The logic behind Valve’s move to MR12

How will Counter-Strike 2's shorter game times affect competitive play?

Valve announced a move back to MR12 in Competitive mode via their Counter-Strike 2 patch notes. Initial reaction has been lukewarm, with 47.1% of 4220 X users saying they would not like to see the game change down to 12-round halves on an HLTV Confirmed poll.

But there is logic behind Valve’s decision, and plenty of it. "Over the past decade, we’ve shipped updates to the economy and weapon balance to trim the fat and reduce the number of uncontested rounds in a match of CS," they said on their blog post.

"Because of these changes, exciting competitive matches can be resolved with fewer rounds. And shorter matches mean players can play more, and more often. So with CS2, we’re moving to a maximum of 24 rounds in regulation time (with a 6-round overtime in case of a tie) for Premier, Competitive, and the Majors."

The stats back this claim. Teams have had a full buy (a team value greater than $20k) in 73.3% of non-pistol rounds since Valve’s big changes to the economy in 2019 compared to 67.4% beforehand. They have a competitive semi-buy ($10k+) in 86.5% of rounds now, 3.7% more than at the StarLadder Berlin Major and earlier. It is rare to see full ecos, and even rarer to see teams have to save two rounds in a row.

Changes had previously come to the loss bonus immediately after pistol rounds, starting on $1900 instead of $1400, in October 2018. The aim was to make the third round of a match the first gun round (though that has not quite materialized). On that basis, Valve thinks Counter-Strike is ready to move to MR12. But is it?

This might seem strange to newer viewers, who have gotten used to CS:GO and MR15, but Counter-Strike was not always MR15. At the start of competitive play, tournament admins were the ones who drew up rulebooks with little to no input from Valve. The number of rounds per half that most of the tournaments decided upon, often independently, was 12. The winner would be the first to 13 rounds.

That was the norm for the early seasons of the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) in North America, Counter-Strike's biggest tournaments in the early days of the game, until Jason "Alchemister" Baker and Trevor "Midway" Schmidt started to push for a change to MR15.

The reason for this push was, mainly, because of a money exploit. Defusal mode was still tied to the original hostage mode settings, meaning that terrorist players could hide on full ecos and deny counter-terrorists any money. They would have a full buy and a meaningful advantage in the next round. That exploit was so powerful that teams sometimes even used it in gun rounds or overtime, punishing the CTs for not hunting down every last T player.

Griffin "⁠shaGuar⁠" Benger, of "what up now, Swedes" fame, wrote a now-iconic article on gotfrag.com in 2003 pleading for a fix to the bug, one that eventually did arrive. But, by then, MR15 — a change designed to reduce the impact of this exploit, as money had less impact later on in the half — had stuck, and it has remained with us to this day.

In this fashion, you can see MR12 as a course correction rather than a drastic change to keep up with shortening attention spans or to copy VALORANT.

"VALORANT didn’t get MR12 in a vacuum," Alchemist tells HLTV. "Sal 'Volcano' Garozzo is over there, he's an old Counter-Strike guy, and he was like 'Hey, our money system is better. We can do shorter matches.'

"But right now, unless there's a blow-out, it's a commitment to watch Counter-Strike, and there's so much other competition for eyeballs. Give people some instant gratification a little bit."

If we compare our game to traditional sports, we can see just how much time fans are expected to give up to watch a full best-of-three. Modern CS:GO has 15-20 minute breaks between maps, two to three-minute half-times, four 30-second timeouts per team, and far more gun rounds that naturally extend play time.

This is the result: You can watch two Formula One races before the average Counter-Strike three-mapper is finished. Even the commercial-laden NFL wraps up a game before three maps of CS:GO.

In an esport that wants to retain its viewership as fans enter their busy adult lives, it is inevitable that those adult fans — the ones with the pockets deep enough to justify the sponsor-based ecosystem we rely on — will find it hard to follow the scene as well as they might like.

A move to MR12 should bring Counter-Strike 2 into a more comparable zone to other sports, though still just above VALORANT, which has a shorter round and bomb timer.

A slogfest of a best-of-three with overtimes will still cross the three-hour mark more often than not, but the same is true of other set-based sports, and few fans would complain about a long tennis match. Long games, more often than not, mean good games.

Where MR12 is essential is in bringing the time of the average game down. This also means shorter days for production, who are often working well beyond the 12-hour mark as they need hours to set up before the broadcast and time to break down once the games have wrapped up.

Alchemist, who worked on production for ELEAGUE, believes that the overall level of production would be higher under MR12. "The longer your days go, things get missed," he says.

"It takes a lot of concentration, especially in a game like Counter-Strike, because it's non-stop. A round happens, you come back in, reaction shot, reaction shot, graphic, graphic, replay, replay, and back in. You're pumping all of this stuff into a 20-second window if you're lucky.

"Then you're just cycling as fast as you can and you're on, as a producer, and a director, and a crew, you're on non-stop. The adrenaline of the game helps keep you going, but it's long. It's fucking long. If you can keep overall broadcast days into the 10 to 12-hour range, you're gonna have a better broadcast.”

This is where talk of a return to four best-of-threes in a day with MR12 proves tricky. VALORANT, with its shorter round time, still opts for two series in a day most of the time, with three in group stages.

Some TOs might try anyway, especially in a business that values watched hours so highly (provided staff do not need to be paid for overtime). But for the biggest tournaments, there should be a prioritization of quality over quantity and a realization that less is sometimes more.

