Last week, Counter-Strike celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. The community eagerly awaited a significant game update for such a momentous occasion, and we finally got it. Today, CS.MONEY Blog will discuss whether a new operation was added to CS2, why this update is substantial, and what to expect next.
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Five New Community Maps
The main feature of the update is five new maps made by different community members. Now, all of them are officially available for matchmaking, so you won’t have to bother with subscribing to the workshop and searching for private servers.
Why is this good? It’s convenient for players because they get variety while being able to farm experience to obtain cases and skins. Additionally, this is the first step towards a potential update of the competitive map pool. Some maps also started through the workshop and casual matchmaking before getting promoted to a higher class.
Pool Day
Let’s start introducing the newcomers with a map that doesn’t really need an introduction. Pool Day was a legendary map in CS 1.6, where entire internet cafes played it for days on end. Small space, weapons scattered on the floor, and many open lines for shootouts — the map was created for mindless and brisk gameplay. Unsurprisingly, it was added to the Arms Race mode — this variant seems even better than the original, as the map is very well-suited for it.
Memento and Assembly
The maps for the Wingman mode now include Memento and Assembly. We wrote about Memento a month ago when highlighting the best maps in the CS2 workshop. Back then, we wrote: “A very picturesque map for Wingman mode, which we would like to see in the main game pool in the future.” Thank you, Valve, as more players will see the beauty of a wedding amid Italian landscapes.
Assembly is an aircraft assembly hangar. The map is small and vertical, but this verticality is more reminiscent of Overpass rather than Nuke or Vertigo. Fans of Call of Duty might also find it similar to Terminal, a classic from Modern Warfare 2.
Thera and Mills
Finally, the five-on-five map pool is expanded with two new maps: Thera and Mills. We were almost certain of the first one’s arrival — it’s the first big project in CS2 by FMPONE, the creator of Cache. He had been sharing screenshots showing his progress for a long time, and it was clear that the community cared about this map. The setting is on the Greek island of Thira, also known as Santorini. This tourist attraction, visited by a couple of million people annually, is known for its romantic atmosphere. FMPONE and his team managed to capture the architectural beauty of Thira. Hopefully, we’ll see this map in a major tournament in the future.
Mills was created by another well-known mapmaker, catfood, who worked on the version of Tuscan for CS:GO. This map, set in a small Dutch village, has mixed feelings among players. Many find it unusual, but Mills leaves almost no one indifferent: people either really like it or feel a burning hatred for it. Overall, this is a good sign!
Mills and Thera are available for casual and competitive matchmaking, and who knows, maybe at next year’s major in the USA, we’ll see one of these maps in the map pool.
Graphics Settings Update
CS2 now has a new “Frame Pacing” subsection in the graphics settings, but there’s no big breakthrough here — more of an optimization. You can now separately set the maximum fps in-game and in the menu, and the game will warn you if the refresh rate in-game differs from the maximum possible for your monitor. Additionally, the game will check and recommend optimal settings for G-sync, V-sync, and other Nvidia features. It’s a small thing, but nice.
Other Changes
Among the important changes, note that to get a rank in competitive mode (not to be confused with Premier), you now need to win two matches on a map instead of ten.
Finally, the developers have worked on the criteria for determining the MVP of the round and updated the visual part of this announcement in the game.
Valve, where’s the new Operation?
Of course, the addition of new maps and the MVP update is nice, but the entire community was eagerly waiting for a new operation or something radically new. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen this yet.
However, there is an opinion that the developers aren’t releasing something bigger because, in their opinion, the game is still raw. We see many reports of issues within the game: some are unhappy with fps drops, and many mention a large number of cheaters in matchmaking. Valve may still be primarily working on the game’s skeleton, and when the fundamental problems are resolved, we will get that much-anticipated content.
For now, the community’s expectations remain the community’s problem, so thank you for this update!
