What’s wrong with Counter-Strike 2?
On September 27, 2023, the world of Counter-Strike changed dramatically. Valve has released an updated version of the shooter – CS2. The game has completely replaced the beloved CS:GO. This decision infuriated fans, because the new game was not yet ready for release and had many problems. Over time, the developers released several updates for Counter-Strike 2, but only the last one became truly major. Even after all the patches, the game cannot be called ready; it still has many problems, which we will discuss in this article.
Abundance of cheaters
The main and most critical problem of Counter-Strike 2 is the huge number of cheaters. According to the feelings of many players and esportsmen, there are even more of them than in the days of CS:GO. Perhaps they were attracted to the new game. Before the release, Valve promised to effectively combat dishonest gamers and even released an updated VAC Live protection system, which should ban cheaters right during matches. But after several months, its effectiveness is in doubt. Sometimes there are large waves of blocking in CS2, but they still turn out to be a small thing compared to the total number of attackers.
There are rumors in the community that Valve is working on a new anti-cheat based on artificial intelligence, which should become an innovation in computer games and surpass existing protection systems. It was expected that the company would release it at the game’s release, but for some reason, work on it was postponed. It is still difficult to judge whether the system will be able to solve the problem with a huge number of cheaters, because the developers have not even officially talked about it. It is also unknown when Valve will decide to introduce a new anti-cheat. CS2 is still quite difficult to play, and this is only one of the shooter’s problems.
Rating system
In CS2, the usual matchmaking replaced the unpopular Premier mode in CS:GO. It has undergone many changes and has become similar to the MMR system in Dota 2. At first it attracted interest from fans, but over time, interest in it waned and its significant shortcomings were revealed.
One of them is also cheaters. One of the main advantages of Premier is the global ranking table. Initially, it was supposed to show the best players and become a motivation to continue to increase the rating, but, as practice has shown, cheaters took the first places. Their win rate is about 90% out of hundreds of matches, which seems impossible for ordinary gamers and even esports players. CS fans have lost the desire to spend time in Premier, because you still won’t be at the top, and the higher your CS Rating, the more cheaters you will meet.
Valve also promised to hold permanent seasons in Premier. But quite a lot of time has passed since the release, and the game is still running on the first one. It doesn’t even have a completion date: if gamers knew they had a limited amount of time left to reach certain heights, the desire to play would be greater. So far, all this looks like a useless rating exercise. Moreover, they do not give any rewards for this, even in the form of medals for the past season.
Bugs for every taste
Bugs were a big problem back in CS:GO, but no one expected that there would be even more of them with the release of the new game. CS2 developers constantly release updates with their corrections, but in place of old errors, other, sometimes more drastic, appear.
During the existence of the shooter, gamers have encountered the most unpredictable bugs: problems with animations when moving, the disappearance of weapons and bombs from the map, the ability to play only on the English keyboard, and many other errors that spoil the pleasure of the gameplay.
Bugs are a common thing in all games, but there shouldn’t be so many of them. Especially in a competitive shooter with such a long history. Esports players also face them at the largest LANs, when huge prize money is awarded.
Subtick system and optimization
One of the most criticized components of CS2 is the subtick system, which Valve introduced as a replacement for the 128 tick rate. But even after time, she did not come close to his performance. After several updates, the subtik continues to work incorrectly and does not always count hits. It would have the right to exist if the developers had not prohibited the use of the usual 128 tickrate until the innovation was finalized. In this form, it negatively affects the professional scene and esports players often complain about it. But they have no choice and have to play with what they have. In a major update, Valve has significantly improved the subtik, but there is still a lot of work to be done on it.
The game is also criticized for poor optimization. FPS sags even on the most powerful components. This is absolutely unacceptable for a competitive shooter, where any drop in frame rate can affect the outcome of the round and the match as a whole. This is especially noticeable when interacting with grenades, for example, extinguishing a Molotov with a smoke grenade. Due to optimization, CS2 lost a huge part of the players, because CS:GO was famous for its accessibility: it could be played on almost any computer. Gamers with weak hardware simply could not continue to spend time in their favorite game.
Lack of content
Players who had come to terms with the game’s problems ended up being dissatisfied too. Only recently the developers released the first major update since the release of the game, and all this time there was no new content in it, except for the Premier mode. But even now, only new cosmetic items and the only old mode from CS:GO – Arms Race – have appeared in the game.
Casual gamers who played CS:GO not for high ranks and attempts to break into eSports were left without everything at the release of CS2. Valve never introduced the popular Danger Zone and neither did War Games. Perhaps the authors of the shooter want to radically change the «battle royale» from CS:GO and it will appear a little later: dataminers have already found a mention of the mode in the game files, as well as some others from the older versions of Counter-Strike (Assassination and Escape).
At release, CS2 also did not receive the long-awaited operation. This content brings a little variety to the shooter and attracts a large audience that previously did not play it as actively. In addition to cosmetic items, operations traditionally come with new maps and co-op missions. But almost two years have passed since the completion of Riptide, and we still have not seen any hints about the release of the next one – even several months after the release of Counter-Strike 2.
The next major content for CS2 should be the familiar and boring stickers for the major. If nothing changes, players will again only have access to the Pick’em Challenge, which gives nothing but the same medals and souvenir cases. This system has already existed for several Valve tournaments in a row and has already become uninteresting to players. Everyone wants to see in CS2 an analogy of the Battle Pass from Dota 2, Oleksandr s1mple Kostyliev even said this in his interview. If the pass to PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 does include more ways to earn rewards, as well as different thematic tasks, it will be able to regain the interest of players, which has been falling for several majors.
Valve is still polishing a crude game that already needed to be released due to stagnant and outdated CS:GO. Continuing to work on the game on the Source engine was problematic, but the approach to releasing the updated version could have been better. Many fans have turned their backs on the company, but it still has a chance to redeem itself. For this, CS2 needs some really big updates, not just bug fixes that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. In modern games, gamers want to see constant new content, and the CS:GO approach with rare cases and operations will no longer work here. PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 will start soon, which means that large-scale updates should be expected after its completion.