Editorial: CS2 wishes for the new year

The most discussed topic in CS2 right now is features that are lacking from the game. We try our hand at a late set of New Year’s Resolutions.

Wintertime and the holidays are a magical time of year. Many associate this time with Christmas and the receiving of gifts under the tree. This year the best-behaved children received a brand-new Mercedes with a bow in the driveway from their hedge fund father. Meanwhile, the naughtiest of scamps received naught but coal. But what did we, the meekest of mice that are known as CS2 fans, receive from corporate old Saint Valve? Silence.

Christmastime was traditionally a season of waiting and fasting before Joy, i.e. Advent. As the holiday secularized, the rigors of waiting and patiently abiding faded, turning into a consumerist and orgiastic tide of toys. But we as Counter-Strike enjoyers know better (unless skins are involved). We hew to the old ways. The seasons turn but we remain. To be a fan of CS is to know patience and its less savory cousin, suffering. And that tide of toys at the end of the case-opening tunnel is all too often yet another stocking of P-250 Sand Dunes.

Look over there! A child has awoken to presents beneath the Yuletide tree! But the child’s lips are quivering. “Mommy why can’t we have that instead? The Reddit household got a naked JKS wrapped under the tree! And look! The HLTV household has mini-donks stuffed into their stockings! I want those!”

And what did our poor Child receive under the tree? The wrappings have been strewn about the floor, revealing a paltry selection of gifts indeed:

· Adjusted wear values of some skins to better match CS:GO
· Adjusted some props and materials to improve character readability
· Changed some player collision surface types

Fast forward to the New Year. Now that Christmas is come and gone, perhaps we should instead look to the future and make New Year’s Resolutions in a gesture of hope. For while it is easy to whine about one’s current predicament, it is even easier to daydream grandiose notions of wishes to be fulfilled in the New Year. To be fulfilled with minimal effort on the wishers’ part of course.

And when it comes to CS2 and things that the player base want changed, or features and content that were promised and have yet to be added, the horizon is endless. The online discussion is already riddled with admittedly righteous wishes for a better Anti-Cheat in Premier, for a better refinement of subtick (and its cousin, animations), or for a new Operation.

The pro scene brings its own gripes to the table as well: wonky collision mechanics with other players, lots of surfaces where nades get stuck in an endless purgatory, inconsistent jumping and moving patterns, and a likely subtick-linked nerfing of the AWP (specifically flicks and quickscopes).

In the thick of winter spirit, we figured we would try our luck with a more alternative Wishlist. One where we visualize a bright future for the game in 2024. So, without further ado, here are a couple of other things we would like to see in our Christmas stockings come next year, or that having failed, adorning the 2024 Goals wall inside the office of our minds:

1. A wish to see a new, well-balanced weapon

Right off the bat with the controversial. CS2 is ripe for the introduction of a new weapon. This has of course been hinted at by the developers themselves. The new loadout system is practically begging for both the introduction of a number of new weapons as well as cosmetics on grenades.

Unfortunately, Valve has a bad track record of introducing new firearms into the game that are also well-balanced. Everyone remembers the R8 fiasco. The original overpowered CZ-75 was not much smoother in terms of rollout. Cowed by these two overpowered pistols and the community reaction, Valve didn’t even bother making the MP5-SD a viable candidate when they introduced it in 2018. That one died with a whimper.

But now it’s been five years and no new gun. And this suggestion of course touches on perhaps the core debate of CS as a game: “Is it just AKs vs M4s or should it be something more?”

Both sides are talking over each other in this debate. The core CS interplay of Deagle-AK-M4-AWP will hold true just how a hit band will always be defined by its lead singer. The years go by and the stars grow old, but they still get on stage and perform, delivering a dependable product. The bassist, guitarist(s), and drummer on the other hand will change as the years go by, always adding new variety to the soundscape of the base formula.

It is compatible with the quiddity of CS to add a new gun for CS2, especially in the Rifles department. Valve in particular seems adverse to disrupting the AK/M4 formula by adding guns in that sector and, with the overpowered AUG arc fresh in their and our minds, perhaps there is a kernel of truth there. But there is room for play. Scoped weapons necessitate niche playstyles. Single-shot semiautomatic rifles, like the Guardian in VALORANT, could see use in desperate half-buys. There is no need for Valve to copy their closest competitor, but the point being made here is: try something bold. Just don't add a bow and arrow.

And if not a new Rifle, we would always welcome the addition of yet another wacky SMG or nifty shotgun to add to a unique playstyle of some pro, particularly on a vertical map. It never gets old watching someone make a name for themselves at Squeaky on Nuke or Sandbags on Vertigo banging people out with an MP9, XM, or maybe even Negev.

2. A wish for a cleanup on Aisle Casual

You can certainly make the case on HLTV that CS is defined by its competitive circuit. We live and breathe this stuff. Even the game’s largest Subreddit has morphed over the years into primarily covering the esports aspect of the game, bucking the trend of other FPS’ where two large Subreddits usually develop, one for casual play and one to cater to the esports side.

