As always, alongside this weekend’s Pro League Finals, all the details for R6’s upcoming free update, Operation Shifting Tides, were just released, including this season’s map rework, new operators, gameplay updates and cosmetics.
Year 4's release calendar
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The Operation Shifting Tide's promotional images
Theme Park 2.0
The Theme Park map originally released two years ago as part of the Operation Blood Orchid update, which also brought us the operators of Lesion, Ying and Ela. Since then, the map has remained untouched despite a number of complaints around the map design and it was eventually removed from the Ranked playlist at the beginning of last season in September. Now, just after the Halloween event on the map, a number of large-scale changes have been shown off which aim to make the map more competitively viable as the reworks to Clubhouse and Kafe have done in previous seasons.
The main change made to the map layout is the removal of the Trains section that ran right through the upstairs of the map. This was seen as an issue as it allowed an individual to completely cut off rotations very easily. With this removed, and the two halves of the map pushed together, the map also has become much smaller and remedies the issue of it being too big to take control of effectively.
The new site locations
As well as this, the lighting on the map has been drastically brightened, the Gargoyle room has been replaced, and a number of other rooms have been redesigned. A full look at the map can be seen below:
Kali - Attack
Hailing from India, Kali is a two speed, two armor operator with a bolt action rifle primary weapon (the CSRX 300) and the LV Explosive Lance gadget which effectively acts as a Thatcher alternative.
Starting with the gadget, the LV EL is an under-barrel launcher (similar to Buck’s Skeleton Key) with projectiles to burrow into reinforced walls, make holes in Castle barricades (seen below) and destroy all Bandit batteries, Mute jammers, and Kaid Electroclaws. The gadget can also be used to destroy Evil Eyes, deployable shields, and barbed wire, but cannot open up Mira's Black Mirror.
Moving onto the primary weapon, the bolt-action rifle has both a 1x and 5x scope and kills with a headshot, downs with a shot to the torso, inflicts very high damage to limbs, and can penetrate through multiple walls and defenders. To balance out the weapon, it has a very long aim-down-sight time, extreme recoil, strong tracers from each bullet, and needs to be reloaded after each shot, making it a high-risk-high-reward weapon, somewhat similar to Vigil and Dokkebbi’s BOSG shotgun. Finally, the gun cannot shoot through reinforced walls or Castle barricades as had been leaked.
Rounding out the loadout, Kali comes with both the C-75 Auto machine pistol currently used by Vigil and Dokkebbi or the P226 MK-25 handgun used by the SAS operators, as well as the secondary utility of either a Breaching Charge or a Claymore.
Wamai - Defence
This Kenyan defender is another two speed, two armor operator with a gadget that works as a Jager alternative. His MagNET primary gadget pulls in nearby projectiles such as grenades and Capitão bolts and detonates them, adding the very first counter to asphyxiating bolts. The gadget is single-use per MagNET (which you gain as the round goes through, similar to Lesion's Gu Mines) and does not attract X-KAIROS pellets or Shock Drone tasers.
Weapons wise, Wamai runs either the AUG-A2 (seen on IQ) or the MP5K (seen on Mute) as a primary weapon, and secondaries of either the P12 GSG 9 handgun or the Rhino D-40 scoped handgun. Finally, for secondary utility, you have the option of either Barbed Wire or a Deployable Shield.
Gameplay Changes
The biggest change to the game mechanics comes with the introduction of bullet penetration, as previously referred to. While in the past if you shot an enemy, and their hand blocked the head, the bullet would hit the hand and deal minor damage, but the bullet will now go through the hand and also hit their head, turning it into a kill-shot. This highly requested feature is particularly helpful when engaging blinded (flashed), prone, or quick-peeking enemies as the animations could block your headshot.
The second change comes with rappelling, as to get off rappel now you must also press the action button, which will stop players accidentally getting off rappel when they don’t wish to. This is likely most useful for players rappelling upside down at the top of a window as they are very near to the roof.
Cosmetic Reveals
This weekend also saw the announcement of a second set of Pilot Program weapon skins as you can see below:
For those that missed it, these are the guns for each organization in the clip above
- G2 - SMG-11 (Sledge, Smoke, Mute and Amaru’s Machine Pistol)
- Faze - L85A2 (Sledge and Thatcher’s Assault Rifle)
- Liquid - M762 (Zofia’s Assault Rifle)
- NORA - C7E (Jackal’s Assault Rifle)
- MIBR - 556xi (Thermite’s Assault Rifle)
- Rogue - M590A1 (the SAS and Warden’s Shotgun)
- Empire - R4-C (Ash’s Assault Rifle)
- INTZ - F2 (Twitch’s Assault Rifle)
- Na’Vi - MP7 (Bandit’s SMG)
- Penta - MPX (Valkyrie’s and Warden’s SMG)
- Cloud9 - 416-C Carbine (Jager’s Assault Rifle)
- EG - MP5 (Doc and Rook’s SMG)
- SSG - ALDA 5.56 (Maestro’s LMG)
- Fnatic - MP5SD (Echo’s SMG)
These will likely launch on the same day as Operation Shifting Tides at the same price as the rest of Phase 2’s skins, 300 credits (270 with the Season Pass). At the moment, you can get the current Pilot Program bundles at a 20% discount for this weekend only.
Secondly, as always, the Finals saw the reveal of a brand new Elite in Capitão’s Responsa cosmetics seen below:
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Check back here at SiegeGG for full coverage of the rest of the Pro League Finals as well as Operation Shifting Tides when it launches in a few weeks time.