It’s been a whole week since the game’s last official update. Now here’s another
worth covering… and it’s the middle of the night, so I’ve got to be quiet.
Vertigo and Cache have swapped places. Vertigo is now in active duty, Cache is in reserve.
I don’t think anybody saw this coming!
Right now, both are playable in competitive matchmaking… but we now know that no map
is safe. We could be seeing Vertigo played in the next major! This skyscraper map’s
importance sure has risen a long way this year.
Fans of Cache shouldn’t be too sad. FMPone is giving it a facelift, so this removal from
the active mappool may only be temporary and may result in Cache becoming a prettier map
that’s better than ever!
The casual mappools haven’t changed (Nor have their in-game descriptions), but I need
to update what I said about them a week ago when I said that the ‘Delta’ collection
appeared to be for ‘all of the old favourites that aren’t likely to see much done to them
any time soon’… what I said still kind of stands, apart from Cache, which is feeling
a little nervous right now.
A new music kit, EZ4ENCE, celebrates Finnish team ENCE’s recent success in the major
and embraces the memes that went along with it. The team’s lineup hadn’t even been
together for a year, but still managed to defeat many favourites, reaching all the way
to the grand final where their EZ winning spree was eventually ended by Astralis.
A new sticker capsule is available. The FERAL PREDATORS capsule, designed by established
skin makers 2minds, Onilolz and Zaphk, contains 9 formidable looking designs, each available
in 2 different quality grades. I’ll just show them here: all 9 are obtainable in the
lowest (And misleadingly named), ‘HIGH GRADE’ of sticker class.
These are the 6 that are in the middle, ‘HOLO’ grade, sporting a rainbow hue.
And last are the 3 of the premium FOIL grade category, all normal-mapped and 3D looking.
But not as rainbowy as HOLO.
They can’t leave Vertigo alone, can they. The timings for both teams should have changed.
They have used the SPAWN PRIORITY feature, which selects which spawn points players will
start at in competitive games. For CTs, they’ll start at the 5 best possible spawns- 3 are
the closest to bombsite B and middle, and 2 are bombsite A.
Terrorists, on the other hand, get a raw deal and will start at the spawn points furthest
away from the sites. This does mean that casual games will see the teams encountering each
other sooner than is possible in competitive. In the past I have seen the priority used
for CT’s, but not so much with terrorists. Using this command will standardise starting
positions, removing yet another variable from competitive play. I wonder if they’ll extend
this to other maps as well in future updates. At the rate we’re getting them at the moment
I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.
As well as prioritising some over others, they also say they’ve moved the CT spawn
positions forward- which will further improve rush times for the good guys. You can see
the changes here. And although they haven’t mentioned it,
they’ve shifted a few of the terrorist ones as well, but I don’t think this alone will
be changing how the rounds play too much.
The two-man boost in CT spawn has been ‘blocked’. You can still do it, but one of the players
must be crouched and although you can still see people in mid and B, they’d have to
be in some unlikely, uncommon spots. This boost has actually been nerfed, and not removed.
In middle, they’ve changed the boost box into this nice stack of cover; some just above
head-height, some a tad below. You can run around this whole thing, or run up this INCREDIBLY
precariously placed pallet to jump through into B, as you could before. Or how about
to do some skilful run-jump over onto this cover here? If you want to.
I’m guessing this change was done to give middle some decent cover for combat to be
based around. The ORANGE BOX provides solid protection for those stood close to it, though
I am a little bit concerned by the numerous gaps between the props- not sure if this was
fully thought through and I expect to see small changes to their positions to close
these up. Also, the clipping on this side of pallet is a little questionable. The other
side’s great. Bombsite B’s falling-protection has been
extended to the corner, making the whole site a safe zone unless you jump or try REALLY
hard to fall off the side. The red barrels on both sites are now blue
plastic containers filled with corrosive liquid. Their shape is simpler- I’ve only just realised
you could lose weapons down the middle of the barrel stacks before. Let’s assume that
was one of the reasons for the change. The wooden panel at the top of the stairs
at B site has gone and the wall at the foot of stairwell now reaches the ceiling to remove
any possibility of a sneaky peek over. The site’s platform has been extended across
to block an overpowered 3-man boost that could have been done before. But you know what this
change has done, don’t you. The drop will now deal a small and infuriating amount of
damage. Please fix. The terrorist entrance to B keeps being shifted
further over. You went from being able to see pretty much all the way from T spawn through
to bombsite B, and now you can barely see any of the stairwell room at all!
I’m sure as a direct result of the previous change, the clutter lining the sides of the
room has also been updated. There were always camping spots either side of the doorway.
Now, they’re just slightly different. And I don’t believe this- I made another
mistake. The generator powering the lights at T spawn IS on. There’s a soundscape tied
to it and everything. It’s just that it’s so quiet that to hear it over the background
sounds your face has to be pretty much inside it!
The accident counter at the team spawns was a nice touch, but only worked with casualties
over the side of the building. Jumping down the lift shaft now also adds to the counter.
This had got to be the most morbid patchnote this week!
In addition to these changes, a bug has been fixed where, under rare circumstances, grenades
could go through closed doors. I seem to recall that this could be done by tossing a grenade
at a player who was stood next to it. After the first collision the grenade would then
pass through stuff- in some cases, doors, in others, the ground. I guess we’ll see
if this is still a problem!
And weapons can’t be picked up through walls or without direct line-of-sight. This was
something I pointed out a few videos ago, where you could use a zeus to see whether
an enemy was stood on the other side of something. But again, a shout-out to Trilluxe who covered
both of these bugs YEARS ago! Good on Valve for going back and finally addressing these
issues. And for not banning the people who point them out. Valve pls f- No
And these are the miscellaneous changes. I don’t have much to say about some of these,
but they’re continuing to patch up d3d9ex, so I do expect it to become the default mode
for the game at some point just to make alt-tabbing when in exclusive fullscreen mode more responsive.
I’ve heard about this bug a lot of times these past few weeks- if you sold a weapon
skin mid-match, the gun it was for became unbuyable. Again, it’s fixed.
Yet more content, more map adjustments, and more (important!) bug fixes. I expected updates
following the major, but didn’t anticipate just how many we were to get, nor the enthusiasm
Valve has shown with what they’ve been updating. March 2019 has been an excellent month for
Global Offensive. So far