Hi!
I’m Philip.
But all is not well.
For in this clip, I have TERRIBLE food poisoning.
And I’m dehydrated.
And I forgot to bring my water bottle to the desert.
But I have greater problems than this, because Valve chose this exact moment to release one
of the biggest updates to the game this year!
At least until Source 2 is released.
So if you ask me, Bananagaming’s already done a great job of covering these changes,
and he managed to release it in the same sickeningly quick release time as always, following the
update.
I suggest you check his video about it out, just here.
But at the same time, I know that in 5 years’ time, I’ll be browsing through my videos
to find the one where I cover this change, and I’ll be wondering why it isn’t here.
So while this video is late, I proudly present: MY VIDEO ON THE UPDATE.
In this update, lots of awesome stuff has happened, but perhaps most importantly, the
M4A1-S has had its magazine size dropped from 25 to 20 bullets again, in one of the biggest
nerfs this weapon has had in quite some time.
The reduced magazine size on the M4A1-S will likely lead to the gun being less effective
in extended engagements, as players will have to reload more often.
This could lead to the M4A4 becoming the more popular choice in those situations.
However, the M4A1-S still has the advantage of being more accurate, so it could still
be the better choice in certain situations.
Ultimately, it is up to the player to decide which gun is more suitable for them in any
given situation.
The two M4 rifles have been unbalanced for a while.
Here’s the stats for the challengers stage of last year’s major.
23% of ALL kills, done by any weapon in the tournament, were carried out with the M4A1-S.
Compared with just 2% for the M4A4.
I had to start with just the challengers stage, because if we view the entire major, then
the M4A1’s kills increase to 24%, becoming so dominant that the M4A4 doesn’t even show
its own category any more.
And the M4A1 got more dominant still at this year’s major in Antwerp, increasing to 28%
of all kills in the tournament.
Again, the M4A4 can’t even be seen, putting it below weapons like the deagle, the… galil
and the…
Mp9.
Oh dear.
So we can understand why the M4A1-S has been nerfed- the meta and balance of CS:GO is always
changing, but when one rifle holds such dominance over another, then it’s clear that SOMETHING
isn’t right, and so this nerf should bring some players back to the M4A4 again.
And it’s not like the M4’s stand alone in a vacuum- the M4A1 nerf might even convince
players to pick up an AUG, a FAMAS, or even SMG instead, sometimes.
It’s crazy to me that, right now, even the galil is seen more than one of the CT’s
main rifles is.
This isn’t the first time that the M4A1-S has had 20 bullets per magazine.
Before an update in 2019, it also only had 20!
Yet its reserve ammunition was more restricted back then.
First you had just 40 bullets in reserve, then in 2018, this was upped to 60.
These days, it’s up to 80, meaning that you’re still left with 20 fewer bullets
than with the M4A4, but it’s nowhere near as miserly as it once was.
Although you’re unlikely to fire 60 shots in a round when targeting enemies, having
restricted reserve ammunition does still limit the amount of smoke wallbanging shots that
you can do if you suspect players of being hidden behind them.
Which I find to be an under-appreciated benefit of having lots and lots of reserve ammo.
Here is a handy comparison between the two rifles that I made last year.
And if I cleverly photoshop in the new update…
-perfect-
You can see how the two stack up now.
In my opinion, the two M4’s have never been more different than they are right now.
There have been times in the past where they’ve been similar enough that the only real difference
I’ve felt between them has been to the magazine size, but now with the M4A1 firing slower,
AND dealing more base damage than the M4A4 does, you have a very real and meaningful
choice to make between these two rifles, depending on your particular play-style.
A few maps have been updated in this update, but Ancient is the one that has had the most
changes to it.
Look at this!
At bombsite A, there’s no longer an entrance leading out from the temple and into the bombsite.
There is now ONLY a wider side entrance instead.
So while we’ve lost a Benny Hill opportunity, I do still like changes like this where the
number of entrances has been reduced, since whenever I’ve got to guard two entrances
at the same time, I am, without fail, shot from the one that I’m not currently aiming
at.
So this change is great for me.
Another change is the removal of these boxes here, which opens up a sightline going all
the way from T entrance to mid, right through to T ramp to B. Again, I like this because
it feels more like a proper bit of the level now, rather than being just where they’ve
all dumped the level’s loose ends and then optimised with crate-spam.
This new sight-line opens up all sorts of possibilities- like guarding T entrance to
mid from this platform, or guarding T ramp from here.
Looks like they’ve forgotten to up the draw distances here though- can see right through
the world and into the void beyond.
So expect to see this patched soon.
Speaking of draw bugs, donut room previously did all sorts of funky stuff if you peered
around the central column and into mid.
This COULD be the draw-distances again, OR it could be an occluder, which is an exotic
optimisation tool used in Counter-Strike where a mapper tells the game that you can’t view
through something that it would assume you could.
Maybe the occluder wasn’t the right size, or wasn’t properly placed, it could mean
that what you see here is where it hides stuff before it’s completely out of sight of the
player.
