Rainbow Six Siege changing how Gameplay After Death works in future

Rainbow Six Siege is getting a few Gameplay After Death changes in the future, but what does this mean? Here's everything you need to know about what this strange phrase, "Gameplay After Death", means and how it might affect you going forwards.

Gameplay After Death?

What does this actually mean? Well... Ubisoft has helped clarify that in their pre-patch Y6S2 Designer's Notes.

Gameplay After Death does what it says on the tin and is a way for Ubisoft to help their players feel connected to the game and invested in their team's success right up until the end of the round.

This, of course, needs to be balanced out so "that players remaining alive in a match is always the superior option", but it does add an interesting dynamic into the current meta of Siege's gameplay.

Essentially, it all boils down to dead Operators being able to use their Drones and Observation Tools / Gadgets in an effort to continue to support their surviving teammates. Although this might not affect casual players too much, it could have huge ramifications on organised team strategies and the professional esports scene.

Y6S2 Designer's Notes

What do the pre-patch Designer's Notes have to say about this, though? Well... They actually share quite a lot of information about the changes for both sides of the game.

Attackers' Changes

• Dead players can control and drive their own drone, including Twitch’s drone. You cannot drive the drone of another operator.
• Antennas are shown on regular drones when the owner dies, in order to help opponents know if the drone belongs to a dead or alive operator.
• The abilities of observation tools and gadgets can be used.
• i.e. Twitch’s and Zero’s lasers
• If you died with regular drones in your inventory, they will spawn at your original spawn location.
• An operator ability like Twitch's Shock Drone won’t spawn after death.

Defenders' Changes

• Bulletproof Camera Rework
  • The camera can now rotate.
  • The camera can shoot an EMP burst to disable Attackers' electronic gadgets and drones for 8 seconds.
  • The first player in the camera can use the ability to shoot. Unlike operators' abilities, there is no notion of ownership.
• Drone Counter
  • The Drone Counter is displayed exclusively to Defenders to help them track the number of regular drones their team has destroyed or captured.
  • This is intended to incentivize Defenders to be aware of the importance of destroying drones, especially in a context where dead players can still drone them out.
  • This counter is not meant to reveal extra intel to Defenders. It only reflects Defenders' actions and doesn't take into account special drones - only regular ones.
• Echo, Maestro and Mozzie can control and use their abilities after death.
  • Note for Maestro: Teammates will be able to rotate the turret-like any other observation tool, although Maestro will maintain priority over other Defenders.

Additional Gameplay After Death Topics Being Explored

• A number of changes released before and during this season will also help player experience in this new context:
  • Yokai drones no longer have cloaking, limiting the potential source of frustration of dealing with invisible after-death drones.
  • The bulletproof glass of the Maestro’ Evil Eye can be shattered with a melee to deny vision when it is closed (same of the Bulletproof Camera and more on these below).
    • The introduction of the GONNE-6 helps a wider range of operators deal with these.
• While it will not be available in this initial test, Attackers being able to chnage their operator in the Prep Phase (coming later in Year 6) will encourage players to more thoroughly scout the objective and Defenders' setups to collect info, putting their drones at risk.
• We are actively exploring and looking for more options relating to:
  • Dokkaebi's Logic Bomb affecting dead Defenders.
  • New secondary gadgets that can help with info denial.

At the moment, all of this is in play on Rainbow Six Siege's Test Servers and doesn't look like it will be implemented in Y6S2 just yet. However, if things go well... We could be looking at this array of Gameplay After Death changes being implemented in Siege relatively soon.