New weapons on their way? Valve give rare interview
Following the successful launch of Counter-Strike 2, Valve have given a rare interview to pcgamer.
The new game has plenty of new features such as ELO rating in the Premier game mode, changes to smokes, and MR12, but if this interview is anything to go by, there could be more new additions during the game's lifespan.
Let's go through the interview and unpack the juiciest details.
Valve's interview
The interview starts out on a positive note, Valve pay their respects to CS:GO saying that "they couldn't have predicted how massive the audience would become". This is followed up by saying that CS2 comes from a "commitment to Counter-Strike".
That's what we like to hear.
The tone switches quickly when pcgamer brings up supposed issues with the sub-tick system. However, Valve are quick to stress that the examples provided aren't issues with sub-tick, and instead a now (thankfully) fixed bug with hitboxes not aligning with animations properly.
They later state that "the goal of sub-tick is to give everyone a consistent, tick-independent experience that's better than CS:GO's 64 or 128 tick experience", but seemingly admit that it isn't all the way there yet as they say that "For the most part the system works as intended".
Although Premier matchmaking was a feature in Global Offensive, changes to the mode have seen it skyrocket in popularity, something Valve says they "didn't predict" and is now making up "half of playtime".
pcgamer goes on to ask if there is anything Valve would've done differently, to which Valve says "we could have handled our communication over the system requirements for CS2 better—we should have let affected players know earlier in the process." - this has especially been a problem for Mac users, as support for the game has been discontinued on Mac with the release of CS2.
Valve then responds to criticism on whether the Limited Test should have been longer:
"Since we've launched, we've been getting feedback about new bugs, behaviors, and issues from players at every level, from casual players on older hardware to the pros.
Launching the game has massively accelerated the pace of improving CS2, so we think that launching when we did was the right time, even if the landing was (and still is) bumpy. Ultimately, this is the fastest way to get CS2 to where we all want it to be one or five or ten years from now." - Valve, via pcgamer
Guns and more
Many players have complained that guns feel different in CS2 to how they felt in CS:GO, something that can potentially be understood by the fact Valve reduced the sprays of rifles for the new game, a decision that they explain within the interview:
"In CS:GO, players were split between 64 and 128-tick servers. Tick rate affected CS:GO in several ways, including how grenades were simulated and the spray patterns for weapons, and players had difficulty switching between the two environments.
A goal of CS2 was to unify those two groups, and sub-tick servers are an important step toward that goal. The sub-tick servers separate gameplay from tick boundaries, which lets us fine-tune gameplay toward whatever specific standard we want. So, to get back to your question, the spray patterns look slightly reduced compared to 64-tick CS:GO, because as a general rule we've tried to match the 128-tick behavior when possible, and 128 tickrate CS:GO sprays are roughly the size you currently see in CS2." - Valve, Via pcgamer
The most interesting part of the interview comes with the next question as pcgamer ask about the chance of new guns being added to the game. To this, Valve emphatically respond "yes", but stress that "it's not the top priority at the moment".
There's no clues given as to what those new guns could be, but Valve say that "we'll typically look at cases where players either don't have the right tools to approach a situation, or have only one or two tools available. Where is the gameplay getting stale? What kind of weapon might shake up the status quo?"
Can we have a new LMG please?
Now of course, those who have been around long enough to remember what it was like when the R8 was added might be a little nervous hearing this, but Valve give us reassurances as they say they "learned some occasionally painful lessons about how to gracefully introduce a new weapon to the game" and that they "have a handle on how to approach this in the future".
They sign off the interview by saying that "we should all expect CS2 to look very different in 10 years", and we can't wait to see what they have in store for us.