Following a rather busy December, CS:GO has taken a bit of a break from updates this January…
until now. In short: Vertigo, Abbey and Zoo have been
added to the game, and Austria and Subzero have been removed. Biome remains and has had
a few changes. You no longer need a phone number tied to your account to get Prime:
reaching level 21 will do. And there have been some bug fixes regarding sound files.
But I think knowing what’s changed is boring. What’s far more exciting is WHY these changes
have been made. Let’s start with Vertigo. This map has been
around in some form or another for almost 20 years. Despite this, it has had a bumpy
ride since it was reintroduced into the game for CS:GO. It has always been the ideal map
for trolls. People would chuck the bomb off the side. Bots would plummet to their deaths
trying to retrieve it. Valve eventually updated the game so that the bomb would teleport back
to where it was thrown off from. Then players began throwing themselves off
the side! Eventually, Valve updated the game to kick people who suicided too many times.
And then, because it was one of the least popular maps, it was abused by parties looking
to rank or derank quickly. Add to that the questionable layout and gameplay balance and
it’s obvious why it was finally removed from the game in 2017. In fact, the only question
is why this wasn’t done sooner! But now it’s back, and its layout is so
different it may as well be a new map. Right now, the only way you can play it is in wingman
mode and you can only access bombsite B. But even bombsite A, and the routes leading to
it, have been changed, leading me to believe that they will at some point release it as
a full defuse map again, at some time in the future. I edited the map to open it all up,
so if you want to you can download it in this video’s description and play it 5v5 or with
bots or whatever you want to do with it.
Onto the other 2 new maps now. Abbey and Zoo have been introduced into casual play. Although,
saying that, I have covered both of these before! Zoo was in the game as part of Operation
Bloodhound in 2015. And while Abbey will be new to most people, it was one of the finalists
in Mapcore’s 2017 mapping contest- along with Biome, which is already officially part
of CS:GO! If history repeats itself, in about a month
Zoo and Abbey will be moved into competitive play. This is what happened to Subzero and
Biome, which were introduced in the same way 3 months ago. Of course, nothing’s set in
stone and I’m assuming this time in casual play is to give Valve time to collect stats
from matches played on them, to determine whether they’re worthy of remaining in the
game. Judging from the changes that Subzero and Biome had during this stage, I wouldn’t
be surprised if this information was shared with the mappers themselves, but this is just
speculation on my part. I don’t know if we’ll ever get a new Operation
again, but maybe it won’t matter. Perhaps slipping a couple of community maps into the
game every couple of months works better in some way. Valve are the ones with all the
information. And if you want to help CS:GO to become a better game with a better mappool,
go play some matches on Zoo and Abbey to help Valve determine whether they’re worth keeping.
For all we know, one of these could be the next Dust2 and become our new favourite of
all time. But, to make way for these new maps, others
had to go. So with this update, Austria and Subzero have been removed from the game. I
got the feeling that these were popular… but I guess they weren’t popular enough.
Biome remains and has received decent changes to its layout, which I will cover now.
The timings across the whole map have been changed, rendering my contact point analysis
well and truly DED. Terrorists are roughly 200 units further away from middle and bombsite
B, and 200 closer to A. This equates to .8 seconds when running with a knife… which
is not insignificant! The official explanation for this change to the spawn positions is
to give CT’s ‘better’ mid timings. But it changes everything. If terrorists are on
their way to A, they may now have time to hide in this corner, whereas before they certainly
did not. And it gives CT’s almost a second more to prepare grenades at B, and those foolishly
pushing through the red door here will face more distant enemies rather than to have them
all up in their faces being like shooty and stuff.
Also for long A, the connection leading to Main Hall has been sealed up, which changes
things a lot! It simplifies this half of the map as you no longer have a quick route to
rotate between the entrances… something that will change things both pre and post-plant.
And with it, Long A has become something you’ll really have to commit to. But if it pays off,
you’re given a powerful angle into bombsite A, AND a route bypassing both sites and mid,
leading straight to CT spawn and by extension the rest of the map, which could be super
effective. Bombsite A itself has seen a few changes.
Sightlines to and from Main Hall have been obstructed by an increased amount of cover.
And while you used to have to jump up and over a stack of wood to get to long A, there’s
a new large set of stairs to do the hardwork- so you don’t have to.
Since Biome’s inclusion in the game, middle has already seen radical changes made to it.
But now it’s seen another: the old CT entrance being sealed up completely, and a ladder being
added to give access to the sniper’s nest to those pushing through mid.
But let’s be honest- both this and the boost box are difficult passages for terrorists
to take. I feel these changes have been made to deter terrorists from taking these routes,
which means that when they do happen they’re all the more sneaky.
If the patchnotes are to be believed, you’ll get better framerates on this map now, which
I suspect was done by removing or by replacing foliage with lower quality models. Note the
cardboard cut-out plants here, which used to be fully 3D.
Several clipping and bomb-stuck issues have also been fixed and- my personal favourite-
the curbs at CT spawn no longer fade out early. Well done.
Several sound bugs have been addressed to make sneaking more reliable. If you fall and
take damage, or if you jump, the associated sounds will be played more consistently. At
this point I’m simply reading out the patchnotes since I don’t think any more explanation
about these is required!
And lastly, changes to Prime. Making the game free-to-play last month was a bold move from
Valve, and one that most of us didn’t expect. It was a change that a lot of people vocally
disagreed with, worrying that it would flood our matches with cheaters. But Valve hasn’t
backtracked. In fact, with this update they’ve gone further still, letting you reach Prime,
for free, without even needing a phone number tied to your account. That’s right: once
you reach level 21, you will immediately be upgraded to Prime, granting you access to
matches that are away from the free-to-play rabble that has just started out with the
game. You may see it as the game becoming less secure-
simple as that. But it could be seen as Valve dropping the measures that they decided didn’t
work, and instead putting MORE reliance on things that they think work better, such as
the trust factor. This is something that takes into account a huge number of variables about
your account and you as a person, silently filtering out the players it thinks are likely
to ruin matches. I will say once again that there’s more
in place to stop cheaters than simple time or money invested into their account. There’s
still VAC and Overwatch weeding out the cheaters that get through the other security measures.
But this update can be seen as a statement from Valve. Going Free to Play was a bold
move, but clearly they didn’t think it was enough, now confidently taking another step
in the same direction. I don’t know their master-plan, but they’re not showing any
signs of backtracking.