After the economy changes, there are far more gun rounds now. But this has come with a negative; rounds, generally, matter less now. A big clutch at 12-12 with both teams low on money might have decided a game in the old economy, but now both teams know they will have a fair few more chances. The overall impact of a clutch or a big play is diluted in a system where it takes so long to economically reset your opponent.

MR12 is a roundabout way of fixing that issue, but it is still something to consider. And, in combination with a lighter load on production (and on fans), shorter games have plenty of benefits.

But what about the downsides? The number one concern is with pistol rounds. "I think I dislike [MR12]," Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool said on a recent stream. "It’s gonna be even more random results, they have to change pistol rounds. They have too much impact."

He later expanded on this point on Talking Counter: "Pistol rounds are the most 50-50 thing ever, it’s all about headshots. It comes down to who has the better timing on the peek."

Just ask Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer and ENCE, who started down 0-3, 0-3, 0-5, and 0-5 in the final four halves of the Gamers8 final against Vitality.

Removing pistol rounds altogether remains unpalatable to ropz and much of the community. "It’s the identity of the game," he says. "You start with pistols and build up the economy."

But change is still needed. Valve’s tweaks to the starting loss bonus have meant that winning the pistol round gives a huge boost to the T side, but barely any for the CT. A 1-0 lead used to give a 55-60% win probability for either side, but that has come down closer to 50% for the CTs.

This is because the Ts are guaranteed a gun round at some point in the first three rounds. They can force with some Galils in round two if they get the bomb down in the pistol round (which gives an extra $800), or they can save if they didn’t plant and still have around $4400 per player in round three.

The CTs have no such luxury. The same figure of $4400 is not enough for a buy in an economy where incendiary grenades are more expensive than Molotovs, defuse kits cost $400, and the M4 costs either $200 or $400 more than the AK-47. Some teams still try, but most opt to force buy in round two with a measly $2000, meaning 3-0 leads are the norm for T sides that win the pistol round.

If you win the pistol round but allow a plant, the Ts sometimes have a stronger buy than the supposedly victorious CTs. In MR12, this is more of a problem. Valve wanted to reduce the impact of the pistol rounds and they have, but their economic changes have made that part of the game even more T-sided than it was before.

Even in gun rounds, it is rare to see Ts have to full eco. The $800 bonus from plants in combination with scaling loss bonuses means a meta of hero AKs or eco rounds from $3500, which still means lots of utility and armored pistols for the CTs to deal with.

The mission of the CTs is not just to win but to win with more than two players alive, so that all five players can be fully equipped. Win a round with one or two alive, and then it is likely the Ts will have a stronger buy than you once again. This is a key reason why saving is so common: The balance has shifted to a point where victory via defusal is often a Pyrrhic one.

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Saving: How bad is it?

If Valve thinks MR12 is the solution to saving, or that this economy is perfect, they are in for a shock. "I get that every round counts a bit more," Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen tweeted, "but wouldn't you just want to save even more then to be strong in as many rounds as possible, exactly like now?" Throwing your equipment away for a low-percentage retake is even more damaging in a shorter game.

Whatever Counter-Strike started as, it has been MR15 since 2003. The magic number is 16 and, for most CS:GO players, always has been.

MR15 is part of the intangible beauty of CS:GO, which is part of why fans are so resistant to change. Nostalgia plays a role but it is unfair to write off opposition to MR12 as just another example of people wanting to keep things as they are.

Fewer rounds, however good the economy might become, will always lead to randomness in results. There is no escaping that. Best-of-ones should become a thing of the past under this system.

Teams will have to adapt and change game plans faster than before; gone are the days of 7-1 leads turning into 8-7 halves. Pistol rounds might matter less after a few tweaks, but the first gun rounds certainly won’t. Gimmicks and gameplans will be more important, too.

There are also other ways to shorten the game. The biggest reason games are so long is not because of saving but due to the round timer increase to 1:55 at the end of 2015; an average map before then finished before the 50-minute mark.

That change was made to help Ts because of the power of CTs saving smoke grenades, but would it not be possible for the duration of smoke grenades to be shorter and to keep the round timer at 1:45?

For whatever reason, that was not the path Valve ventured down. Max rounds was the easier change to make, one that should be easier to balance with a shorter turnaround before the Copenhagen Major.

Another thing to remember is how punishing Counter-Strike's economy has been for most of its history. MR12 is essentially resetting matches to the amount of gun rounds teams needed to win before the economy update of 2019, by way of removing two-three eco rounds per half. There are now enough gun rounds, even in MR12, that the better-performing team should win in the vast majority of cases.

Still, CTs need more help in the economy. Round three should be a gun round for either side. That doesn’t mean massive changes; a $400 incendiary, $200 defuse kit, and both M4s being $2900 would go a long way towards that. The $800 bonus for planting the bomb on the T side might also need to be reconsidered, perhaps reduced to $400 each and counter-balanced with a $400 CT team reward for defusing the bomb.

These flaws within the economy are part of why best-of-ones still provide random results in MR15, and that will only get worse in MR12. If the Major format remains unchanged for Copenhagen, we will get even wackier results than we had in Paris and Rio.

But ultimately, MR12 does future-proof Counter-Strike. Full MR15 best-of-threes are too long in this meta, and reducing the game time is the easiest way to fix that. Shining a spotlight on the flawed economy may lead to change quicker than in an MR15 system, too.

Like everything in CS2, we should not expect perfection right away. Replacing the best FPS game of the last decade will not come overnight. This is as true of MR12 as it is of the gunplay or movement.

There are pros and cons to the change. There are staunch advocates and passionate detractors. But Counter-Strike will remain Counter-Strike. The game is evolving, and we will have to evolve with it.