Houngouoghjoungne posted on Twitter being all like ‘CS:GO has spawn variances,
Valve pls fix s’il vous plait’. He had a problem playing as Terrorists on Dust2,
because their spawn points can vary so much it can make or break a Long A rush, simply
down to random chance of where he starts off, which he believes isn’t a competitive element.
But then he goes too far by suggesting that Dust2 isn’t competitive,
which is clearly wrong ‘cos it’s still the best map ever.
But he has a point about the spawn variances.
As always, I jumped into this thinking it was going to be an easy,
short and simple topic to cover,
but I ended up unearthing so many shades of grey that I woke up this morning, chained to my bed.
Here are all of the CT spawn points on Vertigo. Being one of the newer Valve-made maps,
they’ve got their spawn points sorted. They look like a mess, but what they really are is
3 half-rings of 5. And, to make matters simpler, they have prioritised 1 of these 3 half-rings to
be filled before the others are, meaning that in competitive 5v5 games, CTs on Vertigo will
ALWAYS spawn in one of these 5 positions. Thus, their variance is limited to the distance between
these guys. The maximum distance apart is 192 units, which can be covered in less than a second.
Using a C-shape for the spawns is clever as it allows for easy, unobstructed tossing of weapons
and equipment to the intended teammates. It also leaves a space in the middle for all of your
teammates pool their unwanted assets for anybody else to have. How about that. C for Communism.
This is an example of a spawn done right. Now unless you all spawn inside each other, you’re
always going to get some variance, but it’s very little in this situation, plus given the way this
ring is rotated, they all have easy access to at least one of the routes leading out of the spawn.
The T side is equally well designed. Again, 3 rings of 5 spawns, with one of these rings
taking priority. They happen to be at the back, meaning that in casual play,
you’ll likely encounter enemies a bit sooner on Vertigo because some will spawn further forward.
And also, I find the position of these priority spawns questionable, given how any weapons I
drop tend to enjoy bouncing along the ground and off the side of tall buildings. But the design
of these spawns is well optimised! And again, less than a second of variance between them.
I suppose you could place these spawns even closer together, but at some point
the benefit of lessened variance is outweighed by how much harder it is to drop a weapon to
the intended teammate, and how, when the freezetime ends, everybody ends up running
into each other, blocking an attempted rush. So I would consider Vertigo to be an OPTIMISED
map, for spawn positions! The only other map like it is Ancient, which is Valve’s OTHER newest map!
Valve appear to have got their spawn points in order in more recent years.
The spawns in Ancient don’t look quite so neat; as for CT’s, they’re lined up along this back wall.
So it isn’t so easy for them to drop weapons to each other. And terrorists are prioritised in 2
tightly packed triangles, which I assume was done just cos it looks pretty in the Hammer editor. But
again, it might not be quite so practical if you want to drop weapons to each other. And get this-
6 spawns have priority, so there will always be minor variances between how many T’s have priority
to the best spawns for a rush to each site. So those are what optimised maps looks like. On
the other end of the spectrum, you have maps like Mirage, Overpass and Cache, which have no spawn
priorities what so ever. What you see is what you get with these maps, and so the variation
between the best and worst spawns will be greater. But even in these instances, it doesn’t mean that
these maps will be bad. Overpass’s T spawns may be spread out, but given the shape of the area,
and how they all have to head in the same direction any way, it doesn’t matter nearly so
much as with, say, Mirage’s CT spawn, where some CTs spawn in excellent positions to hold middle,
while others are stuck at the back and trying to find that rifle they dropped for a teammate who
then bought his own and didn’t need any more. So I can strongly urge Valve- and indeed,
any non-Valve map makers like FMPone, to consider priority spawns to their creations
in order to cut down on unnecessary variances between spawn locations.
Nuke is a weird one for having 8 priority spawns per side. Train has 7 for CT, and 6 for Terrorist.
Though I like T side of Train because the way these are set out makes for very little variance
between the spawns. Every man has a chance to lead the charge. Or not, as is what tends to happen.
Using my excellent Excel spreadsheet skills, I devised this colour-coded sheet of variations
between spawn points. Assuming you’ve got your knife out, this is how far behind the best spawn
you could potentially be. But there are a few asterisks to this claim that I’ll need to explain.
For a start: the figures on the left apply only to casual games, so anybody playing competitively
needs instead to look at the figures on the right. Remember, these timing differences in
general are made smaller than in casual games, thanks to use of the priority spawn feature.
I want to point out that it’s hard to determine which are the best and worst spawn points.
Sometimes it’s easy, like in this situation. But other times it’s a lot harder because
different spawns have different benefits, depending on where you wish to be heading.
And third, you’re seldom ever to make a beeline between spawn points. Most of the
time it will be off at an angle like this, so it’s not quite as bad as it looks here.
So you’ll have to trust that I had the best of intentions in mind when I did this analysis,
but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s of limited value because every map has a
differently shaped spawn, and with different numbers of exits leading off from it, which is
something a rigid analysis of distances between the furthest spawn positions cannot account for.
Perhaps a better way of telling if there’s an issue with a map’s spawn variances
is to see if people are complaining about it. Houngoungne, for instance! And my numbers suggest
he might have a point, since Dust2’s spawn variances are out of whack with the others.
