For some reason I don't quite remember, a few weeks ago I dusted off Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and fired it up to have a bash. I had barely ever played CS:GO before - maybe once or twice when it first came out just to try it - so it has been years since I've played CS for any reasonable amount of time.

As a bit of background:

I was never a huge fan of Counter-Strike but played quite a bit of it and sometimes even had quite a lot of fun pwning noobs.

I have always been frustrated by games with pub modes that ostensibly are about team-based goals but generally descend into a mishmash of team-based FFA - it's often a struggle to convince members of your team to focus on goals (e.g., "hey, let's rush left and plant the bomb" is just not a strategy that is met with a high degree of buy-in by random online teammates).

Counter-Strike has always had this problem in spades; old timers might remember the AusGamers "Lightning Dust" server that I set up many moons ago - the point of which was to try to put a finger on the scales by applying more time pressure to the Ts to push and plant. I always found it fun but there were a bunch of people that never seemed to get it.

Anyway, I started playing CS:GO again and was very curious to see how the game had evolved over the last couple of years - what new gameplay mechanics have been introduced? What new weapons? What new interface elements to make things easier for pub games?

I was a bit surprised to discover how almost absolutely identical CS:GO is to my memories of the last time I played CS (five years ago? More? Definitely long before CS:GO was released). The visuals are substantially improved - while it's not absolutely stunning it's definitely a huge improvement and looks really nice, with some really great subtle visual effects around the place. Additionally, the engine and ecosystem feels really solid - the addition of custom guns and skins and stuff seems like it has gone well, and the matchmaking and pro features look like they're pretty cool (although I haven't played with any of these much, it's clear a lot of effort has gone into all of them).

But the lack of significant changes I found weird. There's a few new maps maybe - I'm not even sure as everyone seems to be pretty content playing Dust and Dust2. There's a new weapon - the Zeus single-shot electro-zapper thing, and I think the fire grenades are new too.

I didn't expect a whole new game with hugely different mechanics (sprint, prone, lean) but I thought there might be at least something that felt substantially new or interesting or different. The most significant change I've noticed is the addition of the 'Score' column in the scoreboard, but it's really barely noticable and has no design treatment to stand out above and beyond the kill count. The actual score itself still doesn't take into account many teamplay-focused gameplay elements - you only get a measly two points for planting or defusing the bomb, when they're critical for the round?!

As a result the game feels very comfortable and familiar; it's fun to dive in for a bash but it's still frustrating in exactly the same ways, especially if you're on the T side in a bomb map - people play in their own totally isolated bubble and don't even attempt to teamplay. Had several Aztec games recently where some players buy an AWP and set up camp just outside of spawn and stay there the whole game - basically waiting for the rest of us to try and die, then pick up cheap kills when the CTs come through to try to mop up. This seems to be really common.

I am teamplay difficulties are significantly exacerbated, being in Europe - every game is full of people speaking different languages (also Russians seem to be toxic by default); it's generally harder for people to communicate effectively.

I feel like there's a huge lost opportunity to make a some simple changes to improve pub teamplay. Something like a simple tactical screen at the start of the round which is just a voting thing so people can indicate what they're going to do, but I appreciate that part of the game is /actually/ communicating with your teammates. I just think that this basically never works in practice in pub games, which is where the vast majority of the game is played. There's a few other small things that would be nice - for example when I play with my brother and we start the game in a lobby, there's no UI treatment that differentiates him from the rest of the team. Again I get that if we were better at communicating, we'd know where we are at all times, but I just think we'd be able to get more done if there was an at-a-glance way for us to distinguish ourselves. Even if it only happened in the first five seconds of the round so we could figure out where we are!

A better points system I think would help too. Dropping the bomb at the start of the map, for example - basically a sign that you're completely giving up on the objective - should result in loss of points. Points for defending the bomb carrier or even just being in his vicinity for x% of the map.

One of the main design goals of modern competitive multiplayer games is "easy to learn, hard to master". Certainly the teamplay mechanics side of CS is like that - I haven't watched pro games so I could be completely wrong (tips for great games to watch on Twitch or whatever appreciated!) but I imagine they are totally next level in terms of tactics, teamplay and timing and almost totally indistinguishable from pub games. Aside from the few standard FPS skills like twitch reflexes and aim and stuff I feel like there's not a lot to master in terms of the basic mechanics - as evidence for this I'd present a bunch of the results of recent games that my bro and I have played recently where we are often winning many rounds, even though we haven't played the maps before and played the game for years.

I am certainly not claiming to be awesome at it - just that the learning curve seems quite shallow compared to Dota (which is the only other multiplayer game I've been playing for the last few years).

Mostly it has made me want to play Urban Terror again. I would love to see a Counter-Strike that has some more variety in the core gameplay. Sprinting and basic wall climbing for example - two simple things that made Urban Terror feel so much more like a complete game. Maybe leaning although I haven't played many tacshooters where I got the hang of leaning so not sure if it's worth the added complexity. I think a few small additions like this would increase the range of "mechanical skill" and make it that much harder to master - this would happen at the expense of AK-spraying noobs but I'm not sure if it would be that big a deal.

I think balancing it out with something like UT's damage system would be good too - so it's easier to take a bit more damage in more interesting ways. I got sniped in the leg yesterday for over 100 damage which killed me, which reminded me that In UT you'd (typically) take a non-critical leg wound that you could bandage up; your movement speed would be reduced, but it meant you could take more damage and stay alive longer in a variety of circumstances.

Some more small-scale teamplay-focused things would be cool. I actually really liked the idea of the shields from Condition Zero (although I didn't play it much so don't know how it worked out practically).

