Pros respond to new map system

After forcing the non-se maps on us last year ahead of the first CS:GO major at DreamHack Winter, Valve have now thrown another curveball at the competitive community.

ESL One Cologne will see de_train removed from the map pool with de_cache replacing it. Additionally, two untested maps de_cobblestone and de_overpass have been included as well.

Perhaps most importantly the map selection process has been altered, with each team now given a chance to veto two maps from being played, and the remaining maps played in random order.

This removes a lot of the tactical approach to map selection, and overall makes the results slightly more random with teams no longer able to pick their strongest map of the three.

We caught up with some of the scene's top players to find out how they feel about the changes going into the next CS:GO major at ESL One Cologne.

Xyp9x was already vocal on reddit 

dignitas Xyp9x: "I'll start by saying that overpass and cbblestone aren't made for competitive play as they are now. I skimmed through steel's suggestions for how to improve overpass and they seemed to be quite good. I do think that CS needs more maps, but why do we not use something which is already tested in competitive play for a major tournament? I do know that updates need to be done in order to keep the game stable, but you don't see a huge change in LoL when there is a season of the LCS going on. They do that between seasons (you could compare seasons to a major tournament in this case for CS, and in this case the update shouldn't come one month before a major tournament), why don't we just use the same model for CS?

"What amazes me even more is teams potentially knowing of changes before other teams. Can you remember the time when some tournaments switched to _se maps and some didn't? Welcome to an even bigger problem if organizers won't follow Valve's maps. I think Valve needs to improve on communication with players/tournament organizers so that we both know of changes and can prepare, and maybe even give some feedback before releasing updates.

"The change of the veto system won't change the fact that de_inferno will still be played, the question is whether it will be the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd map. The problem here (again) is that ESWC uses lurppis' system which I think is a much better solution to map diversity (and adds a lot of mindgames to the veto by teams). I don't think it is viable for ESL One though, as you ideally need to be able to play all maps with lurppis' system, but we do not have enough time to be prepared with the current updated map pool. But again, if tournament organizers and Valve don't speak together, it makes our job to prepare a lot harder, since we have no clue how many maps we need to be able to play etc."

Faruk "pita" Pita: "Adding cobblestone and overpass for future events is something I think will benefit the CS:GO community in many aspects. I do believe Valve supporting maps which are more Call of Duty look-a-like will eventually start attracting casual players from that game. In the end there will be a larger community and a larger audience at tournaments, which in the end benefits every professional player and organization. This is a step in the right direction.

"Adding these new maps one month prior to the next major is no reason to say anything bad about it. Everyone has the same amount of time to practice these two maps. The question isn't how much time is needed, it is how bad you want to win, and if you want to win, you will make sure you spend the time necessary for every map so that you can eventually look through your practice results and see which map clearly isn't suitable for you and your team.

"And if we look at these 2 maps they are different in terms of what weapons are good. For example, cobblestone is pretty big which benefits the teams going for a double or even triple AWP setup, while overpass is more close combat, fitting teams that focus more on rifles.

"Removing de_train from future tournaments is however bad. I really do hope we will see it in the future, since this map has been around for a long time, and it's a both long and short-ranged map. The distance between the sites isn't that far away, which enables fakes and fast rotations from site to site. There is also a lot of places you can throw smokes from, which enables spectators to see really cool strats."

retired pita chimed in as well 

encore natu: "It's very ironic that we have complained about not having a big enough map pool, we have too much de_inferno and so forth and now we are introduced to two completely untested maps in competitive play with this time frame. What I find the most mind boggling is the fact that professional gamers are a significant part of their business in terms of growing the game, yet the players opinions are totally disregarded and they purely take all their decision making from statistics - AND we're getting maps into a major tournament that have zero statistics to actually make any conclusions of their viability. I'm simply unable to find the grand logic behind all this. I would love to hear the dev's reasoning on this.

"I understand with the veto change and the map changes that they are trying to find variety and bring in fresh things as it makes sense from a marketing perspective. However, I cannot understand why game developers are disregarding some of their better marketing tools, the competitive/professional gamers opinions. Sure, there are discussions, but in most cases they simply force their own views. #WhySoIgnorantHPE"

Titan NBK: "Multiple leagues changed their map-pool to Valve’s standard map-pool in order to be a contender for hosting the $250K events. These maps are all simple, well-known and can be researched by looking at previous matches. As a professional player I want as few random aspects to the game as possible. With thousands of hours under my belt I would probably be pretty upset if an unknown team had an edge on us due to new maps being relatively uncharted waters. If a drastic change to the map-pool is made it needs to be tested in the smaller tournaments/qualifiers first.

