Nothing is harder to swallow than having a win stolen from you thanks to accidental friendly fire, except for maybe those situations where angered players are doing it on purpose. To combat Rainbow Six Siege's griefer problem, they’re adding reverse friendly fire to punish those inflicting team damage.
Toxicity is a problem that all online-based multiplayer games have to combat, and it’s almost seems like an unwinnable war, but one that many teams are making huge strides in nonetheless. For squad-based pvp games like Rainbow Six Siege - an extremely popular competitive game that Ubisoft has been building into a giant since it’s rocky launch - that comes in the form of angry players killing their own team. This misplaced “attempt to prove domination” simply winds up ruining the entire experience for everyone.
Even though Ubisoft has implemented a rather useful and respected developer ticketing and issue reporting system within UPlay and Rainbow Six Siege, there was more needed in the case of team-slaying griefers. In a world where the Esports scene for R6 is growing with every passing day - including the recently announced prize-pool of more than $1 million - it's important that the developers continue the game's evolution.
How Reverse Friendly Fire Works
It’s an unenvious position to be in, having to maintain the balance of the game and the inherent accidental team harm that can come with the frantic in-game action while also combating those abusing the ability to cause friendly fire.
In order to do so, Ubisoft stated that they will be testing their new reverse friendly fire system on test servers. Currently, the system is designed to allow for “mistakes”. Instead of causing self-harm on your first account of team damage, any damage inflicted on a teammate will result in a warning pop-up. Upon the confirmation of your first team kill, all further team damage will then be reflected onto yourself.
In theory, this is the fairest way to fight against complete team-wipes while still allowing for accidental injuries or deaths to occur during the firefight.
Player Response Required
Probably the best part of the entire new system is that it’s up to the other players whether or not griefers get punished. Rainbow Six Siege has a death-cam replay system - this is designed to allow players to learn from their mistakes - and if you are killed by a teammate, a validation prompt will ask if it was on purpose.
It’s not yet clear as to whether the validation process is in the system just to collect data, or if this prompt will exist in the final released version of the reverse friendly fire update.
Ubisoft makes a note at the end of the announcement that they will “continue to track team kills” and “continue to address toxicity” as the game gears up to have one of its biggest years yet.
Rainbow Six Siege is one of those rare games that saw less than stellar performance upon launch, but thanks to Ubisoft’s ability to unrelentingly support games they believe in, it has simply continued to grow. Watch their “Year 4 Celebration” video above.
With European Pro League matches taking place tomorrow, and North American matches resuming early next week, players in the R6 community are mostly pleased with the current state of the game, and Ubisoft’s continued efforts to combat toxicity. More info on their reverse friendly fire system will be released as testing continues on the test servers.
