New CS2 update brings Thera and Mills to the game
With Counter-Strike recently celebrating its 25th birthday, many fans hoped that the latest update to the game would feature the release of a new Operation.
However, the new update came, and those people were left disappointed.
That said, it doesn't mean that the update was boring; it actually featured a ton of great content.
New maps
The biggest news within the new update is the addition of five new maps to CS2.
In the Competitive playlist, we've seen the inclusions of both Thera and Mills, the former of which is the remodel of a fan-favourite map from CS:GO, Santorini.
Wingman has also had two new maps added to the playlist: Memento and Assembly. Assembly is particularly cool as the fighting takes place in an aircraft hangar, with players battling it out among a host of plane parts.
Finally, Pool Day was added to Arms Race. Pool Day has a great little Easter egg that pays homage to Counter-Strike's history, which you can check out in the tweet below.
If you want to see a quick fly-through of all the new maps, Jacky has posted an excellent one on his Twitter.
Competitive rank changes
The other big change is that the Competitive playlist now only requires two wins to earn a rank.
The queue previously required you to get ten wins on each map to receive a rank, which took an incredible amount of playtime if you wanted to receive a rank on multiple maps and not just become a Vertiglobal.
The change also removed players' current ranks, and those players now have to get another win to regain their rank.
CS2 Video settings changes
Video settings also received some updates within the latest patch, including some additions for recommended settings.
You can read the full video settings patch notes below:
- Added a Settings Recommendation popup if your display's refresh rate is set below its maximum at startup. Using your display's highest refresh rate is generally recommended.
- Added a Settings Recommendation popup if NVIDIA G-Sync support is detected but not enabled at startup. Using G-Sync is generally recommended if your system supports it.
- Added a Settings Recommendation popup if NVIDIA G-Sync is enabled but not V-Sync and/or NVIDIA Reflex. It is generally recommended that all three settings be enabled together when they are available. Note that applying these settings will limit your frame rate to your display's refresh rate or slightly lower, which is usually the smoothest-looking and lowest input latency settings combination. See https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/418E-7A04-B0DA-9032 for technical details.
- Removed "Main Menu Background Scenery" and "Item Inspect Background Scenery" settings from the Video Settings page. These settings are still available on the Main Menu and in the Item Inspect screens respectively.
- The "Refresh Rate" setting now shows your display's current refresh rate in Windowed and Fullscreen Windowed modes.
- Removed the "Laptop Power Savings" setting which has never actually been configurable in CS2.
- Added a "Frame Pacing" section to the Advanced Video settings page.
- Added an "NVIDIA G-Sync" row to the Frame Pacing section which tells you whether or not G-Sync is active with your current display settings. This row may be hidden if you're using the Vulkan renderer or if you're not using an NVIDIA graphics card.
- Added "Maximum FPS In Game" and "Maximum FPS In Menus" sliders to the Frame Pacing section. These control the fps_max and fps_max_ui convars, respectively.
- Increased the default "Maximum FPS In Menus" setting from 120 FPS to 200 FPS.
- The Advanced Video visual preview now uses the "In Game" maximum FPS instead of the "In Menus" maximum.
Check out the full patch notes here.