I’m kind of annoyed with CS:GO- it spends most of the year completely neglected by Valve,
causing its playerbase and community to lose faith, only for it then to get a years’
worth of updates in one sitting. So I’m splitting my coverage of Operation Riptide
up into several parts, with this first one focusing on just the map changes.
But first, if the game is now crashing for you then try using the console command ‘cl_forcepreload
0’. Several times while making this video, I encountered a bug where the framerate would
plummet to single digits. For me, lowering the antialiasing to 2x did the trick, but
it seems like SOMETHING has changed with this update to have caused these problems.
A bit surprisingly, Dust2 has received a rather major change, even though the patchnotes describe
it as a ‘Slight visibility tweak’. Well, no- it’s a brand new extension which conveniently
/ inconveniently obstructs the sightline going all the way from T spawn down to the CT crossing
to B. And no, it isn’t bangable. This changes everything! Terrorists can no
longer snipe CT’s rushing to B unless the Terrorists first hop over the wall. And even
then, their visibility of the crossing isn’t that great. Majorly nerfed.
The wall has got taller, and thus harder to cleanly leap over which will slightly hinder
rushes down suicide until you get used to this.
You can still boost onto the crates in this area, but you’ll be cramped up there and
won’t just be able to drop off the back the moment you find yourself in danger, so
it’s become a high-risk spot to be caught in now.
You can just about see around the raised wall from this position, but still can’t see
that much. You can peer down a bit of the left side of middle, but even this doesn’t
reach as far as B tunnels. So I’d definitely say that this change bas nerfed the terrorsts
at the very start of the round, and gives CT’s more chance of pulling off a cheeky
rush into B tunnels from middle. HOWEVER, its function changes later in the
round! Because this obstructed sightline will enable terrorists to be able to sneakily rotate
through their spawn without being seen from middle. The only place CT’s can really catch
a glimpse of the rotation is from here, at which point they’re pretty much up middle
already, and are exposed from the side. So that’s a huge change to one of the game’s
most beloved maps. I had another video that I was working on, discussing stuff like this
so I’ll leave my speculation for why this change has arrived so late to the game for
another time. But I know that the map has fallen a bit out of favour in recent years,
and the community has proposed numerous adjustments to it to address these shortcomings. Less
than a week ago, in fact, there was a major discussion on the globaloffensive subreddit
about this very issue, with some slightly more radical, and less elegant, solutions
proposed to the sightline down middle. So this change might have been a very recent
adjustment from Valve, simply to ‘test the waters’ while Operation Riptide was underway
in order to distract people away from critiquing this particular change too greatly.
The other noted change is to the back of bombsite B. This doorway has been shifted around to
the other side, to simplify the wall and to improve visibility for players approaching
from the tunnel. It looks like the other details on the wall have received a few minor improvements
too. But I don’t trust Valve, so flew about looking
for other changes. They’ve fixed the window at long A which would fade out far too soon-
POSSIBLY allowing players at long to peer into short to some degree, though I don’t
know if anybody ever found a way to gain an advantage from doing this. But Valve likely
fixed this months ago when I pointed it out and have just forgotten to mention it in the
patchnotes now. And this very small vent has been made bigger.
I don’t think anybody was expecting to see changes being made to existing maps. Or any
at all, honestly! But the timing of this one is particularly unusual, what with all the
pro teams being so busy training up and practicing on them for the next major, which isn’t
far away now.
Now onto Inferno, which hasn’t received such massive changes.
I think the cubemap used on the ground at A has shifted position somewhat? But other
than that, I noticed nothing other than the documented changes to this corner. The see-through,
barred gate has been swapped for a simpler, brighter and more readable white door model
now, which in turn has simplified the lighting in this area to hopefully improve the visibility
of players stood in this, admittedly still awkward, corner.
‘Revised 1v1 layout’ might slightly understate how much the warmup arenas have changed. The
first time I saw the new one I thought it was from the old version of Inferno- it’s
much more primitive and blockier looking now! It might play better. But it looks VERY plain
in contrast to what came before. Ancient is the last official map to get…
official changes. Namely, the bombsites have been extended to give Terrorists more plant
spots to choose from. Like in this corner here on A, which is at least partially sheltered
from both main CT approaches to the site. And B has been extended in all directions,
and annoyingly the radar STILL hasn’t been updated to reflect this! Valve please fix.
There have been fixes to the bullet penetration, and further optimisations, which in my experience
means the map will be stripped of its greenery. And sure enough, I found extensive cut-backs
across the map, with numerous stone and plant props being removed in the name of framerate.
Which I’m always very sad about, I think it’s short-sighted to ‘optimise’ a map
in this way when CS:GO is already so easy to run, and will only become more so as time
goes on. But that’s what’s happened here. And the map has got its own 1v1 arenas, which
as usual contain a bit of the indoor and outdoor scenery to give a brief summary of what the
map as a whole looks like.
Although not mentioned in the patchnotes, Cache also got updated. Bananagaming was ahead
of me here -as usual- having already commented a few days ago over on the workshop page,
detailing the changes, which include (I assume) quieter ambient sounds, better visibility,
and more consistent architecture regardless of graphics setting used. In practice, the
only thing I could spot was this area of B, which now has fewer crossy bits further down.
Defuse maps, Grind and Mocha, have been swapped out for Basalt and Insertion 2. Both of which
I’ve covered before- Basalt is a defuse map set in Iceland and was made for the Mapcore
2019 competition, and is one of the more distinctive themes I’ve seen, with bold, vivid colours
against a dark background. And Insertion 2… isn’t even a defuse map, it’s a hostage
one with a twist where the players get to choose their spawn points, and the map itself
is much larger and more open than we’re used to seeing from this gamemode.
The dangerzone map, Frostbite, has been swapped out for County, which is a beautiful, sunny
map… with a few dark secrets!
And while we’ve lost the wingman maps, Pitstop and Calavera, we’ve gained in their place
‘Ravine’ and ‘Extraction’. Ravine is a distinctive and cosy night-time castle
map, covered in a thick layer of snow. And ‘Extraction’ is set in and around a luxury
house by a lake. Which I think every mapper has tried to make at some point, but perhaps
not quite to the quality on display here. I will say though- the map’s borders hardly
look like they could contain a gun-wielding player, comprising mostly of glass and low
fencing. And hey, look, I managed to escape the play area here. Looks like this map’s
radar needs updating.
So that’s the map changes covered- but you can see that this is but a fraction of what
rolled out with this update.