Valve remains quiet -no surprise there- but a number of things have happened or have been
discovered over the last few weeks to suggest that CS:GO could be getting a big update very soon- now
we’re hoping this will be some kind of rebranded, Source 2 overhaul. Source 2’s biggest problem is
itself. You only have to read through Half Life Alyx: The Final Hours to know its incomplete state
was at least partially responsible for killing projects like Left 4 Dead 3 and new attempts to
make a Half Life game. With that being said, in 2015, Dota 2 moved over to the Source 2 engine,
although I think the impact this had on players of that game was probably less than you might
have expected. But in 2020 -almost 3 years ago now- Source 2 proved itself finished enough to
handle a modern new game, with that game being Half Life Alyx. The question now is:
what has Valve been working on since, does it involve CS:GO, and will it look nice?
On February 27th, Valve changed their twitter account’s banner picture. I made a whole video
covering this exciting revelation and why people thought it could mean something,
which you can check out in this video’s cards. On March 1st, and exactly a month before April
1st, Gabe Follower on twitter pointed out that the latest Nvidia drivers ‘introduced
support for unknown apps’ called ‘csgos2’ and ‘cs2’. If you own an Nvidia graphics card,
you can see this for yourself by going to the control panel and by doing this. Sandwiched
between Costume Quest and Crab Game, you’ll find all the Counter Strike games listed, including
the fairly new additions of CSGOS2 and CS2. Check out Gabe Follower’s video about it,
again in this video’s cards, for a lot more evidence that this isn’t just nothing,
and why he believes it indicates that a Source 2 version of CS:GO is incoming.
Now the Nvidia driver update likely happened sometime before March, it’s just that it went
unannounced and took a while to find. Equally, on March 1st it was discovered
that Valve had recently set up a Tiktok account. Since then the community has been hyped for every
new tidbit of information they can get. And API leaks keep coming, hinting that other stuff is
also going to change. Like this one suggesting that Valve has paid money for the Tuscan map,
a map I covered just before its release which you’ll find in this video’s cards HERE,
so presumably this will be coming to the game at some point as well
On March 5th, Richard Lewis put his reputation on the line again by writing an article about this,
stating that it is likely to be released under the working title of Counter Strike 2. This
project has been a priority for Valve’s team and them being busy with this is
probably why I’ve had so few patchnotes to read. The article’s anonymous source (or SOURCE 2!!!)
says that it’s ‘about ready to go’, that it’s ‘right around the corner’, and that the beta’s
release date is in the month of March and oh no April 1st is mentioned again. It even says that
a bunch of pro players were flown out to Valve’s headquarters in secret to test it. Following this
blog post, poor Karrigan was put on the spot and cruelly INTERROGATED about the stuff he
either didn’t know about, or couldn’t talk about. ‘Is it because you’re so excited about Source 2?’
‘I can’t actually not speak about anything Counter-Strike related’
‘Ah, the… you been to Seattle recently, have ya?’
Either way, we got nothing, which tells us everything. Maybe.
Richard Lewis’s article touches upon a couple of other interesting points as well. The first was
the mention of 128 tick servers and how they would also be coming to this new Counter-Strike beta.
What’s curious about this is that over on twitter, Gabe Follower DOESN’T think that
128 tick servers are coming, but that it will instead be some kind of new, subtick system,
which he speculates could vary the tickrate depending on what’s going on. This doesn’t mean
that Richard Lewis’s 128 tick claim is wrong, -for this new system could still be variable,
but with a maximum cap of 128 updates a second. So they could both be right!
OR: a third possibility: they’re both are WRONG. I reached out to somebody else for a
third perspective and they gave me a third option, being that this tickless system might not even be
referring to communication between client and server, warning about how much it would break
everything it WAS referring to that. And then they ended by saying that when the update hits,
whatever it is, people will likely be left disappointed. Isn’t that the truth. But this
third perspective has a good point- because it’s a big mistake to expect miracles from a
new system. Boarding the hype train feels great, but at some point, you have to step off again.
