The future of Valve’s juggernaut competitive FPS franchise has finally been revealed in Counter-Strike 2, and with it comes decades' worth of player feedback for Valve to build upon. Though Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been tweaked and improved to near-perfection in the roughly ten years it’s been available, the game’s Source engine is outdated and in need of a facelift. Along with a slew of graphical and tech upgrades in the new Source 2 engine, Counter-Strike 2 is making changes to key features that players have been requesting for quite a while.
Since CS:GO launched in 2012, the game has had countless updates and balance changes, but there are still a few areas where players collectively agree there’s room for improvement. The official announcement of Counter-Strike 2 came with three videos released by Valve that demonstrate a few of the changes and updates that fans can expect, including sub-tick rate servers and vastly updated smoke grenades. These two items have caused debate and frustration among players since the game’s launch, so fans are pleased to see Valve leading the CS2 announcement with improvements the community has been asking for.
Counter-Strike 2 Makes Highly-Requested Changes From CS:GO
Counter-Strike has been around for roughly 20 years and in that time it’s become one of the largest and most prominent names in eSports. While most online shooters lose a massive chunk of their player base within months after release, CS:GO broke its concurrent player count record, showing its popularity is only increasing. With one of the most dedicated, hardcore, and passionate communities in gaming, fans had high expectations for the eventual sequel to CS:GO.
Now that CS2 has officially been revealed and players are starting to get their hands on it, it’s clear that Valve took player feedback seriously when looking at the future of the series. One of the most popular requests has been to improve the tick rate of matchmaking servers, as the gold standard for competitive play is 128-tick, but CS:GO’s servers are on 64-tick. CS:GO’s newest and arguably the closest competitor to date, Valorant, has 128-tick servers, but CS:GO players have had to rely on third-party applications like Faceit and ESEA that offer faster tick rates.
In typical Valve fashion, it didn’t just give players the 128-tick servers they’ve been asking for and call it a day. Rather, CS2 implements a new sub-tick system that, instead of the traditional 64 or 128 updates per second, has constant updates, so the server knows exactly when the player performs an action. Though it’s still unknown for sure how well this new system performs, initial player feedback seems to be that it’s better than CS:GO, but possibly not quite as responsive as 128-tick servers.
In addition to the sub-tick servers, another one of the biggest changes Valve highlighted in a CS2 announcement video was the overhauled smoke grenades. Smoke grenades have been one of the most divisive aspects of CS:GO, with professional teams even forming entire strategies around ways to exploit the equipment’s visibility.
Smoke grenades in CS2 are now volumetric objects that are dynamic and reactive, meaning smoke realistically fills in the environment, and bullets create holes in the smoke while HE grenades dissipate the smoke for a few seconds. The new smoke grenades have the potential to dramatically change the flow of matches, and the new ways to counter the effect should help with balance and will likely spawn countless strategies.
The Jump to Source 2 Revitalizes a Classic Shooter
Another issue players have had over the years has been player visibility in certain areas of maps, leading Valve to alter terrain and objects within the environment to help with this. CS2 uses Valve’s new Source 2 engine to drastically improve the lighting, creating more realistic-looking environments with better player visibility. While no new maps have been revealed yet, Valve announced that many classic maps will return and range from simple graphical updates to completely overhauled designs.
Given Counter-Strike’s 20 years of history, there are a lot of ways that a new game in the series could upset fans, but it seems CS2 may be delivering exactly what fans want. The jump to Source 2 looks to provide a nice update to the visuals while retaining the fundamental aspects of the beloved competitive shooter. Access to the CS2 playtest is currently limited, so CS:GO players looking to hop in can check their dashboard in-game to see if they received an invitation.
Counter-Strike 2 is releasing Summer 2023 for PC.