Favela was Rainbow Six Siege's most hated map, now it's coming to Ranked

Rainbow Six Siege's most historically disliked map will be among the first to make the jump from casual play to the Ranked map pool in an upcoming patch. Favela, a highly destructible map added back in 2016, received a complete rework in Siege's recent North Star update. The map update was intended to be a "casual rework" only for Quick Play, but Ubisoft is now confident the map is balanced enough for Siege's most competitive mode.

"We know you want to give it its chance in the moonlight, so Favela is coming to Ranked and Unranked playlists near you!" Ubisoft tweeted on Wednesday.

The reborn Favela has a largely new layout that addresses common gripes while maintaining its visual identity. The most drastic change can be noticed on the exterior of the map, where there are now far fewer destructible walls.

Previously, the overwhelming number of walls to reinforce or cover made its bombsites frustrating to defend. On the attacking side, the malleable map gave spawn peekers countless opportunities to score cheap kills. The rework follows a similar framework to Siege's other map redos: plenty of room to breathe on bomb sites, fewer opportunities for spawn peeks, and more staircases for easier navigation.

New Favela already feels like a Ranked map in many ways, except for one important difference: it's a nighttime-only destination. Every map used to have a night variant before Ubi removed them in 2018 for balancing reasons (attackers could hide in the dark a little too well outside). Considering night is the only way to play Favela, I'm guessing Ubi has changed its mind.

Ubi says Favela's positive feedback during its first few weeks has informed the decision to add it to Ranked. I'm enjoying the rework so far, though to be fair, it's hard to tell if any map is balanced until players have spent a few months with it. You can play Favela in Ranked right now on Siege's test server or wait another few weeks for patch Y6S2.2.