I wondered why I had heard no fanfare or announcements (not even the Steam banner changing, its still Shmup sale up there) but on checking the page this seems to be the Overwatch school of sequel? Just update a current game and put a 2 on it?
Well. On one hand, doesn't seem like it needed fixing (Its not my type of game but its popular enough, certainly more than most other Valve ventures) but also geez. At least artificially pretend its big news.
Counter Strike has been the same game for 23 years, basically every new game is an "update". Porting the game to Source 2 is the single biggest thing that has happened to Counter Strike since 2004 when they moved from GoldSrc, so might as well brand it as a new game.
I have 4k hours in CSGO alone. Probably 10k hours in the whole series all together. The changes they made are far more significant than an update.
Just update a current game and put a 2 on it?
It was a "ground-up" rebuild on Source 2, so while it carries forward all the CSGO content and aims to "play the same" in terms of movement and gunplay (with the exception of improvements like subtick actions), I'd say it's way more of an actual "2." New engine with all kinds of fancy lighting and other improvements, new assets (including weapon and character models, some of which were still originally in the 2013 CSGO launch), remakes and retouches of maps, vastly improved map-making tools, some nifty accessibility features (your walking sounds appearing on the radar) and quality of life features (selling back misbought items, or the picture-in-picture grenade throw practice camera), and some huge balance changes (games are now shorter, players now need to more strategically choose their weapons, smoke grenades are voxel-based and can be cleared out with gunfire and grenades, skyboxes are now open for grenade tosses, etc.)
It looks the same but with some lighting changes on the surface, but it's actually huge.
Despite some minor changes the game has played fundamentally the same since 1999.
Edit: also CSGO came out 11 years ago, compared to the 6 years between overwatch 1 and 2.
Just update a current game and put a 2 on it?
This is how the software engineering industry works. It's actually games that are the outlier here, with their big releases each time a sequel is made.
More visibility would definitely help here though, odd that they don't put a banner on the store given how big of a release this is for many players.
I play on Linux but encountered sound issues. Maybe after a day one patch, but it’s a damn big update. Whole different game now.
I had audio issues too and fixed them by adding %command% -sdlaudiodriver pipewire to the launch options.
Can people still kick you from matches for being bad at the game? If not I might consider trying it again.
Ironically I find that silvers screech more about shitty team mates than any ither rank.
Just a few days ago had a 3000 CS rated dude losing his fucking mind at one of our team mates because he was bottom fragging, only for the angry dude to end up hard negative KD while still bitching
He's trying really hard for gold status okay! You don't understand the pain and stress he's going through to try and get there, and his teammate playing badly reflects directly on his physical gaming ability!!
There is a kick option, yes.
Just use a name like noob be gentle. I hate it when ppl kick in casual because someone plays badly.
That name is guaranteed to get you kicked.
What about expertplskik?
Yeah, they can at least call a vote.
Welp, have to pass then, pisses me off way too much when that happens.
Yes, and that's the reason why I play it only with 2+ friends, it's a completely different game this way.
I will spend hours and hours playing against expert bots until I can consistently be at the top of the leader board. Then I be ready to play against humans and rank at the bottom.
I have been playing CS since 1.6 and every time a I take a break I have to start all over again.
I definitely hear you on this one. I stopped playing for a few years and I dropped from LEM to Silver 4. The skill drop-off is immense!
Bots seem to be set to "Drunk and Sleepy". Changing bot_difficulty does not seem to make a difference.
Pretty much, they are good for target practice and that's about it
bot_difficulty 5
custom_bot_difficulty 5
Those seem to work. The standard 1-3 make no difference that I can tell. They are still very very dumb, but at least they do not hesitate 5 sec to pull the trigger and can hit a target.
So if I own CSGO can I just run an update and have the new game?
Yes
Well, seeing as how CSGO is F2P, everyone owns it. And, CSGO itself is gone, it's now just CS2.
I am playing now. Looks great. Just shot through smoke which was cool.
I saw some streamer playing and legit thought "That's CSGO with Valorant saturation on"
Am I just too ignorant or did they really make everything boosted saturation?
This is just CS:GO finally evolving from the CoD brown-tinged visuals of 2007-2013
No? There's more color, but it's reasonable CSGO always had a kind of dull color grading/textures, though updates changed that A bit later on. A lot of players turn up saturation themselves for the (at least perceived) benefit of visibility so that might be what you saw, you also see CS players playing in 1024x768 stretched still because that's how they always played before.
They definitely gave it that trendy sunny slightly hazy day look. I'm not complaining it's a much nicer aesthetic than the original release of CSGO which felt like a Seattle afternoon in the middle of the desert.
The saturation doesn't look any different to me when on my own machinr, the streamer may have changed their color settings on their GPU for a number of reasons. Visual clarity can be important for seeing targets quickly, as well as maybe wanting to stand out when scrolling in a feed so viewers see their stream stick out?
Doesn't setting max ping fix it for you? Or is the servers themselves that are the problem?
So maybe this was just an issue during the beta but it would still connect me to LA servers even with my max ping set to 25. It would start out at 9 ping and during the
warm up it would just shift to be 40s
I played a couple games today and I haven't been forced to connect to any servers in California
I wondered why I had heard no fanfare or announcements (not even the Steam banner changing, its still Shmup sale up there) but on checking the page this seems to be the Overwatch school of sequel? Just update a current game and put a 2 on it?
