How Counter-Strike 2 Could Change Everything

The already released Counter-Strike 2 changes are mainly focused on visuals, with little difference to how the game actually plays, excluding the buy menu. But data miners such as Gabe Follower have found and proposed some interesting updates that could change the way the game is played completely. These game-breaking updates include every aspect of the game and are not limited to just a few important parts.

Counter-Strike has always been a franchise that you learn as you play, without a tutorial or a guide. Valve is seemingly looking to change that with the inclusion of a new one in the game; nobody has a lot of information surrounding the new tutorial, although we do know that it’ll be much bigger than the shooting range provided in Global Offensive. We know almost for sure that it’ll have a competitive match simulation against bots, which will make the game much friendlier for new players and will probably see some massive rank disparity. This could be a very big problem, as there is already a huge difference in skill between players in the same rank; introducing an even bigger one can be a massive problem for the player base and competitive matchmaking. This could be easily fixed, however, by adding a few more ranks to the game, which might also fix the already existing competitive problem.

Valve also seems to be looking to completely change the meta, as new files point towards a new weapon (or weapons)! The speculations right now are about a grenade and rocket launcher being the newest additions that could be introduced. This will be a massive game changer if it gets released — Counter-Strike has always been about high precision, and introducing spam weapons into it will change the entire way the game could play. We could see a new role in professional teams, the “spammer” role; it could be a very important one, which is in charge of clearing corners or holding down a position without really being in danger. It might take a lot of skill or little skill to master this role, and it will be a very impactful one if these weapons do get released.

Competitive matchmaking could receive an overhaul, introducing ELO (A numerical number to represent your rank used in competitive games, where each rank is a certain range) into the game. In Global Offensive, you cannot see how close you are to ranking up or ranking down, and only when your rank changes can you know whether you performed well or not. Valve might be looking to change that, something which will greatly impact Global Offensive’s matchmaking and make it much more popular amongst players. It might look similar to Dota 2’s system, in which you can see how close you are to ranking up not with numbers but with a prompt that tells you how sure the computer is in your rank. Making the competitive system more open and understandable to players will create a higher desire to rank up, something that will surely change the way the game is played.

And lastly, Valve has updated the anti-cheat system, VAC. There is now a “VAC Live” system, which can ban players mid-match and cancel matches in which a cheater was found. The way that the anti-cheat works is both by checking that the game isn’t modified and with an AI that analyses gameplay. Using an AI to detect whether or not a player’s cheating is revolutionary, as unlike other anti-cheat systems, it still protects the player’s privacy while being a good system to get rid of cheaters. Valve has seemingly been training the AI based on the Overwatch system that was used in Global Offensive up until now. The game has always had a huge cheating problem, and introducing a new system to combat it would get rid of cheaters in ranked matches and help more players rank up fairly and come up with new strategies.

Overall, Counter-Strike 2 has huge potential to completely change how the Counter-Strike franchise looks and plays. It could completely revolutionise the tactical shooter genre like Global Offensive did when it first came out. I am very hyped for the changes and additions we could receive and what their effects on the game will be.