Valve has traditionally maintained a more discreet approach compared to other game developers who frequently engage with their communities through “developer posts” outlining updates and future plans.
Out of the blue and on a rare occurrence, Counter-Strike’s developers granted an interview to pcgamer.com, where they shed light on the game’s future, providing a glimpse into what lies ahead for your favorite first-person shooter.
Bumpy release
Counter-Strike 2 has had a bumpy start with many bugs, performance issues and the lack of fresh content. However, according to Valve, it was ‘the right time’.
‘We know there’s a conversation about whether the Limited Test should have been longer. For sure, there are some features that would have been included in CS2 at launch if we had a longer beta.’
‘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.’ – Valve to pcgamer.com
The sub-tick system caused quite a stir since the first announcement, and it received heavy criticism once tested by professional players. In their defense, the developers said that ‘the system works as intended.’
‘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. For the most part, the system works as intended, but as we rolled out the feature to more and more people we got feedback, like those clips, about systems that weren’t reaching their goals.’
New guns?
As for the lack of new content, as mentioned previously, Valve confirmed more weapons will be coming to the game in the future, after taking lessons from the overpowered R8 Revolver back in 2015. According to them, it should be easier this time with the new customizable loadout system.
When it was first added, the R8 took CS by storm, and was the most powerful weapon in the game (Image Credits: Valve)‘It’s not the top priority at the moment, but we absolutely plan to introduce some new weapons for CS2.’
‘Among the many things we learned from the R8, one was to be more careful when shipping new (or major changes to) weapons, to let players put them through their paces before making them available everywhere.’
Removed game modes and the lack of an operation
Many players expected an operation at launch, but nobody expected that the casual modes would be removed, like Retakes, Arms Race and even Danger Zone, let alone the other modes that require a connection to a community server, like surfing.
Image Credits: Valve“In the short term, we have been keeping our development focused on the spaces where players spend the overwhelming amount of their collective time,” they said. This explains the heavy focus on having a playable game at launch.
‘Those modes haven’t been forgotten! We have plans to re-introduce popular game modes and explore others. That being said, all game modes, regardless of their rules, fundamentally depend on solid core gameplay.’
Though the game is still a construction site, the future vision seems bigger than what we can imagine. After all, CS:GO took years of constant fixing and changing until it became a work of art.
Let’s face it: the transition to a new engine was necessary as a solution for the technological advancements the gaming industry has witnessed these last few years. As the developers said, “CS2’s future isn’t set in stone,” but it’s bright and positive.
‘We should all expect CS2 to look very different in 10 years. Just look at how much CS:GO changed! But just as CS:GO’s final form was the culmination of a decade of experiments, CS2’s future isn’t set in stone.’
