Rainbow Six Siege’s New Anti-Griefing Measure Is Pretty Smart

Rainbow Six Siege has had a griefing problem for quite some time now. While parent company Ubisoft has been at the forefront of a lot of measures geared to make one’s player experience more pleasant, including when they banned players for using slurs in chat earlier this year, there’s apparently still been a ways to go to stop actual in-game griefing since the release of Operation Burnt Horizon. However, it now looks like players who abuse friendly fire are in for a rude awakening.

The way that the game dealt with griefing in the past has been arguably sub-optimal. Teamkilling in the game would often only result in being kicked or potentially a cooldown timer on queues, which would hardly put off serial griefers who were hellbent on offing teammates in matches. While the game has a “report for toxicity” option, reports made through that system are likely weighed against Ubisoft’s Terms of Service for the game, which do not explicitly count specific griefing behaviors as bannable offenses.

The latest Ubisoft devblog has now announced an update in the form of a mechanic that they’re calling Reverse Friendly Fire (RFF), which aims to make your Rainbow Six Siege games more about teamwork and less about team-killing. RFF essentially activates when someone on your team is using the friendly fire mechanic to troll you, and it appears to activate based on total friendly damage after some community feedback. When RFF is activated by direct hits and damage from primary weapons, damage dealt to teammates is then reversed by the system and teammates will not receive that damage.

The devblog details the effects of reverse friendly fire as follows:

On Weapons/Thrown Objects

Impacts:

• Primary/secondary weapons
• Direct hits from thrown unique gadgets
• Exothermic-S Torch (Maverick)
• SK 4-12 (Buck)
• Mounted LMG (Tachanka; regardless of who’s using the turret)
• M120 CREM (Ash) when the breaching round directly hits someone
• KS79 Lifeline (Zofia)
• Airjab Launcher (Nomad)
• Pest Launcher (Mozzie)

After RFF activation:

• Teammates will not receive damage
• Will reverse damage dealt

On Explosives

Impacts:

• Generic gadgets (frag grenade, C4, breach charge) that results in an explosion — gadgets that don’t do damage like stun grenades and Ying’s Candela don’t trigger RFF
• Gas Grenade (Smoke)
• TAC MKO asphyxiating bolts (Capitao)
• M120 CREM (Ash) when the breaching round explodes
• Cluster Charge (Fuze)

After RFF activation:

• Can cause damage to teammates
• Does not reverse damage dealt — this will be hotfixed in Season 2

Exceptions

• Claymore
• Entry Denial Device (Kapkan)
• X-Kairos pellets (Hibana)
• Exothermic charge (Thermite)

The above explosives do not trigger RFF and while under RFF, they can continue to damage teammates.

On Drones/Operator Cameras

Impacts:

• Evil Eye (Maestro)
• Shock Drone (Twitch and Mozzie)

After RFF activation

• Teammates will not receive damage
• Will reverse damage dealt (onto the drone/camera)

This anti-teamkill update is due to go live tomorrow for Rainbow Six Siege so it’s likely that the community is going to have more to say once they actually see it in action.

The patch notes from Ubisoft already indicate that it’s looking forward in terms of potential amendments to RFF in Season 2 of its prolific Year 4, which is positive; it likely shows that this isn’t just a one-and-done fix that the company’s throwing out to deal as a temporary band-aid. As to whether this update is going to stick will likely depend on the reception of fans and careful balancing from the dev team in updates to come.

Source: Rainbow Six Siege/Ubisoft Devblog