CS2 - A NEW ERA HAS BEGUN

The wait is finally over. Valve has finally released the long awaited version of Counter-Strike, CS2. However, there are some things that have shocked the whole world after the final update was released. Let’s dive deep into this topic and see what has happened.

First impressions: 

Although most of CS:GO players have tried CS2’s beta at least one time, there are some things that the community never had access to, like: 

• Opening Cases 

• The skin  marketplace 

• Competitive matchmaking  

• All maps

Now that the world has been given access to everything, a lot of us are shocked to the limited extent of features we have been given to try before, and how many new features are available to us now. 

OPENING CASES 

Opening cases in CS2’s beta was not an option for the community. However, now it is, and you might have seen shocking videos of streamers, such as XQC, opening knives in their first cases in CS2, trading up Dragon Lore’s and Fire Serpents, and customising their skins with stickers they have been saving as investing for the past few years. 

There is a lot of hype around skins in CS2 at the moment, as we all expected. But, we have to talk about the negative aspects too… The animation we all loved and were used to while opening a case, most of us spinning the case left to right as the skins scrolled though our screens, has been deleted, at least in the first version of the game. Now, the case you are opening right now just fades away into the background, without the chance of you spinning it anymore. Let our favourite animation rest in peace.

SKIN MARKETPLACE

Before, although we did have a little section on our screen to purchase cases, skins from the case we chose from, and purchase event items, the section wasn’t given much importance. 

However, with CS2, this has changed. The skins marketplace has been given a whole screen in the “inventory” section in the games main menu. Even more, the UI is very user-friendly and lets users see everything they need and want to see on one screen. 

This is a dream come true for most of Counter-Strike players, because let’s be honest, who doesn’t like skins? 

COMPETITIVE MATCHMAKING 

Although we all knew that competitive matchmaking would change with the release of Counter-Strike 2, we did not have the opportunity to try it before. Now that we do, a lot of people are extremely happy with the new and logical upgrade of this game-mode. 

Instead of having one rank for all maps in the competitive map pool, we now have a rank for each map, meaning when you try to learn a new map to play on, you won’t have to play with people of your rank, you will start playing on the map with people who also haven’t played on it before, meaning you all start from zero and have the same opportunities to learn it and level up your skills on the map. 

MAPS

From today and onwards, every single player will have the opportunity to play on the upgraded, either graphically and completely changed, maps in the main activity pool. 

Some maps, such as Office and Cache, were not available in the game’s BETA versions. However, now that people have tried them, they have quickly fallen in love with the updated version of the maps and are excited to keep investigating and finding the new features on their favourite maps. Hop onto the game with your favourite skins and try out your favourite maps! 

What else can we see? 

During the BETA version of the game a lot of people have encountered issues with the tick-rate, hit boxes and much more. But, to our surprise, a lot of these issues were worked on and most of them have disappeared! Valve has done a good job fixing the issues that were publicly spoken about.

Unfortunately, even during the first 24 hours after CS2 released, a lot of people have seen cheaters in their games, making a lot of people believe that the “new” anti-cheat is not as good as Valve has announced it to be. Will Valve quickly fix this, or will we have to play with cheaters for some months before the new anti-cheat starts working as Valve wanted it to?

CS:GO is gone? FOREVER? 

The bad news are that after CS2 was released, CS:GO was deleted from Steam and players can no longer access either the servers, or the game itself. 

Some people think that this is just a marketing technique to make all players interested in Counter-Strike try CS2, or at least they hope that it is for marketing purposes.

What do you think, will it come back? Do you believe this was Valve’s marketing plan, forcing all players to play CS2 without a choice, or will CS:GO leave the world and go to the shadows the same way CS Source did back in the days? 

Final words:

We believe Valve did a great job fixing all the issues that we could find in the BETA version of the game. It’s smooth, it’s pleasant to the eye and it’s FUN! 

We encourage you to download the new version and try it out for yourself, check out your skins and maybe even consider buying some more skins, as these have also become even cooler than before! 

Good luck in your games, and remember, have fun!