Certainly the simplicity of CS is a huge factor in its popularity and I can easily imagine even minor changes to the gameplay would probably be considered too risky (if only to avoid legions of CS players complaining incessantly). But it would be nice to imagine a future where CS evolves a little more actively over a period of several years so that it feels a bi more like a different game over time.

Anyway, the game is still fun enough to play that the frustration is usually outweighed by the entertainment factor. I just feel like it's been several years since I complained about Counter-Strike so I thought I'd do it all at once.

Be interested to hear if other people are still playing it and what I've missed!

I played CS with my brother recently and got completely owned. I guess my reflexes have gone down the s***tier but the game was never that much fun to me anyway. People still play it like they used to on the WON servers. Still the same damn maps.

Trog did you use to play RTCW: Enemy Territory? My absolute favorite FPS game, with TF2 coming in second. I loved how these games forced players to concentrate on the objective while still giving them opportunities to solo the enemy.

I also played a bit of CS:GO the other week, after not having played since CS 1.6 back in like circa 2000.

I was surprised it hadn't changed much, everyone's still basically playing dust, the average age seemed to be about 14 (on South African servers at any rate), the game play is kinda annoying with it sticking in the same old map bottlenecks, with no team play and awp campers.

I played in casual and was surprised I managed to pwn and come top in quite a few matches, guess the reflexes aren't too rusty. Someone even accused me of cheating with a headshot script or some such! lol.

It made me want to play / miss Tribes (used to play the original a lot, thought Tribes: Ascend was great fun) and Urban Terror (loved UT!).

Guess I need to check out the latest Battlefield or CoD for some online FPS fun I can dip in and out of. Or maybe Quake Champions actually, that looks sweet.

A worthy follow up to this thread.

haha nice memory!

Multiplayer games have become no-go zones for me because of how toxic the communities are.

yeh ever since I started playing games where I wasn't admin I really struggled because I couldn't simply kick and ban people that were toxic and had to adjust to a whole new way of playing. Dota's muting system is OK but people still default to toxic mode; it needs some more incentives on the commend side to encourage better behaviour.

I basically had to immediately turn off the voice chat system in CS globally because it was full of either russians yelling, kids swearing or just general idiots being idiots. The text chat seems to be almost totally vestigial now and used for abuse or random s*** - seems like that is the intent based on where it lives in the UI now.

I am keen to try PUBG as it sounds like it's pretty fun in groups but it looks like of a bit slow and snipey?

CS is a f*****g annoying pub game. Battlefield I find is a little better because there is a better chance of teaming up with a teamplay focused squad.

im surprised by how much i enjoy proper overwatch matches.

when you play as a team, you can beat any non team playing enemy

Great post Toll thanks!! I need to go through it in more detail but very informative.

One thing I definitely forgot to mention was the addition of the radar which I think is the biggest change. I really like it though it seems like a weird concession to the sorts of teamplay-based mechanics.

Also I forgot to mention cheating still being a problem - less so the actual instance of cheating but people whining about cheaters. We had a game on the weekend where someone tried to kickvote my brother in the 2nd round because he got like 3 or 4 kills without dying. He insisted that he was cheating over and over. F*****g ludicrous.

Yesterday I saw my first real cheater though - some dude just spinning around in circles shooting down through the floor in Vertigo killing people on the level downstairs. Was really stupid. I reported him - am I likely to get any feedback about it?

Cool. Yep I feel I definitely have not seen many cheaters, at least many obvious ones. The instant replay you get when killed is generally good enough to know that you were killed by luck or skill in most cases - there are times when it probably hurts, rather than helps though. I had one moment a few days ago where I was randomly shooting cover fire into a door, a split second before a dude put his head out and collected the bullets. On the reply it would have looked exactly the same as me wallhacking.

Alas it's still easier for most donkeys to blame cheating when they get pwned.

I do think it's a side effect of what I still think is a problem with the core mechanics (what I was writing earlier about the skill differentiation). It's easy for a lucky noob to get easy kills through spray and pray (I got two headshots in a game yesterday within a few seconds, doing nothing but blind-firing through smoke). You have to watch for several rounds, or even games, to rule out cheating if someone has a small spurt of good luck (which is what happened yesterday with my bro).

You have to watch for several rounds, or even games, to rule out cheating if someone has a small spurt of good luck (which is what happened yesterday with my bro).

ahh, you have it backwards.

It should be viewed as ruling in cheating. People do bulls*** things from time to time, the better players do bulls*** more often.
You blind fired into smoke, a part of you had an idea where about in that smoke is the most likely spot for bad-guys, 3D spatial awareness helps a lot for that. People really do have trouble perceiving what they can't see, it's a skill to accurately hit a particular spot that is behind a wall when you can't directly see that spot.
You used skill to minimize the randomness of shooting through that smoke. You were rewarded by getting the bulls*** kills. It's an indirect use of skill, unlike a rocket-jump off a wall to get the angle for a perfect shot in Quake, that is direct use of a skill(S). That is part of the difference between CS and Quake type games. In CS the skills used are more indirect.

Anyway, the idea is that if you suspect a player of cheating it's about Ruling the cheating in, do they do more bulls*** stuff, do they respond to information that they could not possibly know that can't be explained by reasonable chance? This is part of why players need to have a certain amount of experience under their belt in order to be eligible for Overwatch.

Does the rank I get in casual get used in competitive? So I can increase my rank through casual play to have a better chance of matching in competitive? I'm like a lvl 3 private or something, lol.

I just wiped the dust off my monitor.


a few seconds later, I realised i used my 'spankerchief' to perform this task.


Such is CS...