"A few likely scenarios:

- Teams start practicing the two new maps, as a result performance on the classic maps will suffer.
- Teams completely ignore the two new maps, which would make the change pointless.
- Only some teams play the maps; other teams will veto them and they will rarely be seen in professional matches. No team will sacrifice their spot in a $250K tournament by playing maps they don’t feel confident on.

"To learn a new map takes an incredible amount of time and effort. You need to learn: how to create proper cross-fires, which angles are held, different ways to re-take sites, all the different nade spots and timings, which weapons are most suitable for certain spots, managing your economy etc.

"The new veto system is essentially trying to force the new maps being played (if you are lucky they will never get picked due to the random aspect of it). The idea is good in essence, especially from a spectator’s point of view, but only if the level of play lives up to their expectations. However, with only a one month warning prior to ESL One it is likely that we will see decreased performance on the standard maps and mediocre performance on the new maps. Randomness should not play this big a part in an event."

Above was an excerpt from Nathan "NBK" Schmitt's blog he wrote here on HLTV.org yesterday. You can find the full blog here.

fnatic Devilwalk: "First of all I want to start off by saying that change is something that's needed in the CS scene in general. We need new maps to compete on and we need a few updates to the game.

"So what we just got is the addition of one great map to the map pool with two maps we basically know nothing about as a competitive community. I'm sure there are people that know a lot more about these maps than I, or even the entire professional scene do which is a problem in itself.

"Players need time to get a feel for a map and what's happened now means that players will not have that time. Cache has been implemented into smaller tournaments and has been a very popular map for both the casual gamers and the professional ones - it's just a spot on decision to take that one in.

"I feel that to start going through a new map I know none of my players have touched or even seen in CS:GO 1 month before a major tournament starts is a problem. That amount of notice is way too short for my liking but don't get me wrong, I do like that new maps are coming in to the competitive scene, I just think this might be the wrong way of doing it. But now we have been dealt with this hand and it seems we have to play it.

"Also, another problem is that we as a competitive community can't really change the maps to get them "ready" for competitive play with this short notice; giving feedback and changing the maps so close to a tournament is just not possible. With a few months extra, having gained more experience on the maps, I'm sure we as a community could have given the feedback needed to make sure the maps are balanced and just generally better, as I think feedback on these maps is a very important aspect as they are very new."

mousesports allu: "I think if we try to implement new maps, they should first be tested in online play and smaller tournaments, not in a major event with a $250k prize purse. There is a reason why cbblestone and overpass haven't been played in the competitive scene.

"I also don't think Valve thought things through at all with the new veto system. The game is random enough as it is, no reason to make it more random with the new map selection process."

mouz's new recruit had a clear opinion 

Na`Vi ceh9: "Well, my opinion is very simple - no major changes 1 month before a tournament. Which team do we want to win? The most professional or the most lucky? I think the most professional. Counter-Strike has been played for 15 years and there were a lot of veto systems and different maps but the best maps won at concurrent wars, so if we want this game to be more professional we need to be more successive at such things, but if we want some show for kids we can add hostage maps and it will be alright. Maybe it's time to think about separate leagues. For professionals and amateurs."

 coL.Semphis: "Hard to make a statement on maps I haven't played with my team but from my limited matchmaking games cbble seems to be nothing more than a fun pub map and is not viable for competitive play. With how many spots and corners you would have to clear it can't be a consistent map.

"Overpass is a lot simpler and might make for more consistent gameplay but it still seems incredibly imbalanced (T-sided) and I'm not sure Valve should be releasing maps without pro approval.

"The veto system is just a ploy to try to get cbblestone and overpass into the map rotation because we all know if it gets let through it will be the 3rd map unless someone is trying to get cheap wins."

ex-SK Maikelele: "My first thought about this was that they want the power in the CS:GO Scene. To make people play two weird maps is kind of frustrating. I don't think they mean any kind of harm or something but they should definitely ask the pros and the community about this.

"Releasing train for cache in different tournaments is acceptable because we have all played cache in various tournaments online and offline so everyone knows this map and has tried it competitively for a while. In that way it's acceptable.

"But to put overpass and cobblestone in is kind of weird because they're not even that common to play in matchmaking either (actually for me it was the first time I'd ever heard of overpass when the news was released). But yeah I don't know... I guess you have to put more hours into smokes and stuff on those maps too.

