Rainbow Six Siege's Free Loot Plans, Reworked Menus Announced

Ubisoft has shared a wealth of new details about Year 2 of Rainbow Six Siege, including some specific new features players can look forward to.

The dev diary above previews some of what's to come, including free loot. "The players will also get some loot, and I want to give them access to almost the whole item bank we currently have in-game," creative director Xavier Marquis said. "But beyond that, we'll also thank players for their time spent on the game. You play, and we give you some loot packs that you can open for free. So the more you play, the more you get."

A brief glimpse of this new loot system is shown in the video. The ways this is presented will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played Hearthstone, Gears of War 4, or any number of other games. We see a weapon skin and a cosmetic item both obtained from something called Alpha packs, suggesting there may be different types of packs to open. This is expected to launch during the second season of Year 2, which puts it at least a few months away.

Also in the video, we get a look at the revamped main menu, which launches as part of the Velvet Shell update this week. Everything can be accessed from a single page called the "player hub," which remembers the last mode you played and makes it the featured choice. Other game modes are accessed through an arrow button just to the side.

Matchmaking will get a "complete rework" later this year that is intended to be faster and smoother. One other benefit will be the ability to browse the menus while waiting for a match. Like the loot system, this is expected out during Season 2 of Year 2.

One thing you shouldn't expect to see this year are new game modes.

As part of the Six Invitational tournament over the weekend, we got a better look at the new content in the Velvet Shell update. You can get the full rundown in our video feature here.