Ubisoft is making some big changes to Rainbow Six Siege's map rotation for the game's Ranked and Casual playlists. Starting with the Ranked changes, Ubisoft is reducing the number of maps in the mix, bringing it down to nine.

The nine maps--Bank, Clubhouse, Oregon, Kafe, Consulate, Chalet, Border, Coastline, and Skyscraper--are the same ones used in the Rainbow Six Siege's Pro League.

"Moving forward, we will introduce the new Ranked and ESL Pro League playlists at the same time we perform the rank reset--and all of that will occur at the start of the new season," Ubisoft explained. "The Ranked playlist, much like the ESL playlist, will be rotated each Season, offering a different selection of available maps."

As for the Casual changes, the number of maps in the playlist is dropping to 15. Ubisoft is doing this with the aim of helping players learn the maps faster. "We have identified the steep learning curve that our new players face in terms of map knowledge, and this is one of the ways that we plan to address it," Ubisoft said.

Some of the maps that are taken out of rotation--but not all of them--are going to be reworked by Ubisoft's level design team. It might be a while before some of the removed maps return, if they ever do, as Ubisoft said "some of them will be over the course of the years to come."

Sometime after the current Season 3 of Siege, Ubisoft will completely remove some maps in part because the game is closing in on the data size allowance.

The 15 maps that will be available once the change is made include Bank, Clubhouse, Oregon, Kafe, Consulate, Chalet, Border, Coastline, Skyscraper, Kanal, Hereford, University, House, Plane, and Theme Park.

The maps that were removed from Ranked and Casual are still playable in custom games, so they are not lost entirely.

Another announcement that Ubisoft made about maps today is that the "Map Preference" system, which lets teams choose maps, is going to be deactivated for all PvP modes, though it'll stay online for Terrorist Hunt. There is no word yet on when the Map Preference system may come back for PvP, but Ubisoft teased that it is "exploring some alternative implementations we believe can improve the experience."

These changes are presumably coming to Siege as part of the much-anticipated free Blood Orchid 3.0 update. This also adds a new map and Operators--and a lot more.

You can go to Ubisoft's website to learn more about the map changes.