"To randomly select maps is bad because you never know how to prepare yourself. You always have a thought about how your opponents are going to ban and not ban so it makes the game more of a coin flip than actually a fight for the win. Let's say me and my team actually plays these new maps and NaVi don't and we ban dust2 and inferno, then NaVi must ban the new maps and nuke will be chosen in the BO3... They have never played it except when they've been forced to do so."

Virtus.pro Neo: "I don't like that every event is running different maps now, that's just annoying from a pro player perspective. I haven't tried overpass yet but I like new maps being added. Cbble from what I've seen is pretty huge, but I also didn't pay too much attention to it. In general it would be best to test these maps before we play them in bigger events, at least we would get the feeling of the map in the competitive mode."

Neo wants all events to use the same maps 

Copenhagen Wolves Pimp: "For me it's like a chain of bad decision making. The first thing that springs into your mind is that 1 month before a major tournament they decide to renew almost half of the entire map pool. Even if the maps had been season, tuscan, and train for instance; taking in 3 new maps so close to when the tournament is taking place is unacceptable in my head.

"The second thing that springs into your mind is that the new veto system actually forces teams to be ready on 6/7 maps, unless they want faith to decide their tournament life. The last thing you can then take into consideration is the fact that 2 out of the 3 new maps added are completely untried maps. Maps that have never have been played in any tournament you can classify as beeing competitive. So basically this means Valve/ESL are forcing teams to be ready on 6/7 maps where 2, for some maybe 3 of them are completely new and untried in any competitive tournament. Besides that you also end up with a situation where luck and randomness is gonna have a huge impact on a team's tournament life as funnily enough, some teams are strong on some maps while others are strong on others.

"I like the idea of having a map pool with 7 maps, I think in general everyone does, but forcing two untested maps that could potentially be shit and not even suitable for competitive play is ridiculous. As long as the map pool is not mature enough to host 7 maps, I see no reason to force something untested in, and definitely not only 1 month in advance. Then comes the veto system which is just the last nail in the coffin of an overall poor and ridiculous decision from Valve. It will literally make some teams cross their arms while some ESL admin rolls a dice, hoping not to be behind 0-1 in maps already before the match has started, because preparing on 6 different maps and being able to play them at a respectable level in a $250,000 tournament with one month notice is just not enough."

NiP Fifflaren: "Adding two completely new maps one month before an event can be considered a ballsy move made by Valve, but if you look at how many experienced teams we currently have in CS:GO that will take part in the next major event, I wouldn't really say that it will be an issue. Everyone should know by now what needs to be done to fix a map, or at least try to make your team decent on it.

"Sure, the more time you get on a map the more time you have to perfect it, but people need to keep in mind that every single team in the tournament will get an equal amount of time to prepare. I think this will really set apart a decent team from a good team, to know how to adapt and to make the best of the situation given. Instead of complaining about the two new maps being added, embrace the change instead and show everyone that, 'hey, we're here to compete, it doesn't matter what you throw at us, we will do our best and succeed'. This is a mindset most teams seem to be lacking, which is a shame in my opinion. I am sure we will see the same three core maps being played at this event anyway, it's not like a lot of teams played de_train to begin with so most teams are used to having one map that they always veto, which they can still do, just pick one map out of the two new ones to veto and learn the other one in a month's time, it shouldn't be a problem.

"As for the new veto system, I kinda like it. I don't really see it being an issue in BO3s since the three remaining maps will most likely be played anyway considering how balanced the scene is right now - in most match ups it will go to all 3 maps, so I don't think it will make too much of a difference. As for the new veto system in BO1s I think it will have more of an impact, since you have a 33% chance to play the map you really wanted to play vs. the team you're playing, but then again we have a very strong competitive scene with a lot of teams that can show their best on more than one map."

Berzerk asmo: "Hello everyone. My thoughts about cobblestone and overpass making their way into ESL One Cologne are, to be honest, like 'what the...?' I can't understand why two completely new maps are put into the map pool in such a big tournament. On the one hand you could say 'yeah new maps, maybe a different outcome and stuff' but let's be realistic, both maps will surely be the first ban anyway so I don't think that a single match will be played on one of these maps since nobody will practice or find opponents.

"On the other hand we've got season and cache - two maps which should be put into the map pool not only because it would be more interesting to watch, but it would also make it a lot more fun to practice on more than just 5 maps. I would love to see tuscan in the future!"

Fifflaren had no issues with the change 

ESL One Cologne will take place at GamesCom on August 14-17 and HLTV.org will be on-site to provide you with full coverage of CS:GO's third major within the past twelve months.

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