And yet, and yet, it is no small thing to ponder that up until (very) recently a future Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev or Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets was possibly opening the game for the first time ever. Then they began to cut their teeth on a Casual game mode, either an in-game one like Arms Race or Flying Scoutsman or via community servers and something akin to Hide and Seek (HNS), Surf, or KZ. These lighter game modes, which emphasize messing around, movement, and fragging, are where the addictive secret sauce that is Counter-Strike is brewed and born. The kinesthetic feel of being a highly responsive avatar in a game with so many creative outlets for play is unbeatable, except maybe in Minecraft. And it is often where young kids get started on the pipeline of first opening the game to moving to wanting to play it competitively.

There is a strict emphasis here on was because CS2 has shipped with the barebones aspects of its competitive side, foregoing integrated Casual game modes and also leaving us with a horrendous Steam server browser that minimizes the game window to use. Other than Casual mode, which has its own issues, a large fraction of new devotees and acolytes to the game have been simply forgotten by Valve and allowed to drift to getting into other FPS games. As the saying goes, “For every bygone CT-side Mirage B Site defender, another Tracer simp is born.”

Valve needs to consolidate the casual and minigame experience into a more legible format. This means a better community server browser that encourages exploring custom servers to immerse oneself in the game more. Admittedly, Valve has to tiptoe carefully here due to the unpredictability and insensitivity of content hosted on some of these servers, but providing a better and more modern tool to explore is more than enough in the vein of Christmas giving. But we also need better Valve-side offerings, e.g. more maps for each game mode, more rewards for playing these modes (akin to the old Operation missions), etc.

This can go as far as adding in new game modes to the Valve side of the house, including Surf, KZ, Zombies, HNS, and Bhop. While the hardcore players will always seek out more maps and more content via the community servers, even a couple of pipeline maps would engage new players and convince them to stick around and see what CS2 is all about.

Right now CS2 feels like a competitive branch demo for what a larger game will one day become that is being shown in a corporate boardroom somewhere. And that feeling is felt deeply across the mechanics, UI, and content, or lack thereof. Players are not dimwits and they can feel when they’ve been robbed behind their backs with the removal of CS:GO and all that it offered.

A consolidation and re-release of a better casual and community experience will go a long way to building back that organic player base and trust.

3. A wish for love to the movement respecters

This point ties into the previous so it will be truncated but it bears shouting from the rooftops. The one core mechanic of Counter-Strike that the developers have always understood the least (going off of their track record) is movement. This is not a new issue and was already called out around the time CS:GO released with the then-introduction of the stamina system and a lower bhop speed cap. And to be fair it is an issue that plagues the entire gaming industry with developers shirking away from hard-to-master, easy-to-abuse (against new players) mechanics that advanced players can tip in their favor through movement.

That being said, we still fondly think of the more movement-oriented players such as Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell historically, and Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool more recently, as an X factor brought to matches, allowing them to make impactful frags and then make dastardly escapes via map navigation and bunnyhopping. And it feels criminal that CS2 and its subtick system are further penalizing these exact aspects of play that rely on frame-precise timing such as crouchjumps and bunnyhops, making them harder to hit than ever before.

Valve should conduct a whiteboard session to revisit which aspects of gameplay should be bound to subtick and which aspects need to be “de-subticked,” as that phrase has come to be known. With some players already relying on aliases to de-subtick their movement keys and the jump command in Premier matches (admittedly not at the pro/semi-pro level since this is banned by ESL and other TOs), the exact problem Valve always claims to be trying to fix of new players not aware of complex binds required to reach higher levels of play has reared its ugly head again.

Unfortunately, given the totalitarian impulses of game development, it is far more likely Valve will take the heavy hammer approach and simply remove alias commands or further hardcode subtick into movement. This does not need to be the way. As Mariah Carey putatively sings: “All I want for Christmas is better movement in CS2.”

4. A wish to make this year a landmark one

Last but not least, something a little metaphysical for 2024. Over the years of CS:GO we have seen a couple watershed moments:

· The 2013 Arms Deal update and skins, and subsequent Major system
· The 2015 Hitboxes and Animation Overhaul
· The 2018 Panorama Update

Compared to these updates which had seismic shifts to the way CS is competitively played and publicly presented, the CS2/Source 2 engine update has at times seemed more akin to the Overwatch 1 to Overwatch 2 transition in terms of its modesty, and certainly in terms of post-release hype.

The year is right for Valve to not just reintroduce old games, or bring in a new Operation, or pack the game with more content, but to do something which the Washington-based developer is integrally known for, namely envelope-pushing experimentation.

And while we can guess what a few major updates this year might be, e.g. skins for new cosmetics like grenades, the bomb, and agent body parts, or an overhaul of a game mode like Danger Zone, it is important to remember that the best experiments are the boldest ones. Ones that nobody sees coming.

Valve needs to keep pushing the boundaries of what a competitive FPS game can be. There is no other studio in the world right now that has the resources, the vision, or even the willpower to pull off such a feat and that is why Valve continues to dominate the 5v5 tactical shooter space. While we can’t guess exactly where they would go if they introduced something unprecedented, it is best to remember that stagnation is the real killer of us all.

So while Christmas may be behind us, and the New Year may be upon us, we feel particularly starry-eyed this year looking into the unknown future. Expectancy is rising to the forefront and the game is practically crying out for changes to stay fresh and relevant. And this year Santa, we promise that we will be good.