It’s safe the say that the release of Counter-Strike 2 for most fans has been anything but smooth, concerns were raised right away with the lack of content released with the game, along with the age old issue of cheaters within the game, and the addition of new bugs that came with the game being released onto a new engine.
Despite this, Valve have pushed ahead, the first big event to include CS2 shed a lot of light on some of these issues, and despite them was still a very popular event with lots of activity at Cloudbet for wagers being placed. It also led to a number of changes over the following weeks that have chipped away at some of the issues players have had.
Prior to the holiday period and now that the holiday period has passed, Valve have been quieter than they initially were with fewer updates and small updates to boot, and the common held belief is that there’s going to be a bit of a waiting period – the qualifiers for the first CS2 Major event are currently being played, with the first Major taking place in the second half of March.
Any significant change before the major takes place could lead to changes that aren’t entirely necessary, or changes made without the necessary information to really make a balanced change, and so despite players getting restless this certainly looks to be the correct way to go about things. The big question is what changes could be on the way?
The in-game economy is a big one, Valve will be paying close attention to how often teams have to save or how often they have to eco, what buys are possible and how these buys influence the state of the game too. It’s no big secret that CT’s have a very difficult time managing economy in the current iteration, and fixing this big imbalance will go a big way in fixing some flow of the game.
It’ll also be an opportunity to take a look at the re-introduced MR12 format, it has widely been accepted as a good change for shorter games but as the game is yet to be balanced around this, there’s still some work to do. It’s extremely unlikely that Valve will revert back to the MR15 format, but fans will be keeping a close eye on this space after the major.
For some fans of the game, operations are the big highlight of the game as it brings new cases, new skins, and new game modes too, so this will certainly be another important area for players to keep their eye on during the lead up to or after the first major for CS2. Many fans are expecting the operation to drop following the completion of the major, particularly as some new cosmetics have already been datamined and are being highly sought after by collectors already.
It’s going to be a very exciting period of time for the game, esports as a whole are thriving and Counter-Strike 2 is right up there amongst the most popular, a bit of work to smooth out some of the rougher edges will continue to push the game in the right direction, and with Valve seemingly being much more responsive and much more involved this time around, there are plenty of opportunities to push CS2 to be the most popular esports title in the world, and keep the Counter-Strike franchise at the head of esports for another decade to come.
