This is the first sizeable update that CS:GO has received in 2018.
The shotgun spreads I covered last December are now in effect.
Nuke and Canals have both received considerable changes, Cache and Shipped minor tweaks, and
the Coop Strike gamemode has been given some love.
It still isn’t an official thing within the game, so I’m going to be waiting on
a later update before getting too excited about what these changes could mean.
But until then, speculate away!
Onto the map changes.
In the latest Major in Boston, Nuke was the least played map, seeing only 2 matches played
on it.
So it isn’t too much of a surprise to see these significant changes being made to the
map.
Teams will have plenty of time to prepare for it before the next major.
Onto the changes.
The outside walkway has gone!
Vanished.
We’ve never seen a version of Nuke with so little walkway.
I’m a little bit sad to see this go, but the map in its existing state clearly wasn’t
working so I’ll be interested to see if this is what it needed, and how Counter Terrorists
will guard the outside now it’s been simplified.
The boost onto silo has been made more difficult…
but still pretty easy, considering that I could nail it every time.
This area now functions similarly to early CS:GO-era Nuke again.
Moving to bombsite A, we can see some other walkways that have changed!
We get a bit more space around the edges, but the yellow walkway is no longer accessible,
nor can you climb up to it from the site any more.
While we’re in this room, the skylights have been changed to these, which I assume
is to make it easier for terrorists to setup grenade throws into the site.
The window in hut has also disappeared.
Once again these changes simplify the map and reduce the number of spots that attacking
terrorists have to check.
Bombsite B has had the railings near ramp removed which will speed up how quickly players
can drop down into the site itself and will make this little cubby hole here more exposed.
This new cover on the site itself is kind of a big deal- it gives players a really handy
place to defend the site from, and doubles up as a quick rotation up to the vents.
Both teams now spawn closer to the centre of the map, which is something I’ve wanted
for a long time!
If both teams had been moved the same distance forward, this would have had no impact on
gameplay other than to shave a second and a half off the beginning run.
But the shifts aren’t equal.
CT’s have been dragged 384 units forward (about 6 crates’ widths), while terrorists
have been moved 352 units (5.5 crates) and had their best 3 spawns shifted to the side
slightly.
The reason for the shift I assume is because otherwise there would be a wall right in front
of their faces.
But the result of these changes means that on average, CT’s will have an extra .1 of
a second head start.
Smaller changes include: Flipping the direction these doors are opened.
Blocking off the old entrance to secret.
Adding white walls near CT spawn for increased visibility.
A crate has been removed from ramp room.
The boxes to get up here have returned from whence they came!
And there’s now collision for physics objects (except grenades) near the water in B site.
Canal’s changes are even bigger, even if you don’t care about it as much just yet.
It’s generally been simplified and a few places have been removed.
To get to B, for instance, CT’s used to turn left up here and then left to get out
onto the balcony.
Alternatively they could turn right for a view of the courtyard, and further along for
a view out onto and into bombsite A- this last bit in particular felt very overpowered.
All this has been removed, replaced with a simpler passage up to the right which leads
directly to B. If you like you can still turn right here to head onto the balcony, which
still leads to bombsite A.
This spot already existed before the update, so all that’s been lost is the old look-out
window, and the rotation from courtyard to A has been lengthened.
The terrorist entrance to B has been changed as well.
This room has been cleared out and simplified.
The ladder leading up to the room has been removed, replaced with a skill-jump that will
take a bit longer to perform.
It’s not TOO difficult, but I suggest practicing it a few times so you can reliably nail the
last jump.
And this one-way drop-down has been cordoned off for both sides.
But just you wait, I bet it won’t be long before somebody new to this map realises these
bits are almost connected and comes up with the clever idea to join them again!
Oh and they’ve added an ashtray for the smokers.
Anal attention to detail, or a cryptic puzzle for us as a community to work together to
solve over the coming weeks and months?
…or perhaps just an ashtray here for players to trickshot grenades into.
I dunno.
As well as coop mode, the shotgun update and these map changes, Valve have polished the
workshop so that people can sort by wingman, flying scoutsman and… coop strike.
Almost as though it’s going to become an official gamemode or something.
Mappers can now add floating text to their maps which is always handy for custom gamemodes.
There are other tweaks that I guess are also related to Coop Strike.
And lastly, added vscript function named ScriptPrintMessageCenterAllWithParams which requires 3 params that get inserted
into the localization token at the %s1’s.
… But this isn’t it!
Check out my shotgun video to understand how much more useful they’ll be now once you’ve
memorised the blast patterns.
Check out Nuke’s illustrious history in my ‘Many Changes of Nuke’ video.
And lastly, a video of mine from 2015 when I made a new version of Nuke and made a lot
of the changes that Valve has now added to the official Nuke in this latest update.