Sandwich patch notes

Years after the sequel to the original delicious sandwich the next installment of the franchise that has sold over 25 billion copies receives it's 3rd installment; CHEESESTEAK SANDWICH.

Cheesesteak sandwich v1:
-meat is shit
-the spread is vomit
-the cheese is snot
-the bread is old and moldy

cheeseteak sanwich v1.01:
-shit is changed to 3 month old meat
-vomit is toned downed
-snot cheese is toned down
-Changed bread value from old and moldy to stale

cheesesteak sandwich v1.02
-meat changed to month old meat
-vomit changed to mayonnaise in the back of refrigrator
-snot cheese toned down

Cheesesteak sandwich v1.03
-meat changed to 3 week old meat
-Mayonnaise changed to old mayonnaise
-snot changed to hard american cheese
-stale bread changed to 3 day old bread

cheesesteak sandwich v1.04
-Bread changed to day old bread
-meat changed to week old meat
-american cheese made relatively fresh
-mayonnaise changed to right before expiration date mayonnaise

GOAL:
-Fresh sandwich roll
-nice spread
-delicious carmelized onions
-diced steak
-american cheese perfectly melted

Hopefully it'll get there...but right now it's not looking great.

Map balance part 3

So here's the thing I've wanted to talk about for a while but I haven't mainly because it's really hard to explain. 

 So when you're looking at DE nuke there is only a few areas you need to look at. The "ramp room" which leads to the lower bombsite and there is the "outside" area at the very bottom of the screen which leads to the upper bombsite. The middle area of the map is the lobby and it leads to ramp and to the upper bombsite through a "hut" or a "squeaky" door and through a "radio" room. The CT's lead tot he same places, only their have an upper view of the hut which is directly in front of their spawn and a big garage which looks at outside and squeaky.

Only that's not it. There's also a second entry point for the lower bombsite. It's behind the big garage. now i couldn't find a real overview which properly displays this but the overview below shows it relatively effectively in their bottom lefhand corner. It isn't to scale but it does the job.

This is the biggest change from CS1.6 and CS:S to CSGO. They completely drop that route. Now the argument for it was that that pathway wasn't used so why even have it in the game?

They removed the stairs and they removed to "green mile", the fake bombsite and the second tunnel on lower. They still have the control room which allows for a bit of diversity on bonmbsite coverage for the T's or CT's to hold.

That being said the unforeseen consequence for us CS players, something that valve probably didn't really think about. By taking away that pathway and the second doorway on lower it makes the lower bombsite  infinitely harder to play AND makes it infinitely hard to take. Instead of 2 or 3 viable ways to get to that bombsite there is only one: ramp. This makes radio room AND lobby a death trap because the CT's can just run up on the T's. and the outside can only funnel into the minigarage connector to A. So it's all rushes and all  death for the T's instead of them being able to control the pace and abuse the multitude of pathways that the T's have to take outside.

Basically they made a map which was already NOTORIOUSLY CT sided EVEN MORE CT SIDED.

map balance part 2

So now i'm going to touch on two maps which have not been touched much from their layouts and map designs outside of cosmetics and some minor changes in between the games - dust2 and inferno.( I haven't forgotten about de_Nuke but that'll be touched on in the near future). 

INFERNO:

 de_inferno is considered one of the most balanced maps in the history of counter-strike mainly due to the equal times it would take from A bombsite and the B bombsite for BOTH teams. Where de_train had fast times of rotation from outer to inner for the counter-terrorists than it would with the terrorists,  the times of rotations for the CT, specifically from apartments to B-bombsites and vice versa, can be relatively long but overall it's a pretty fast rotate for the players of archway on both sites. The terrorist path of rotation from alt mid or apartments to banana and vice versa, are equally long. Furthermore 2 areas of the map, mid and banana, are easy paths to cut off for either side if they attempt to abuse that path of rotation.