Hence these bugs, which are now fixed.
Donut room has had its edges smoothed out and candles added to improve readability and
to cut down on the camping spots in this area.
But most importantly, it makes this room look a little more like a donut.
This room has been made smaller, removing yet another corner that players could hide
behind.
And this pixel-gap behind this crate has been sealed up.
There was already a pillar in the middle of bombsite B, but now there are other, wider
ones next to it.
This one can be wall-banged- they’re here really just to give terrorists approaching
from ramp more cover from side entrance, and their placement ALMOST completely obstructs
the sightline from here on alley.
But not quite.
Again, this change will make me feel just that little bit safer when rushing the site.
But I’ll still be terrified.
When Valve said that the scaffolding that separates B site from the inside room thingy
had been made less wall-bangable, I wasn’t expecting a drastic change.
But I got one!
You could kill a helmeted player in 3 headshots with the glock before.
Now, the same murder will take 10.
Headshots with the MP7 used to take 3, and now take 8, and an AK headshot previously
dealt 86 damage through the wall, and now does just 49.
So the difference depends on the calibre of the weapon being used, but expect about 50%
less damage with a more powerful weapon, and 70% less damage with a weaker one, like a
pistol or SMG of some kind.
Candles have had their brightness ‘boosted’, which in spots like this you can see does
make it look brighter, but in others, it just looks a lot yellower.
Apparently, there were spots in middle causing players to go airborn!
The only change I can see is to this invisible ramp clip brush, which has been made less
steep on this side.
So maybe that’s it.
I recently got this comment, asking why people who claim to care about climate change do
nothing to stop it.
It’s obviously a deeply flawed and baited statement, but I… sort of… get it.
As a Youtuber, I am heavily dependent on electricity.
I have a big, bright screen, and I spend hours a day stressing a powerful computer, and this
year alone, this 3kliksphilip channel has been watched for 87 years already.
That’s 87 years’ worth of high definition content, streamed from youtube’s servers
to devices across the world, which itself must have a substantial carbon footprint.
But at least I check on the greenery in CS:GO maps, and I am happy to say that, after substantial
analysis, no greenery has been stripped from Ancient in the name of ‘optimisation’
or any other silly excuse, in this update.
So that’s good!
…even if, ironically, more greenery in CS:GO maps probably burns more computing power.
Damn it.
Now’s as good a time as any to show you this.
I’ve been dabbling with a more powerful AI image generation tool called Midjourney.
It’s a bit of a creepy tool- you sit there in a forum full of people all shouting at
it to generate images and it’s there, bringing them all to life one smudge at a time.
Here is what it generated when I asked for images of CS:GO in a jungle setting.
I also tried to describe the Leet Krew but ended up with the Pet Shop Boys.
Inferno has had its C4 explosion beefed up.
Always seemed a bit silly in CS:GO for the bomb to go off right in front of you and for
it only to do, like… 37 damage.
I think this has been done to stop players from so easily being able to survive the blast
from the safety of the back of the site.
And while you CAN still survive a bomb blast on A from a place like pit, you can only do
so if you’re on high health, and if you’ve planted a fair distance away.
You can see the figures on-screen.
It’s a sizeable increase to the damage dealt- and this is with armour!
If you’re not wearing it then it’s double the damage again.
Bombsite B is now LETHAL.
You cannot survive in dark corner, no matter where the bomb is planted.
When the bomb goes off, you’ll really want to be a long way down banana, or up towards
CT spawn, because even cemetery and ruins will virtually guarantee your doom… unless
you’ve planted as far from those places as possible.
Clearly, Valve wants teams to make a mad dash at the end of the round for our amusement.
And I support that decision.
Vertigo gets two bug fixes.
The first addresses THIS, where players could somehow stand on the outside of this cover
by the ramp.
Valve has responded to this by thickening the clip brush that surrounds it so that there’s
no longer anything left to stand on.
The other update ATTEMPTS to fix this bug, where a Molotov landing on this stuff sets
fire to the stuff on the floor below it.
Evidently, the last fix they applied 4 months ago didn’t work.
I don’t know specifically what they’ve changed this time around, as the clip brushes
don’t appear to have changed at all.
But looking at this video from a few days ago, it looks like it’s already been bypassed
again.
Maybe Valve should admit defeat and delete the rebar completely!
Cache had a mystery fix, and according to El Exodus on reddit, there was a way to make
clients of all players have a huge performance drop.
And lastly, Vineyard’s had some generic bug fixes and a new blowy ivy model.
I asked one of the developers if there was anything worth covering, and they just said
that the map should crash less frequently now.
I’ve been so late to cover this update that CS:GO has received ANOTHER update since!
…but this one’s just about the Steam Deck controls again.
Something about every Valve game having a unique control system on the device rubbed
me up the wrong wa,y and I reached out to SolarLight for his thoughts on what would
be the best, universal control system, which I then forwarded onto Valve, so here’s hoping
that they can settle on a standardised control system for the Steam Deck device.