The first month with Vertigo: fifty official maps and nothing is clear

At the end of March, Valve surprised community by adding Vertigo to the competitive mappool. It is good that there is a rotation and it was obvious that Cache will be removed as FMPONE almost prepared the processed version of the map, but the choice of Vertigo seemed the most strange. After all, there is a redesigned Cobblestone, Valve could try to solve the issues on Tuscan or try to revive Cpl_Mill. They could choose something else from the current CS:GO maps, it is unlikely that the resonance would be greater.

However, we have what we have. In the first month with Vertigo in the pool of maps, there were played 58 official games and so far the feeling is very contradictory.

In this post:

The good and the bad

It is worth starting from the fact that Vertigo – a funny for the competitive format. To be honest, we can finish with this point. The multi-level structure of Vertigo with many moves, angles, and hidden places create chaos. The bad side of this moment is that the randomness is higher than on the usual maps – something completely illogical can happen more likely.

The flip side of the coin: despite the theoretically lower overall level of play on the map, it’s all a lot of fun. For the viewer. The match of two tier-1 teams on Vertigo will be very interesting to watch. Perhaps we will see it already on BLAST Pro Series Madrid. In addition to the enhanced probability of random, there is a noticeable bias in favor of protection, and specifically, in the direction of B-site – it’s almost impossible to take it as T.

How is Vertigo taken by teams and events?

Tier-2/3 tournaments and leagues almost immediately have replaced Cache with Vertigo (though some players hoped, that competitive Vertigo is just an April’s fool). But, for example, BLAST Pro Series Miami and IEM Sydney were held with Cache in the map pool (by the way, the tournament in Sydney showed that Cache was already a mistake: the teams tried to avoid playing on this map. For the entire event there were played just a couple of games on Cache). And the teams were not in a hurry to choose Vertigo at first. It’s understandable, a new and super-specific map. Playing it in important matches was akin to suicide. But after the initial lull, at Copenhagen Games was played 15 matches during the event (including BYOC-qualifiers) and now for many teams Vertigo – is just one of the maps.

Who does well on Vertigo?

We note that the top teams have not played Vertigo yet, but from what we saw, 3 teams play Vertigo very cool:

FURIA (3 wins out of 3 matches)
NoChance (5 wins out of 5 matches)
Movistar Riders (3 wins out of 3 matches)

In general, it can be reflected that aggressive and “explosive” teams, as well as teams with active and arrogant lurkers, should feel comfortable on Vertigo. And separately, it would be nice to see Liquid and Stewie2k on the new map. It must be really nice.

What’s further?

The only question is how long Vertigo will stay in the competitive map pool. And whether to change it next time. On the approach of Cobblestone and Cache, there are several other options, and so far it seems that Vertigo is only an experiment and a short-term measure. However, Valve might have a completely different position on this matter.