I was curious to see how long this dated back. Going back to the Counter-Strike Source version,
which has its roots back in like, 2004, you can see that they’re a lot more densely packed
together. But the earliest version of Dust2 for CS:GO shows the same 3 rings of 5 spawns,
which seems to have lasted through the 9 years and 1 major map remake that Dust2 has received
in that time. Judging by how Valve deals with newer maps, this spread-out spawn system
seems but a relic of an older era, and the time may have come for them to consider changing it.
Which other maps have significant spawn variances? None come close to Dust2’s T-side,
but Inferno looks like the next greatest for spawn variances on its T side. And they’re all trying
to head through the same small opening, so the same spawn points are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ regardless
of where you’re trying to go in that round. …In contrast to Mirage’s T side, where the worse
a spawn is for one site, the better it is for the other, which I think makes the spawn situation
better than on inferno because at least there’s always a perk to where you start off on this map.
But the same can’t be said for the CT side, and for those poor CTs who start way back here.
If you rush window as often as I do on this map then you’ll know how much of a
difference these spawn points can make! And next up is Cache, which again,
doesn’t use the priority feature so the variance could easily be reduced if he decided to use it.
Having seen FMPone’s spawn placement, it reminded me that it’s never ‘told’ to
mappers how their spawns should be placed, nor how much variance there should be between them.
Mappers don’t even know how many spawns are needed! It’s not like there’s no rulebook
anywhere. I think most mappers learn by looking at Valve-made maps, but as we’ve seen already, even
Valve doesn’t seem to know what to do with them! So spawn placements are dictated by the mapper’s
interpretation of what’s best. It might be cool to look through all of the officially
featured community-made maps in CS:GO’s past and to name and shame the weirdest spawn placements!
I’ll save that video idea for a rainy day. I’m trying to recall what my own thoughts are on
this matter. I suppose I’ve always seen a bit of spawn variance on the T side as being a good
thing to allow for surprise, opportunistic rushes. And because the CT’s have a more defensive role,
I’ve not seen spawn variance as being such an important thing for them, since they should
already be able to reach ‘their bit’ of the map long before terrorists do. So it’s only really
with aggressive rushes (like long A on Dust2), or when timing grenades to interfere with rushes,
that spawn variances would matter, which is a meta I suppose can only come about a while
after the map has been released. As something of a mapper myself,
I looked back at my own creations in the hope of finding something profound, but it turns out… I
never really cared much for spawn positions. I’ve only ever cared about having enough of them in
my level, which back in 2014 I thought meant having 32 per side! Which I suppose leads to
more variance than if I only stuck to just 16, or even 12, as maps like Train and Ancient have done.
These days, with 10 player competitive, and 20-man casual, a 64-man Counter-Strike server seems a
weird thought, but back in Counter-Strike Source, large matches and custom gamemodes were far more
popular, and it was worth adding enough spawn points to your own map in case it ever took off on
the popular (and aptly named!) Teesside servers, or for a weird gamemode somewhere. So that was my
thinking behind having THIS many spawn points. It’s not a FUN thing to choose spawn points in
maps. It’s more like, you place them in and if they don’t work then you consider moving them.
And they’re fiddly, too: in Source, if spawn points are touching anything
(even just the ground!) then they no longer work. Which stops you from starting these spawn points
TOO close together. And the game doesn’t do a good job of telling you if they don’t work, so you only
discover you’ve made a mistake during playtesting when somebody complains they can’t join a team.
So that’s what it’s like for a mapper who’s deciding on their spawn placements in their level.
But I can assure you: it’s something I’ll be putting more thought into for my next map!
In conclusion: If spawn variations are such a bad thing, then every map should get priority
spawn positions to minimise variance. Perhaps we should consider going further still by
eliminating variation completely, by getting each player to select a spawn point dangerzone-style,
which they then stick to that for the entirety of that match half’s duration!
That’s if spawn variance is bad. But what if it’s a good thing? Houngoungne
argued that having good spawns for B ruined their long A rushes. But doesn’t this mechanic also
reward adaptive players and teams, who can make the most with what they’re given? Is a last-minute
revision to the upcoming round’s strategy not an element of skill unto itself? Isn’t variance
in the spawns part of what makes maps like Dust2, maps like Dust2? And on Inferno, sure,
it sucks to get a back spawn as a terrorist, but equally, getting one at the front is exhilarating.
And terrifying, cos you know your team will expect you to be first up banana.
The only thing I’m sure about is that TOO much spawn variation can be a bad thing. As
a hypothetical example: if terrorists on Dust2 could spawn anywhere between T spawn and B,
then obviously, that’s too much variation. It’s just a question of where you draw the line. And if
Hounoguougogujonge is complaining, perhaps Dust2 is the only map that has overstepped acceptable
levels of spawn variance. It’s certainly hard to drop weapons for teammates on that map right now.
And I’m all for anything that can make this map even better than it already is.
And doing this video has explained a long-term mystery to me: for years,
I’ve always struggled to drop weapons and to NOT run into teammates on CT side of
Inferno. But now I know why that is, having checked the priority spawns on that map:
…whoever placed them like this is a troll!
Valve, fix.
S’il vous plait.