Taking A Look At Recent CS:GO Updates

CS:GO has seen a lot of changes over the past month, some of them quite major. Let’s discuss what was changed and how it changes things.

1.35

This is THE big update.

Hitboxes!

Old:

New:

For those who are unclear as to what this means – the hitboxes (the thing you actually shoot as opposed to the visual model of the player) used to be boxes, meaning it was possible to shoot a players model as opposed to their hitbox. This would mean your shots wouldn’t actually register as having hit the player. In addition, the planting and ladder hitboxes used to be completely wrong, and many players experienced shooting dead at a planting terrorist and doing no damage to him. In this update, the hitboxes were made into capsules that fit the models of the characters, meaning that shots should (and in my experience, are) registering much more consistently.

Animations!

Everything you previously had an animation for in first person is now visible in third person as well. Brief examples:

- Changing weapons

- Switching to grenades

- Throwing grenades

New animations shown in third person:

- Ladder Climbing

- Bomb defusal – CTs will now hold a little device with wires running from it to the bomb when defusing, regardless of if they have a kit or not.

The new defusing animation.

Player culling!

This means that if you walk up to, for example, squeaky door on nuke, and stick your gun into it, it will no longer be visible from the other side. This means players are no longer detectable from their weapons or bodies sticking through walls and allows for smaller places to be hidden in with a long rifle out.

Weapon rebalancing!

- The M4A1-S now costs $3100 and has had its fire rate reduced. The patch notes reported that its armour penetration had been reduced too, but this is not the case.
- Zeus had its price reduced to $100.
- The Dual Berettas have had their armour penetration and range increased, making them more viable in eco rounds to steal a gun off an armoured player.

There were numerous small updates to these that have occurred (tweaking animations, for example) but I’m only going to discuss the new things that were added in terms of gameplay. The Shadow Case was introduced with a new knife (technically knives) – the Shadow Daggers. Now back to the fun stuff!

 

1.35.0.3

StatTrak Music Kits. Colloquially known as the “Valve, are you kidding me?!” update due to the amount of jokes that used to be made about StatTrak Music Kits, these music kits will track the amount of competitive MVPs you get while the Music Kit is equipped. This update also added a Darude Music Kit, but much to the disappointment of the player base Sandstorm was not included.

 

1.35.0.4

Operation Bloodhound came to a close. In this update, the Zeus was changed – price changed to $200, kill reward reduced to 0, and the player speed has been set to 200 when moving with the Zeus out.

 

1.35.0.5

The player flashbang animation was adjusted. In previous versions, the players arm would be in front of their face whether they were full flashed or only slightly flashed, which lead to much confusion when seeing an apparently fully flashed enemy player kill you. In this update, the arm movement will update and move with the amount of blindness a player experiences.

 

So, how did all this change the game?

The single most discussed thing (apart from all the sarcastic StatTrak Music Kit discussion) over on the CS:GO subreddit was the nerfed M4A1-S. When the update was first announced, a large percentage of players reportedly switched to the M4A4. This switch was largely borne out of panic, as the M4A4 wasn’t actually changed in any way, and someone who didn’t like it before had no reason to like it post-nerf. As time passed, the M4A1-S was picked up again by more players, as with the reduced fire rate (and therefore reduced recoil), the M4A1-S is easier to control now, so players who can hit headshots will be rewarded by it. A poll posted two weeks ago has accrued 1200+ votes and shows ~55% for the A4 and ~45% for the A1-S, so while the A4 is seemingly the preferred rifle now the A1-S is definitely not useless.

The new hitboxes mean that hitting shots on jumping players is consistently possible, meaning jump scouting is possible to counter now. Shooting is much more reliable now, and planting terrorists can be consistently killed if you have a clear shot on them.

There have been numerous reports of players experiencing framerate loss since the updates, and while Valve has released many small patches to try and alleviate this, the problem may not be gone for everyone. To my understanding, a concrete reason for the drops was never established, so if you are affected have a look around and try out some fixes, but there is no single confirmed cause or solution yet.

 

That’s about it for the big changes in CS:GO recently! What do you think of the new animations? Do you use the M4A1-S or the M4A4, and has that changed since the nerf? Do you like the new hitboxes? Let me know!