excellent choices for unexpected flank maneuvers. There's also operators and gadgets that prevent movement, like Castle, Nomad, Montagne, Clash, Gridlock, barbed wire, and placeable shields. Lastly, it's very worth mentioning that very few games include a rappel mechanic making it an extremely unique element of Siege that's worth calling out. Even if it hasn't changed or evolved much at all since launch, using a soft-breach charge to quickly and unexpectedly enter a building through a window has remained just as cool as it was when the reveal trailer came out (only a year shy of a decade ago).

Here's where my argument for this new gadget comes in. We've had operators that really built onto every single one of the above pillars of what makes Siege feel unique, except for the final one, and that's why it's the perfect spot for a new operator to come in and make a difference.

Sound:

Ask anyone who has played the game for more than 10 hours, and it's obvious that Siege is a completely different game if you play it without headphones. One reason its poignantly obvious is that EVERY gadget has a unique sound. You can always tell whose pushing from where because of the noises you hear - shields, explosive charges, guns, grenades, cameras, etc. all make a 100% unique noise so that the trained ear can tell what's coming.

And so far not a single operator has capitalized on really screwing with in-game audio.

There have been a few gadgets and operators who have a deafening impact, like Echo, Ela, Zofia, and flash/stun grenades, but there have been zero gadgets that intentionally, exclusively alter the way the game sounds. All other gadgets modify sound as a secondary effect. All other gadgets impact visuals in one way or another. Furthermore, previous Ubi reveal videos have listed the effect that a noise has on the way it can disrupt player awareness, like it is specifically mentioned that Sens and Gridlock's gadgets can partially cover up the sound of a defuser being planted, and that's a huge deal, but covering up noise is less interesting and powerful than getting rid of it altogether for so many people.

I think this new gadget could really change the way that attacking teams push, and as a result change the way that defenders hold angles. It would bring a new element of chaos if absolutely nobody can hear what's coming, and add a new dynamic to the already complex ecosystem of gadget-and-player interactions in the game.

I believe the biggest reason not to add a gadget like this to the game is what everyone likes to bring up at least once a season: sound propagation. There are very many issues with the ways that sounds are propagated from their source to a listener (drone/camera/player). But that being said, these issues only exist because this game was built with an incredibly deep system of dynamic sound propagation. Because of how walls can be built and destroyed, and maps can be so brutally redecorated, this game needs and has what is likely the most impressive system of sound propagation in any video game created. I know there are issues with the sound, but I will more readily sing the praises of the engineers who made the system than I will criticize the system because for every time that it doesn't work, there are 1000 times that it works beautifully - so beautifully that nobody notices it, because they shouldn't notice it. It should seamlessly emulate real audio, which it almost always does. Thusly, I don't think the issues with the propagation of sound from this gadget should prevent the gadget from existing.

When I saw "Mute's" name, my first thought was that his jammers would be like muting charges that somehow deafen attackers charging in to fast and was greatly dissappointed to learn that I was wrong. When I saw teasers for Melusi, I thought the deafening gadget was finally coming, but that's not what it was either. I'm still hopeful that within this game's lifetime we'll see a player-controlled alteration of sound propagation.

TL;DR - Sound is the primary pillar of Siege gameplay that has yet to be tapped with an operator/gadget that entirely focuses on it, so we should have an operator that drastically affects a player's ability to rely on it.

So, please tell me what you think. OP? Not OP? Too buggy to work? What's your thought?