Keeping up with CS:GO’s updates at the moment is a fulltime job. Since the last major, we’ve
had 5 updates in under 2 weeks! One of them was a bit boring, granted. But the rest weren’t.
Today sees Vertigo added to competitive matchmaking, Cbble removed, a few other maps reshuffled
around in casual play, some bug fixes, map updates for Vertigo and a new HUD element
to show the new loss bonus system. We’ll start with Vertigo, which is all opened
up for the first time in years! (Unless you’ve been playing my workshop map version!)
The changes to CT spawn are the hardest to get my head around. The old route has been
sealed up, and a new one added that leads straight through to elevator room. To see
the change this makes to the rotation times between the routes to A, let’s run from
the back of A, around through CT spawn and to elevator room. There. This update also
means that from CT spawn, you can ALMOST see to both sites.
But while this makes it faster for CT’s to reach A, they’ll be a bit slower at getting
to mid. I’ll have to do a contact point analysis for this map at some point, I’m
just a bit scared of doing it right now because it could change again at any moment.
I assume these stacks of insultation are to obstruct this line of sight. But it also lets
players perform a sneaky boost to look on over into bombsite B- and the upper terrorist
corridor entrance as well! Is this intentional? Is it all playing into Vertigo’s verticality?
We’ll let a future update decide. Also, the bullet holes on these rolls are
ludicrously large. And bullet holes on the panels opposite stack on top of each other
until they’re a beautiful rainbow hue! The cover in mid has been shifted slightly,
which the patchnotes say will make ‘T boosts slightly safer’.
Uh- well, I guess if you want to boost up here it is a bit safer now? You can also boost
over the large wooden crate to gain a powerful sightline through to door.
Player movement on the metal stairs at T spawn and B has been smoothed out. For this I made
the clipping brushes visible and you can indeed see that more of it is clipped off at T spawn.
The steps at B… not so much. But there didn’t seem to be a problem with it in the first
place. The soundscapes have been changed. The bridge
at lift shaft shows this most clearly. The sounds have been made much louder and
windier. And outside, particularly at A, I noticed metal groans coming from the crane
that weren’t there before. Not sure if this works well for a competitive
gamemode. Normally Valve reduces distracting stuff like background noise and fog, so this
change did surprise me. Also, I like this little touch here. It wasn’t
added in this update, but this orange graffiti lines up with the edge of the crate on the
other side of the wall. If you hope to wallbang people through here, shoot to the right of
it or else the crate will gobble up all your bullets like a really hungry… box.
The generator at T spawn has been moved up to the ‘second’ floor- which is wrong
on so many… LEVELS! It gives terrorists a good bit of cover to defend against CT rushes,
but also now makes more sense because previously these lights lit up without being connected
to anything! The generator doesn’t appear to be on, but it’s still a step in the right
direction. The cables themselves have been changed. They
used to be 3D models and now they’re using the same wire tech that has been in the Source
engine since Half Life 2. I don’t think it looks quite as well lit as the old cables
were, but I was surprised to see some lighting on them, with the cables away from the skylights
indeed appearing more dimly lit. And then I remember it’s 2019 and it’s not that
impressive at all. And a single roof panel has been taken out
to make grenade throws easier for terrorists. A single roof tile.
I took comparison shots of the rest of the map to see if anything else had changed.
Some metal things have been added to this wall- but I don’t think they serve any purpose
other than to look nice. …And you can lose weapons down the side
here! Valve please fix. If you fall down the shaft, you can see nodraw
in the windows! Horrible way to go. One thing I do love are the worn-off edges
to the concrete blocks. It looks 3D. But it’s not! It’s just painted on. But you wouldn’t
have known that had I not pointed it out. And the last change I noticed was that the
sandbags at bombsite A have gone through a bulking session.
Onto Cbble, which has had a bumpy ride ever since it was first made! It has seen many
large changes since arriving in CS:GO in 2013. But these apparently weren’t enough, and
it’s been taken out of the competitive mappool, now only playable in casual gamemodes. I’d
say to expect a redesign at some point- were Valve not so busy with Vertigo and Canals.
And all of these other updates as well. I don’t see Cbble being a priority right now.
As for the mappools, this is what they looked like before… and this is what they look
like now. Sigma is for more experimental maps that are
perhaps still going through changes, while Delta contains all of the old favourites that
aren’t likely to see much done to them any time soon.
And then there’s Dust2. And hostage.
The loss bonus system was changed a week ago. Maybe it’s proving to be more complicated
to keep track of than expected, so on the scoreboard for competitive games, it shows
how much money you’ll get for losing a round. 0 of these lit up is $1,400, while all 4 will
give you a sweet, sweet $3,400. It also shows the enemy’s which is an interesting touch.
I guess you could work it out manually by counting back through the rounds.
But it does also show another thing: if you lose, say, 8 rounds in a row and then start
winning, you’ll keep the maximum loss bonus for several rounds! Although you’ll never
be paid more than $3,400, it will remain at that for several rounds should your new winning
streak end.
And then there are bug fixes, which you can read here. They’re all pretty self-explanatory.
Tazers no longer shoot through walls. Trilluxe deserves mention here, for in 2016
he made this excellent video talking about the problem. He discovered you could kill
through thin walls, and guessed this was to do with the model culling which hides body
parts that stick through walls- of which I’ve also dedicated a video on in the past, covering.
Sadly, although made invisible, their hitboxes remain active.
Another, newer bug that Trilluxe discovered in 2017 remains, which lets players pick up
the zeus through walls. If you suspect a player is hiding behind a spot, simply toss a zeus
at it and see if it disappears. If so, there’s an enemy the other side who has automatically
picked it up! This would likely work with other weapons,
but since the zeus slot is seldom used, and is so cheap, it’s the ideal choice for this
exploit!
They’ve fixed a problem with the new d3d9ex command- I suspect a lot of players use integrated
intel graphics so it’s good they got that before making it compulsory. The Emperor M4A4
in the Prisma case was missing a ‘the’ from its name, and Danger Zone, CS:GO’s
battle-royale mode, has had a few minor improvements geared around starting matches sooner, and
being able to invite teammates to a new lobby before the previous game ends.
I guess with the improved lobby it isn’t required, but CS:GO used to have a ‘rematch’
vote at the end of every competitive game. It needed both teams to agree to it- and of
course it was never done because why would the losing team want to lose again? So while
this feature hasn’t been in the game for YEARS, I see these new ways of inviting strangers
to your lobby as kind of like an improved, streamlined ‘rematch’ feature.
I know we wanted more updates and I feel this spam of changes is Valve passively aggressively
giving us what we wanted. But I’m trying to work on other videos as well, so let’s
try and hold off the changes for a while!
Please