A new round of gameplay improvements go live in-game today for Rainbow Six: Siege, as part of this season’s “Operation Health” initiative to prioritize overall functionality and health over new content.  This last set of fixes come in Update 2.2.2, rounding out the tail end of the 3-month push towards technical well-being for the game, and brings fixes for animations, server support, and more.

The first part of the new update will be expanding and improving dedicated server support for more game modes and functions.  Custom games, which were previously hosted peer-to-peer unless they contained a maximally full lobby of 10 players, will now always be hosted on a dedicated server, reducing issues associated with P2P such as input latency and connection lag.  The Terrorist Hunt game mode, which previously saw numerous issues with host migrations when players would leave matches, will now also be hosted on dedicated servers.

Rainbow Six: Siege in-game voice chat will also be receiving the new server treatment, and will be moved over to a new service: Vivox.  Vivox will allow for clearer voice communication and reduce the bandwidth requirements for chat, which will be key improvements in a game that is so heavily dependent on teamwork and communication.

Another fix in the update, which was requested many times in the official Rainbow Six: Siege subreddit, was for the game’s animations when a player vaults through a window or over an obstacle.  The previous animation was locked with the character looking forward, and did not necessarily reflect where they were aiming, since a player can freely aim and shoot side to side while vaulting.  The new animations reflect where an operator is looking, which will help defenders adjust and prepare for incoming breachers.

The update also adds a new elite skin for Pulse, who receives a sweet new mohawk as well as new weapons skins, gadget skins, victory animations, and uniform customizations.

Update 2.2.2 also brings a number of small bug fixes and improvements, which can be found in the full patch notes over at rainbow6.ubisoft.com.

Now that we’re in August, Operation Health is wrapping up while Season 3 is looming large.  We’re still waiting for more details on the season’s title, new operators, and more, but in the meantime, you can start warming up your hard drive, since Ubisoft has shared that the upcoming Y2S3 update will be absolutely massive, as big as 42gb for some PC users.