A decent update has been rolled out today. It has been made easier to follow tournaments,
to find games and to find players. Click WATCH on the side and go across to EVENTS
and you can see a list of all the ongoing and upcoming tournaments, courtesy of hltv
which you’ll be linked to if you click on any of them. You can choose the tournaments
you want to be notified about if there’s a match being played live. And even if you
don’t do this, according to the patchnotes, all players will be automatically notified
about the most favourited events each month. This new page bridges the gap between the
game and the community surrounding it. Must be part of Valve’s plan to get people more
invested in the pro side of things. The LOOKING TO PLAY feature is a bit like…
dating, but for CS:GO. You can broadcast that you’re available for a game, or if you have
a space in your lobby, you can fill it with a player from this list.
There used to be something similar where nearby players could fill your lobby, but this was
badly exploited recently, with people joining and injecting code and crashing games, so
I think this update is Valve taking steps to make lobbies more private, unless you’re
actively looking for other players. There’s nothing stopping you from letting
matchmaking automatically find you teammates, but this does at least give you more control
over who joins your lobby, so it’s more your fault if you get it wrong.
Players can no longer join lobbies that have already entered the matchmaking queue- because
there’s nothing more annoying than having a search for a game cancelled by someone you
didn’t even ask to join.
Moving onto the game itself, the loss bonus has been capped. To understand why, let’s
go back in time. Back, back back.
In the old days, if you lost, say, 10 rounds in a row, won the next, then lost again, you’d
only get a $1,400 starting round bonus. This resulted in one-sided games where the weaker
team’s economy was left in bloody tatters! This was changed earlier in the year so it
added $500 with each round you lost, and subtracted $500 for each you won. This way, even if you
won a single round, your loss bonus for the next would remain higher than $1,400 instead
of immediately plunging you back into poverty again.
But they might have taken it a bit too far, because there wasn’t a cap to how much loss
bonus you were entitled to. Like, it never gave you more than $3,400, but if you had
lost enough rounds in a row then your loss bonus could have remained at that amount for
the rest of the half, even if you had won several rounds in a row and shouldn’t have
been entitled to such a high loss bonus. So all they’ve done in this update is to
cap the loss bonus at $3,400. It will drop down from this with each round that you win
in a row.
Exploits related to vote commands have also been fixed. If you know what this could have
been then please let me know in the comments section. It could have been a follow-up fix
to the other lobby exploits that they addressed recently.
I always like updates to the map editor- you know a problem has to be bad when they fix
it here instead of botching the problem in the map where it’s happening. There was
apparently a bug that could result in large gaps near the edges of flat displacements.
Could this be what was causing objects to fall through the floor? I hope so, because
of all the bugs I get sent, this is the most common. If we see a load of maps get updated
but without any real changes anytime soon, then it could be from this. We will see!
For now, only Sirocco and the two community maps have been updated. Which I’ll cover
some other time. Dangerzone has had its last new features unlocked
today. The Drone Pilot Tablet is the big exciting
one that everybody will jump to. It lets you take control of drones. You can summon one
whenever you like by pressing the fire button. That’s right- unlimited empty drones at
your disposal! You can also take control of any other drone
on the map- once they’ve dropped off their stuff. So don’t use the drone pilot, expecting
to be able to steal deliveries before they’re made.
Not that it matters- this perk still has so much potential! When in control of a drone,
you can fly about the map’s surface. It hightlights all of the nearby drops and players.
You can pick up and drop items- though some can be tricky to reach. You can remain in
this drone state for as long as you like- just remember that while you’re here, your
player is vulnerable to attack. I tried flying it out of the map and it gets
squished against an invisible wall and ends up flying up really high. I did wonder if
this could be used to your advantage, but it’s pretty easy to spot and vulnerable
when flying this high, and it bugs out the moment you stop using it.
You can’t take control of a drone that’s already being used by somebody else. But you
can the moment they stop using it, which makes it a good check of whether a drone is being
a spy or not. It also gives more use to the first tablet
upgrade, since you won’t need to be close to a drone in order to take control of it.
When you’ve had enough of flying a drone, you can stop controlling it… or you can
make it self-destruct, whereupon it will drop to the ground before bursting into fire like
a Molotov. But with a larger area of effect, it seems. You’ll be able to wreak havoc
on other teams, punishing them for camping in spots!
One of these fireballs is enough to kill people. It’s enough to open the big weapon crates.
It alone has a hundred possibilities! The number of times this would have been useful
in the endgame. Simply fly one over to reveal the enemy’s position, then detonate into
fire to force them out from wherever they are. Brilliant.
The other new options are good, too. You can get a helmet and vest, and while not as exciting
as the BALLISTIC SHIELD that was added last week, this will at least protect most of your
character from all directions, and won’t slow you down at all.
And the last 2 options give you extra money. For every hex cell you stand in, you’re
awarded $100 after a 12-ish second countdown. Getting the ‘BONUS EXPLORE’ doubles the
reward to $200. And the BONUS WAVE ups the reward for surviving
a wave from $750 up to $1000. The question is: which is better? Uh, well
it depends how far you’re going to travel and how long you plan to stay alive. There
are 5 bonus waves, so that’s up to $1,250 you’re guaranteed if you live for long enough
with the BONUS WAVE. If you plan to cover at least 13 cells and to spend at least 12
seconds in each, then the BONUS EXPLORE is better.
Both options will help you to reach the more exotic upgrades the endgame has to offer.
There are some other small changes to the gamemode, too:
Choosing a taser isn’t just for when you want to rush people immediately- it can now
be used to break large weapon crates. This makes it the ideal choice for players who
don’t like scavenging. You simply pick the taser, look on the map for the nearest large
weapon crate, and you can get on with running about with one of the bigger weapons in the
game.
Dropped shields now have a delay before they can be picked up. Here’s how it compares
before and after the update.
Remember- you don’t just have to choose from one of the starting perks. With a few
exceptions, they can be bought as a drop mid-game. But they’re not all priced the same! Some
things, like the shield and armour, cost $500. While the drone pilot costs $1,000. The exojump
also costs $1,000 but does come with the mines and parachute as well, giving you more than
had you started the game with the exojump perk.
With the exojump and ping system, Dangerzone got closer to being like Apex Legends. But
this update moves it further away again. The drones really distinguish Dangerzone from
other games and giving us control over them is Valve making the most of it. The Drone
Pilot perk has the potential to be overpowered. I hope it is! I want to see the fun stuff
people come up with when using it. It’s like adding a whole new dimension to an already
feature-packed gamemode. Other games may have set classes, but Dangerzone
lets you pick and choose the perks you want to play with, thanks to the money system.
All of these items and unlocks allow you to customise how you intend to play, be it as
a spy with the drones, a quake player with the jump boots, or as a guy with a big gun
who just wants to shoot people.
It seems a shame that Dangerzone is seen just as a gamemode for CS:GO, because the love
it’s been given this year, it deserves more than that.