Counter-Strike 2 is already proving to be a massive improvement.
Last month Valve announced that the much-rumoured Counter-Strike 2 is real, and launched the Limited Test to give some players a chance to test the new game before it launches this summer. While only a few changes were revealed, and many more were held back for the final release, Counter-Strike fans are already shouting about the improvements and how this is the best shooter they have ever played, which is not good news for its biggest competitor; Valorant.
Counter-Strike 2 has only been available to a select few players for a few weeks, but it is already becoming clear that it is doing a lot of things better than Valorant, Riot Games’ attempt to create a Counter-Strike-like shooter. From core gameplay changes to backend tweaks and more there is a lot that Valorant players are looking at with jealous eyes in the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test.
When Valorant launched it was the hot new toy, with many CS:GO players and even some pros, moving across to the new game that was the first real challenger to CS:GO since it launched 10 years ago. But now, just a few years later, Valve is fighting back and is taking the fight to Valorant with these big features.
In slower-paced shooters such as Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant a lot of the action is based around smoke grenades or abilities. With defenders usually sitting on an angle waiting for a pixel to walk around before they shoot, forcing them to move away from where they are looking by disrupting their line of sight is one of the most effective ways to put them in a bad situation.
Holding angles is easier thanks to new smoke physics
In both CS:GO and Valorant, smoke has the amazing ability to always act in the same way, creating reliable vision blocks that you can’t do much about. But in CS2 that is all changing, with smokes that fill areas instead of defaulting to a set shape and smoke that interacts with bullets and explosions. No longer is smoke effectively a brick wall, you can now disrupt them, get vision through them, and reduce how effective they can be. As far as significant changes go, this is perhaps the biggest CS2 is bringing.
You know those moments where it felt like you shot first but somehow you’re the one who ended up dying? You can put that down to tick rate, which is basically how often your inputs are sent to the game server. While both Valorant and CS:GO (if you played on external servers) had solid tick rates, it was still noticeable in some situations, but in CS2 things are different.
While the tick rate is still technically a limiting factor, CS2 now records all your inputs at the sub-tick level, sending that data to the server every tick. So if you and an opponent both shoot on the same tick, when that information reaches the server it will be able to see who shot first and determine the outcome fairly.
Counter-Strike 2 will make everything look better
An area that Valorant always had the upper hand on was how abilities interacted with the world. While the art styles are quite different, it was always strange that fire in Valorant would look better than CS:GO and behave in a more natural way. But CS2 is overhauling all of that, with improved effects on things such as fire, explosions and even blood, which will not only splatter onto the environment in a more varied way, but will also change its appearance based on how long it has been left on the wall. It’s a lot of small changes that together add up to make CS2 look way better than CS:GO and even Valorant.
One advantage that CS will always have over Valorant is that every single player on the server has exactly the same power level and opportunity. Sure the two sides have different arsenals, but they swap at the half, so even if you lose the first 15 rounds, there’s no reason you can’t come back to push to overtime.
Whereas Valorant has the issue of different agents with different abilities. With so many agents there will always be some that are more powerful and effective than others. While Riot has done a good job of balance, it’s impossible to keep them all perfectly even all of the time, which means a team with the strongest agents of the patch will have an inherent advantage over their opponents.
Your skins will look better than ever in CS2
There’s no doubt that Valorant’s cosmetic designs are typically a step above CS:GO, even if a recent skin line did literally copy the base designs from Valve’s shooter, but the big sticking point for many is how difficult they can be to get. Once a skin set leaves the store, typically a couple of weeks after it launches, then you have to rely on the random rotation to get any skins you want, and even then many are limited time only and you’ll never see them again.
Fortunately for CS2 fans, all your CS:GO skins will transfer across to the new game, and you will still be able to trade them on both the Steam Marketplace and presumably still on third-party websites. This means that providing you have the cash, you’ll be able to get any skin you want from day one in CS2, a major improvement over Valorant.
