Counter-Strike: Global Offensive hit ten years last week, a remarkably commendable age for an online game. For example, games such as Halo 4, Call of Duty Black Ops 2, and Battlefield 4 were released around the same time. Unfortunately, despite their greatness, these games are almost entirely dead, with only dozens of active players remaining. At the same time, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is currently a top multiplayer game on Steam.
The secret to such success is that Valve supports the game, regularly filling it with content and innovations. The developers can change maps, add guns, or launch operations. In general, it’s about the impulses that keep the game alive. Mostly. Still, CS:GO lacks some really important things even now. Today, CS.MONEY Blog talks about five things CS:GO needs, but they are yet to appear (and maybe won’t ever).
Progression Reset
There’s a popular technique of resetting the progression periodically among multiplayer game developers. Progression reset is usually non-obligatory in games like Titanfall 2 or the Call of Duty series. There, players reset skills, weapons, equipment, and bonuses to the lowest levels to receive cosmetic items. For example, a new camouflage color for player models.
In other games, like Rainbow Six Siege, progression reset is real. Once every three months, all Rainbow Six Siege players reset their achievements in ranked mode and have to start climbing the ladder from scratch. As in the case of the games above, for resetting the progression, the game rewards players with a couple of pleasant little things to flex with in the next season.
Resetting the progression should not be understood as an attempt to discount players’ achievements. On the contrary, it’s a great opportunity to repeat your successes. Regular resets help maintain interest in the game, bring back old players, and act as soft tools against boosted or smurf accounts. Moreover, Valve has already done such a reset recently, and the matchmaking only got better!
128-tickrate Servers
For most players, there’s no difference between playing on 64-tickrate and 128-tickrate servers. And that’s fine since 64 server updates per second are more than enough for top-notch competitive play. However, double frequency servers with 128-tickrate have become standard for competitive matches. Third-party platforms, esports athletes, and competitors (howdy, VALORANT) sit tightly on 128s, and only Valve’s servers are updated 64 times per second.
As a result, unfortunately, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s audience is divided. Let’s add the fact that, according to Steam statistics, most players’ PCs can easily produce 150 frames per second in CS:GO. With all this, it’s a disappointing conclusion that Valve’s official servers should have 128s but they are stuck in the past. This definitely needs to be fixed.
Training Maps
Maybe you didn’t know, but CS:GO has a tutorial. A small map that introduces beginners to the very basics of the game: moving, shooting, planting, and disarming the C4. Well, a usual briefing. But CS:GO does not have regular training or warm-up maps at all. Workshop fan-made analogs are the only thing we have. They help a lot but lacking an official training map, or even a separate mode is surprising.
Matches with bots are closest to this matter. When starting one, you can turn off the bots to have an empty map at your disposal. But this is clearly not enough. It would be cool to see full-fledged training maps that would teach players advanced techniques: airstrafe, strafe, two-mouse-button grenade throws, whatever else. Or at least a separate mode with necessary console commands activated by default to help during training. That would be much better than what’s in the game now.
Healthy Settings
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has several uncomfortable effects that all players regularly experience. Famous examples are the stun grenade’s flash and sound, and headshot sound. Loud noises and sharp bright flashes convey the danger of battles between special forces and villains well. Too well.
Why does it matter so much? These effects can damage the players’ health. For example, regular exposure to loud sounds is considered one of the main causes of tinnitus, aka ear ringing, which significantly affects the quality of life, so it is better not to provoke tinnitus on purpose.
The community has already suggested several options for removing these and other uncomfortable effects. For example, there is a suggestion to change the white screen from flashbangs so that it fills the screen with black instead. These and other settings designed to protect players’ health would be a great addition to CS:GO.
Mirage Update
Every single CS:GO Major has seen Mirage. During all this time (after all, almost a decade has passed since the first tournament under Valve’s patronage), only a few minor changes have been made to the map. Mirage has become so well-known that now it is the game’s face, even more than Dust 2. It’s not a joke: this year, the pros have played Mirage the most; ordinary players statistically also confirm the maps’ popularity, with Mirage, Inferno, and Dust 2 being the three top-picked sites on an equal footing.
And here’s the catch: Mirage is stuck in the past, having become the game’s face. In the current pro-competitive map pool, all other maps, except Overpass, have either been updated significantly or recently released. Meanwhile, Mirage is literally the definition of a CS:GO 2013 map. Well, almost. Of course, the map has received minor updates over time. For example, the shop or the skybox is in the map’s center. But this is nothing compared to how Dust 2 was redesigned. Or Train. Or Nuke. Or Vertigo. Or Inferno.
In general, a Mirage update is what most people are waiting for. And it’s not about just adding new textures to the map; we’re speaking of a complete rework. So, doing it in the eleventh year of the game’s life is a great idea. Moreover, while Valve will be working on the update, they can add the long-awaited Tuscan to the competitive set of maps!
What update would you like to see in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below this post or on our socials!