Well. On one hand, doesn't seem like it needed fixing (Its not my type of game but its popular enough, certainly more than most other Valve ventures) but also geez. At least artificially pretend its big news.
Counter Strike has been the same game for 23 years, basically every new game is an "update". Porting the game to Source 2 is the single biggest thing that has happened to Counter Strike since 2004 when they moved from GoldSrc, so might as well brand it as a new game.
I have 4k hours in CSGO alone. Probably 10k hours in the whole series all together. The changes they made are far more significant than an update.
It was a "ground-up" rebuild on Source 2, so while it carries forward all the CSGO content and aims to "play the same" in terms of movement and gunplay (with the exception of improvements like subtick actions), I'd say it's way more of an actual "2." New engine with all kinds of fancy lighting and other improvements, new assets (including weapon and character models, some of which were still originally in the 2013 CSGO launch), remakes and retouches of maps, vastly improved map-making tools, some nifty accessibility features (your walking sounds appearing on the radar) and quality of life features (selling back misbought items, or the picture-in-picture grenade throw practice camera), and some huge balance changes (games are now shorter, players now need to more strategically choose their weapons, smoke grenades are voxel-based and can be cleared out with gunfire and grenades, skyboxes are now open for grenade tosses, etc.)
It looks the same but with some lighting changes on the surface, but it's actually huge.
Despite some minor changes the game has played fundamentally the same since 1999.
Edit: also CSGO came out 11 years ago, compared to the 6 years between overwatch 1 and 2.
This is how the software engineering industry works. It's actually games that are the outlier here, with their big releases each time a sequel is made.
More visibility would definitely help here though, odd that they don't put a banner on the store given how big of a release this is for many players.
I play on Linux but encountered sound issues. Maybe after a day one patch, but it’s a damn big update. Whole different game now.
I had audio issues too and fixed them by adding
%command% -sdlaudiodriver pipewireto the launch options.Can people still kick you from matches for being bad at the game? If not I might consider trying it again.
Ironically I find that silvers screech more about shitty team mates than any ither rank.
Just a few days ago had a 3000 CS rated dude losing his fucking mind at one of our team mates because he was bottom fragging, only for the angry dude to end up hard negative KD while still bitching
He's trying really hard for gold status okay! You don't understand the pain and stress he's going through to try and get there, and his teammate playing badly reflects directly on his physical gaming ability!!
There is a kick option, yes.
Just use a name like noob be gentle. I hate it when ppl kick in casual because someone plays badly.
That name is guaranteed to get you kicked.
What about expertplskik?
Yeah, they can at least call a vote.
Welp, have to pass then, pisses me off way too much when that happens.
Yes, and that's the reason why I play it only with 2+ friends, it's a completely different game this way.
I will spend hours and hours playing against expert bots until I can consistently be at the top of the leader board. Then I be ready to play against humans and rank at the bottom.
I have been playing CS since 1.6 and every time a I take a break I have to start all over again.
I definitely hear you on this one. I stopped playing for a few years and I dropped from LEM to Silver 4. The skill drop-off is immense!
Bots seem to be set to "Drunk and Sleepy". Changing bot_difficulty does not seem to make a difference.
Pretty much, they are good for target practice and that's about it
bot_difficulty 5
custom_bot_difficulty 5
Those seem to work. The standard 1-3 make no difference that I can tell. They are still very very dumb, but at least they do not hesitate 5 sec to pull the trigger and can hit a target.
So if I own CSGO can I just run an update and have the new game?
Yes
Well, seeing as how CSGO is F2P, everyone owns it. And, CSGO itself is gone, it's now just CS2.
I am playing now. Looks great. Just shot through smoke which was cool.
I saw some streamer playing and legit thought "That's CSGO with Valorant saturation on"
Am I just too ignorant or did they really make everything boosted saturation?
This is just CS:GO finally evolving from the CoD brown-tinged visuals of 2007-2013
No? There's more color, but it's reasonable CSGO always had a kind of dull color grading/textures, though updates changed that A bit later on. A lot of players turn up saturation themselves for the (at least perceived) benefit of visibility so that might be what you saw, you also see CS players playing in 1024x768 stretched still because that's how they always played before.
They definitely gave it that trendy sunny slightly hazy day look. I'm not complaining it's a much nicer aesthetic than the original release of CSGO which felt like a Seattle afternoon in the middle of the desert.
The saturation doesn't look any different to me when on my own machinr, the streamer may have changed their color settings on their GPU for a number of reasons. Visual clarity can be important for seeing targets quickly, as well as maybe wanting to stand out when scrolling in a feed so viewers see their stream stick out?
The game suffers from server inconsistency
When on LA servers I lose. When on Atlanta servers, I top frag and pop head shots like crazy.
There's no way for me to manually decide to never be placed in California servers when I live 2000 miles away.
Maybe the larger player base will make a difference for closer games.
You can set max matchmaking ping in the settings, this has been a thing for years.
Doesn't setting max ping fix it for you? Or is the servers themselves that are the problem?
So maybe this was just an issue during the beta but it would still connect me to LA servers even with my max ping set to 25. It would start out at 9 ping and during the warm up it would just shift to be 40s
I played a couple games today and I haven't been forced to connect to any servers in California
...except on macOS, apparently.
I wonder if the game works if I try playing it using the GPTK.