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Last month Valve announced that the much-rumoured Counter-Strike 2 is real, and launched the Limited Test to give some players a chance to test the new game before it launches this summer. While only a few changes were revealed, and many more were held back for the final release, Counter-Strike fans are already shouting about the improvements and how this is the best shooter they have ever played, which is not good news for its biggest competitor; Valorant.
Counter-Strike 2 has only been available to a select few players for a few weeks, but it is already becoming clear that it is doing a lot of things better than Valorant, Riot Games’ attempt to create a Counter-Strike-like shooter. From core gameplay changes to backend tweaks and more there is a lot that Valorant players are looking at with jealous eyes in the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test.
When Valorant launched it was the hot new toy, with many CS:GO players and even some pros, moving across to the new game that was the first real challenger to CS:GO since it launched 10 years ago. But now, just a few years later, Valve is fighting back and is taking the fight to Valorant with these big features.
In slower-paced shooters such as Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant a lot of the action is based around smoke grenades or abilities. With defenders usually sitting on an angle waiting for a pixel to walk around before they shoot, forcing them to move away from where they are looking by disrupting their line of sight is one of the most effective ways to put them in a bad situation.
Holding angles is easier thanks to new smoke physics
In both CS:GO and Valorant, smoke has the amazing ability to always act in the same way, creating reliable vision blocks that you can’t do much about. But in CS2 that is all changing, with smokes that fill areas instead of defaulting to a set shape and smoke that interacts with bullets and explosions. No longer is smoke effectively a brick wall, you can now disrupt them, get vision through them, and reduce how effective they can be. As far as significant changes go, this is perhaps the biggest CS2 is bringing.
You know those moments where it felt like you shot first but somehow you’re the one who ended up dying? You can put that down to tick rate, which is basically how often your inputs are sent to the game server. While both Valorant and CS:GO (if you played on external servers) had solid tick rates, it was still noticeable in some situations, but in CS2 things are different.
While the tick rate is still technically a limiting factor, CS2 now records all your inputs at the sub-tick level, sending that data to the server every tick. So if you and an opponent both shoot on the same tick, when that information reaches the server it will be able to see who shot first and determine the outcome fairly.
Counter-Strike 2 will make everything look better
An area that Valorant always had the upper hand on was how abilities interacted with the world. While the art styles are quite different, it was always strange that fire in Valorant would look better than CS:GO and behave in a more natural way. But CS2 is overhauling all of that, with improved effects on things such as fire, explosions and even blood, which will not only splatter onto the environment in a more varied way, but will also change its appearance based on how long it has been left on the wall. It’s a lot of small changes that together add up to make CS2 look way better than CS:GO and even Valorant.
One advantage that CS will always have over Valorant is that every single player on the server has exactly the same power level and opportunity. Sure the two sides have different arsenals, but they swap at the half, so even if you lose the first 15 rounds, there’s no reason you can’t come back to push to overtime.
Whereas Valorant has the issue of different agents with different abilities. With so many agents there will always be some that are more powerful and effective than others. While Riot has done a good job of balance, it’s impossible to keep them all perfectly even all of the time, which means a team with the strongest agents of the patch will have an inherent advantage over their opponents.
Your skins will look better than ever in CS2
There’s no doubt that Valorant’s cosmetic designs are typically a step above CS:GO, even if a recent skin line did literally copy the base designs from Valve’s shooter, but the big sticking point for many is how difficult they can be to get. Once a skin set leaves the store, typically a couple of weeks after it launches, then you have to rely on the random rotation to get any skins you want, and even then many are limited time only and you’ll never see them again.
Fortunately for CS2 fans, all your CS:GO skins will transfer across to the new game, and you will still be able to trade them on both the Steam Marketplace and presumably still on third-party websites. This means that providing you have the cash, you’ll be able to get any skin you want from day one in CS2, a major improvement over Valorant.
source