The Cobblestone map has not been part of the competitive set for several years now. The same number of years ago, Vertigo replaced it in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Each map has supporters and fans. To celebrate the third anniversary of this rotation in the map pool, the CS.MONEY blog is looking for an answer to the still-so-burning question: which map is worse, Vertigo or Cobblestone?
To find out which one’s worse, we came up with a special points system. In order to determine the ‘winner,’ we compared the two maps. Each unique flaw gave the map a point. The more points, the worse the map! Now it’s time to find out what the weakest link in the CS:GO competitive map pool is.
Popularity
There are three favorites among regular players. Dust 2, Inferno, and Mirage are played more often than all other maps in the game combined. Vertigo and Cobblestone have parity in this matter. That said, we decided to seek the pros’ opinion. Surprisingly, quite a few esports professionals are rooting for the return of Cobblestone.
Wow, what a support group! Surely Cobblestone was the most popular map in the Majors. Well, no, it wasn’t. The map was only played four times in the main stage of the 2018 ELEAGUE Major. To put it in perspective, the most popular map of the tournament, Mirage, was opted for as the battlefield an impressive fourteen times. And we’re not fudging the results here. At PGL Major Krakow 2017, the map wasn’t a favorite either.
At the end of its life in the pro scene, Cobblestone had an abysmal balance and wasn’t popular with the pros. What about Vertigo? This map has only made it to two Majors so far, and both times, it was at the tail end of the popularity scale. Talk about a coincidence. Both maps scored one popularity point each.
Appearance
Cobblestone is some kind of castle museum in France. The map looks like the embodiment of 2007, what all its space occupied with monotonous stone and flat paving stones mixed with grass and wooden elements. To be honest, it looks completely outdated compared to, say, Inferno. Try to remember the latter: a bright yellow wall at the banana, red walls and paving stones at A Site, stained-glass windows in the ruined church — every part of the map is unique.
On Cobblestone, you might point out that the armor set and the huge dragon drawing are pretty eye-catching. And maybe the coffin cart. Everything else is monotonous. Stones on the floor, stones on the walls, even the ceiling is stone!
Vertigo is a little better in this respect. A Site has a huge yellow wall, and there’s a fence that can be seen from anywhere on the bombsite around B. Wall textures demonstrate more variety. On Vertigo, you can find walls of drywall, concrete, and bricks. Far more options than stones, stones, and… stones on Cobblestone. In this part of the competition, we deservedly award Cobblestone one point for its stinky appearance.
Optimization
You know what the new versions of Nuke, Inferno, and Dust 2 have in common? They all exert more pressure on the hardware than the older versions. And since Cobblestone is an older map, it should have more frames per second than Vertigo, right? While this is true in theory, but in practice, the difference between the Vertigo and Cobblestone in terms of FPS falls within the statistical margin of error for most computers. Considering the appearance of Cobblestone, we can safely add another point to this old-school map.
In CS:GO, maps are associated with skin collections of the same name. Vertigo has two such collections: The Vertigo and The 2021 Vertigo. Let’s face it, the former is rather underwhelming. Its rarest skin is the Dual Berettas Demolition, and its most expensive one is the AK-47 Black Laminate. The second collection looks more fun. It has more skins, and the skins themselves are more eye-catching.
Cobblestone, on the other hand, has only one set of skins. But how beautiful it is! The Cobblestone Collection contains the Dragon Lore AWP and M4A1-S Knight! It’s an unqualified victory for the old map, no two ways about it. The penalty point goes to Vertigo.
Jumps & falls
We’ve already discussed the exterior, but haven’t yet expatiated on the layout of the map. And by the way, both can boast deadly elevation changes! On the old version of Cobblestone, there was even a chance of you not getting out of the T base and simply crashing down instead. Not a bad result if you want to mess with your team and leave it outnumbered. Just don’t overdo it: the game kicks you out of the match for overly frequent suicides.
On Vertigo, you can crash as well. And you don’t even have to try too hard. Almost anywhere on the map, you might jump over the edge and fall to the ground from the height of a skyscraper. Besides sabotaging for the team, a stunt like that can also be beneficial. By jumping off the map, you’ll live a few more seconds, and these seconds can aid you during the weapon save. It’s a rare scenario, but on Cobblestone, it’s not possible at all. In this section of the comparison, it’s Cobblestone that gets the penalty point for its boring vertical layout.
Summary of the comparison
We’ve compared and contrasted Vertigo and Cobblestone in five different parameters. At the end of the day, Vertigo scored two penalty points. The map wasn’t particularly popular, and the weapon finishes in the map’s collections can’t compete with the legendary AWP Dragon Lore. Contrariwise, Cobblestone scored as many as four penalty points. It’s boring to fall and crash on, it has bad PC performance despite its awful appearance, and the best years of Cobblestone’s popularity were five years ago.
To sum up, Cobblestone with four penalty points is twice as bad as Vertigo with two penalty points. It turns out that the old maps are really not as beautiful as we remember them?
