So far, the latest major has seen the AUG’s usage shoot up from ‘not much at all’
to being more popular than the M4’s- which up until this point had been the CT rifles
of choice. What happened?!
I compared them in depth, way back in 2014. I concluded that the AUG is accurate from
a greater distance. It penetrates armour better. And at close range, can kill helmeted enemies
in one hit- unlike other CT rifles! Mastering the spray pattern will make it more accurate
than the M4’s are. And spraying with it fires 667 bullets a minute- 10% faster than
the M4A1-S can. And yet, despite these benefits, until 2019
the M4A4 and M4A1-S HAD been considerably more popular. If asked why you think that
is, you’d probably just list off their advantages: they deal better damage against unarmoured
enemies. You move a bit faster when using these. The spray pattern is smaller and thus
easier to learn and control. And it takes less time to deploy and to reload them. And
they cost less. These benefits were enough reason for almost
everybody to stick to using the M4’s… until now.
Although I tested them 5 years ago, since then, the weapons themselves haven’t changed
THAT much. I’ll cover what has happened a bit later on. The biggest change the AUG
has received is the recent drop in price from $3,300 down to $3,150 last October.
And that doesn’t sound like a big change to me. That’s less than the cost of a flashbang-
and it appeared to transform an almost unused weapon into the next big thing! It’s still
more expensive than the M4’s, it’s not like they save money by getting the AUG instead.
It could just be that players’ rifle preferences truly are that price-sensitive. But this video
will investigate what other factors could have contributed to this change in rifle preference.
Most of this will be speculation. I don’t think there’s a way of knowing for sure.
But I still think a lot can be learned from investigating.
Long before the M4 VS AUG battle was taken seriously, another question split the community
in two. And that’s M4 VS M4. Since the M4A1-S was introduced in 2013, it has spawned endless
debates over which M4 is the best. Over on HLTV it shows the most used weapons
for each year. I ripped the M4’s and AUG’s data from this and compared them over time.
Now this isn’t entirely true. I don’t think the AUG’s usage in 2014 or the M4A1-S’s
in 2019 was actually 0%. It was simply low enough not to show in the original pie-chart,
so rather than ‘0’, consider this ‘low enough not to be one of the most popular choices’.
The M4A4 is still a BIT ahead of the AUG if you look at all of the results for 2019 so
far. But if we only look at the stats for the latest major, you can see the story is
very different. This could just be an anomaly. But I don’t think it is! If the AUG is suddenly
good enough for the best teams in the world in the most influential tournament of the
year… I expect to see it being used elsewhere as well. Starting now.
Comparing weapon changes over time… The M4A4 is the constant. It has remained
more-or-less identical, forever costing the same old $3,100. The M4A1-S, on the other
hand, has been changed quite a lot and has seen its price vary from between $2,900 and
$3,200! I don’t think the AUG was even a factor in these changes. The adjustments to
the M4A1-S were done to keep its usage balanced with that of the M4A4’s. Since 2015 the
prices of both have been the same, and apart from the tap buff / spray nerf adjustment
in 2016, their stats have remained more-or-less the same for years.
And yet, despite this, players’ preferences between them have still changed. Perhaps due
to changes in the prices and stats of OTHER weapons in the game. Changes to the game’s
economy, which strategies are in fashion and so on. Lots of things could determine which
M4 is the most popular. It’s just that they themselves haven’t changed. Likewise, a
large part of why the AUG is now the favourite could just be down to these other factors,
the $150 drop in price being enough to kick-start the avalanche of change. To get the ball of
progress rolling. To usher in a controversial new world for Global Offensive.
In short: I think the $150 drop was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Even before
this, the AUG was better than we thought. Or at least, better than public opinion made
it out to be. It’s not like it wasn’t questioned- countless people asked on forum
posts why the AUG wasn’t more popular. These have always been followed up with a list of
the M4’s strengths and it’s simply been left at that. Now the AUG’s more popular
and used by pros, it’s easy to look back with hindsight and to laugh at how blind we
all were. But weapon balance has always been more than cold, hard facts and figures. To
put it politely, there’s always been an artistic element to the weapon meta. To put
it not so politely… it’s a popularity contest and we’re all like sheep, following
the crowd. I think that we, as players, aren’t as objective
as we like to think we are. A sunk cost fallacy is where your decisions
are influenced by the time you’ve already invested into it. While the AUG may have been
better for some occasions, perhaps we as players were unwilling to let our mastery of the M4’s
go to waste. All those hours we’ve spent, practicing it and learning its nuances. Plus,
why learn something like an AUG, when you’d seldom pick that up off a fallen enemy? Why
ruin your short-term success by switching to a weapon that would take time to learn,
and the uncertainty that comes with it? I suspect veterans of the game stuck with
the M4’s out of familiarity, and popularity has led to new players adopting the same preference.
And while the M4’s have forever been associated with good players, it’s perhaps thanks to
Call of Duty that the AUG and its scope have been associated with noobs- maybe this was
enough to prevent change until now. Now that players better than ourselves are discovering
the AUG and winning with it, it’s no longer seen as a nooby weapon. I’ve certainly seen
its use in matchmaking boom since the start of the major.