On CSGO little has changed outside of a few minor changes - most notably the constricted pathways for apartments and banana - the map's layout has not changed much. This is GOOD. By not really changing much of the map the balance of the map should not have swayed too much. While i could make a big stink over the placing of the fountain in the B bombsite, having a construction site where L-halls was or the fast rotation path from CT archways to B from my play through these things have not really changed much from one version of CS to another. This allows for the metagame to change very little and the strategies and tactics should be applicable from one game to the other

DUST2:

dust2 is THE iconic map of counter-strike. Where most people who have played halo will know wizard or warlock, quake will know DM6 and starcraft will have played a game on lost temple CS is the cs communities map. IT goes without saying that this map will not be changed much, if at all.

That does not mean this is a perfectly balanced map as, with the exception of long A, every single pathway on the map is easily accessible by the terrorists, and not for the counter-terrorists. The map has a middle area which is connected to every since pathway and there are more entry point for the terrorist side to this area than there are for the counter-terrorists. However the benefits of this are marginal as a strong CT side could be dominate their half and win it outright. However for the most part this goes in the way of the terrorists however slightly(IE 9-6, 8-7, 10-5 for the T's).

Similar thing to inferno, while there have been some minor changes(the big box in middle is slightly shorter and makes it able to be jumped on it and then ton cat walk, the boxes on lower can be jumped onto etc) for the most part the overall format and layout remains unchanged. This allow, like inferno, for the same strategies, the same tactics, the same metagame to transfer over and from the recent CSGO tournament in Copenhagen it appears that the T sided nature has been toned down a bit, but that could be more the player than the map. 

Overall these 2 maps display the old saying "if it aint broke, don't fix it." Most people, outside of the hardcore gamers who play this game for a decade like myself, will not notice these changes and most people will not even care - and for the most part these changes do not really hurt the game as a whole. 

Map balance part 1

So here's my attempt at explaining why 1.6 maps are better than CSGO maps - specifically train and nuke - and why certain maps are more balanced than others. I'm sure there is more that is far above my level of understanding but here's my attempt.

TRAIN:

So here's the problem with this map: it's far too easy for the CT's to rotate from one site to the other and it's much, much harder for the T's to rotate from one site to the other. For example if you're cut off white halls it's next to impossible for you to actually rotate from white halls to T mid or IVY. Going down ladder, if the CT's called fast enough they'd have that covered.

On the other hand if the CT's get the call that they're going IVY but haven't actually gone through the people covering lower inside  could run through white halls and flank them. IF they're actually through ivy they could provide backup through ladder room, z halls or run all the way to CT spawn and flank from there.

Basically the problems of the map is that it's far to hard to properly spread out the CT side and pick them off or exploit there weakest point or have an easy place to rotate to when the T's initial plan fails. While it can be done - and over the last few months they have seemed to have balanced themselves out, however slightly(IE instead of 11-4 or 12-3 CT halves we have 10-5 and 9-6 CT halves).

So how did CSGO fix these problems(ala the stairway from underpass to overpass on dust)? They didn't. In fact they made it worse in some regard.  Where the bomb sites were in cover and only had 2 real points of attack in the previous game(s) In CSGO they're more out in the open and they have taken away cover and prevented vertical support outside. So where on the inner bombsite there was the flatbed(although i misspelled flatbed fatbed...don't mind that, i'm just stupid) and took out the 2 train.

Now most would argue that this isn't a real issue and that train was perfect how it was. But there is another issue which remains unsolved from the removal of those train cars and getting rid of the ladder to 5(and now 6) trains. By removing those trains and limiting the vertical movement you have a map which, once you take a bombsite, is actually incredibly hard to hold as you have less places to hide and are more out in the open.

By limiting the ability to get onto 5 and 6 or under ANY of the trains you don't have that extra place to hide(preventing depth in strategy) and by adding another heaven(above Z halls) the map moves more towards the CT's favor again as once you take a site it's harder to hold and simply taking the sites will be harder due to the fact they have height advantage and almost all the areas that CT's have to hold can be held by multiple areas and most of the areas on the maps can be covered by multiple CT's without much of a rotation.

While i'm sure the changes in the map might not show these changes favor the CT side the potential that they could - and the fact that most of the players in the beta from my experience have not played CS and do not understand the layout, the benefits and the drawbacks of playing each spot the way they do - might harm the game in the long run. Basically they shouldn't try to fix what isn't broken, even if they don't like how the game APPEARS to be played - let the players try to sort that out, as it has been the last 13 years.