But let’s throw caution to the wind for now, and assume that we WILL be getting a magical, variable
tickrate system. WHAT will this be good for? This is gameplay from CS:GO. It looks smooth,
but how it’s communicated to the game’s server is anything but. I can enable this information,
and this is more like the information that’s sent to and from the server. Each of these
is a position and direction the character was looking at a particular moment in time,
and information like this is relayed to and from the server 64 times a second. Hence,
64 tick server. The argument is that 128 tick would be better because then there would be
double the number of these. But a variable system would argue that you don’t always need 128. How
many you need varies depending on the situation. I think. It’s all just speculation at this point.
Because if I’m honest, netreg is a very complicated topic that I barely
understand the basics of. It involves time travel! Yet even I can see the benefits of
a variable system. For instance: some newer phone screens already vary their update rate,
because you don’t need 120 refreshes a second when you’re simply reading something on reddit
or when you’re watching a 60 fps youtube video like this one- so it’s
far better for your phone to drop to a lower framerate and to save on battery life. Hell,
even your computer’s screen may have some kind of variable update feature, because it makes sense
to update when it gets new information, instead of just regularly updating 120 times a second
or whenever even when nothing is going on. So likewise, a variable tickrate system in
CS:GO would vastly cut down on wasted, redundant information. Because your teammate, AFK in spawn,
doesn’t need their inactivity reported on 64 or 128 times a second. But those spinbotters
on the other team, wildly flicking about and killing your chances of winning the
game? Their frantic movements may benefit from MORE than the standard 64 updates a second,
and this variable system would allow for this if it has a higher maximum limit. Like, say, 128.
Valve has long been criticized for hosting matchmaking at only 64 ticks a second,
with some arguing that 128 tick feels better and more responsive. The argument against this
would be the people claiming that players can’t feel the difference, and also the extra burden
it would put on Valve’s servers. Because 128 updates a second would be double 64.
But a VARIABLE system? If anything, this could DROP the amount of information being sent,
but with higher temporary ‘peaks’ where it shoots above the current datarate when a lot is going on.
So I can definitely see the benefit from Valve’s side of implementing a feature like this. Plus it
would put an end to the whole 64 VS 128 tick debate once and for all, by keeping the best
of both worlds! And hopefully it won’t destroy the bunnyhop and surfing communities while it’s at it.
Richard Lewis’s article also discusses a ‘MUCH improved matchmaking system’ that ‘is
hoped would make the need for third party pugging services unnecessary’. Now I’m going to ask: who
hopes this? Valve as a company has historically embraced third parties doing the work for them.
Nothing about HOW this better matchmaking system will be achieved is mentioned in the
article -other than the possible 128 tick idea- so the way I see it, if they intend to overhaul
the matchmaking system in ways to render services like Faceit obsolete, it will likely require a
lot more of Valve’s time and effort to maintain such a system moving forward. So I don’t really
see it as being in Valve’s interests to do this. Nor do I think it helps the communities that have
built up around Counter-Strike, like Faceit. So I wonder if there’s any basis behind this claim,
other than the general idea that players want CS:GO’s features to be better than they currently
are. Sort of like if I claimed that Source 2 would make it harder to cheat on, or will
improve the graphics in some way. It’s easy to make generally good sounding claims like this,
but we need specifics if we’re to understand HOW it will achieve these things. So there you go:
I’m simply taking away from this that the matchmaking system might be improved.
I mean, this video isn’t meant to be for my own speculation but I do love the idea
of having a clan-based ladder separate to the normal matchmaking, because I loved
watching our clan rising up the leaderboards back in the days of Enemy Down and Clanbase.
Aquarius 2 highlighted this and asked if it meant the game could be getting a
native jumpthrow bind. What does this mean? Well, I’m guessing it’ll be a button that
will provide a consistent jump-throw timing that will nail pre-lined up grenade throws every time.
Currently, the one difference between 64 and 128 tick servers that everybody can
agree on is that it changes the behaviour of grenades. So it would be nice if Valve devised
some way of providing a reliable and consistent grenade-throwing method that will work the same,
no matter which server you’re playing on. Even if we don’t get a variable tick system,
this would still be a nice feature to have!
And that’s about it… FOR NOW. But things are moving quickly. While you’re waiting,
check out this video of mine to see how Source 2 could improve the graphics.