I sometimes wonder how different Counter-Strike would be in an alternate reality. Or if pro
teams from an entirely remote country (COUGH AUSTRALIA) were to suddenly compete against
everybody else. Unfortunately the Klik Empire can’t fund such an experiment, but what
if we gave CS:GO to a remote tribe somewhere, and let them master it. I wouldn’t be surprised
if their tactics, map and weapon preferences ended up being completely different to that
of the rest of the world, if based only on the latest version of the game and with no
past biases, outside influences or historical information to influence their choice. I’m
not saying they’d be better. They’d probably develop their own biases. But they’d be
interesting to see.
I don’t think we should be too embarrassed about the AUG situation. A lot of factors
are at play, and people have done perfectly well with the M4’s until now! It perhaps
requires a team at the highest level of play to win with the AUG to wake the rest of the
playerbase up. Moving forward, we should acknowledge that the AUG is a decent weapon, and so as
not to look so silly in the future, maybe consider the possibility that the current
weapon usage might not represent how good they actually are. I’m fully expecting dualies
to dominate eco rounds soon. Another thing about the AUG adoption interests
me- and that’s Valve’s decision to lower its price. They could have done anything to
it! They could have buffed its stats, nerfed the M4s… or they could have just done nothing,
leaving the game as it has been for years. But something made them drop the AUG’s price,
and I think it was to test CS:GO’s fanbase. To see if just a small price drop was needed
to make an ignored weapon viable. Something tells me they didn’t expect quite
so many people to jump to it so quickly! So I’m excited to see what happens next.
They’ll wait until after the major, no doubt. But I would be surprised if there wasn’t
further tweaking to the rifles’ balance before the second major of 2019. The only
question is… what will it be? The M4’s have been a fundamental part of
Counter Strike since the beginning. Something doesn’t seem right about them falling out
of favour so quickly, no matter how exciting this change to the meta feels right now. But
at the same time, something tells me that the game can’t return to how it was before.
Even if the AUG was to return to $3,300, I think many people would continue using it,
now it’s had the chance to be used and for its strengths to be known.
I wonder if maybe the AUG’s success will encourage them to drop the prices of other
under-used weapons to keep things fresh for the major, and to reward the teams willing
to take risks. There may be other great weapons lurking within CS’s arsenal. All it might
take is a small financial incentive to encourage players to give them a chance!
You know what else dropped in price when the AUG did? It was the SG553, which is kind of
like the terrorists’ version of the AUG. But this weapon costs even less- just $2,750-
and yet it hasn’t seen the same boost in popularity that the AUG has been enjoying!
Using the scope on an AUG or SG reduces recoil and improves accuracy further- but these traits
help CT’s in particular, who generally know where enemies will be coming from and can
use a scoped weapon to lock it down. Maybe this is why the terrorists still greatly favour
the AK. Hopefully I’ve made it clear throughout
this video that I don’t know for sure… because I don’t! I still remember back in
2014 when Cloud9 used the AUG on Cbble and thinking that maybe we were witnessing the
start of something great. But we weren’t. And after all this, is there any proof that
using the AUG has made maps more CT-sided? Surely that would be the real test to see
how good it is? I’m not proud of how this turned out, but
it shows what it needs to. As an example: HERE are 2 bars showing the number of CT-T
rounds won on Mirage. This first bar shows it for the London major last year, back when
the M4 was the favourite CT weapon. You can see from the blue area, representing CT round
wins, that they won about 50% of the time. Now onto the second bar for Mirage, representing
this current major in Katowice. So far. The blue bar here is bigger, meaning that CT’s
have won more than 50% of the rounds played on Mirage.
The win-rate for CT’s has jumped up, which could be something to do with the AUG giving
them an advantage! All of the other maps have done the same, meaning that CT’s are doing
better in this current major than they were in the last.
OH apart from on Dust2, where the CT win rate has gone down massively. Thanks, Dust2. Ruining
an otherwise clean conclusion. I thought we were friends.
Apart from Dust2, all of the maps have become more CT-sided. This could be a sign that the
AUG makes it easier for CT’s to win. Or it could be another factor. Or it could just
be random chance, what with how small the sample sizes are. As an example, for this
major, so far only 2 matches have been played on Cache!
In conclusion, after decades of the M4 dominating the game, a small price drop to the AUG has
made it the new weapon of choice. It has been used extensively by pros in this major, and
now the world can see that it’s a good weapon in the right hands, I expect the AUG to become
the favourite in other tournaments and in matchmaking from now on.
After this major I expect Valve to roll out an update to try and bring balance back. I
have nothing against the AUG being used but it does feel like too big a change to the
buying-meta and map balance, in too short a time. I don’t think Valve was wrong to
drop the AUG’s price. But knowing what we do now, I think it would be wrong to keep
it how it is. But until then, I suggest you sit back and
enjoy the major. The M4-some has ended. The AUG-asm has begun.