Valve has announced a major gameplay update to its flagship title, Counter-Strike 2, and your muscle memory is in for one hell of a nightmare.
Long-time fans of the game and fans of FPS games in general, are used to the mechanic where when you reload a gun, it will top up the ammo that is currently in your magazine from the total pool. More tactical games, such as Escape From Tarkov is a different story where you have physical magazines to manage.
The change that is has arrived makes it so that now when you press reload, your character dumps the magazine on the ground and you now lose all the ammo.
Quote From Valve We think the decision to reload should have higher stakes, so in today's update reloading has been redesigned. Now, when you reload, you'll drop the used magazine and discard all of its remaining ammo. Instead of 'topping off' your weapon with a few bullets, a new full magazine will be taken from the reserves whenever you reload.
This has massive gameplay ramifications. Players very consistently reload after taking a few shots if they need to head for cover so that should a battle go on for a full magazine, they are ready for it. Now, you have to make your shots count even more and you have to be so strategic with your reloads.
Reload early? Lose a lot of possible ammo that might bite you later in the game.
Reload late? Someone turns the corner and you've only got 5 shots left in your mag and you did not make them count.
This should make professional-level play even more interesting to watch as we learn some of the new strategies involved in this new way of playing with reloading. Speaking of magazines, most weapons in the game have "three clips fill-up" while others have less to reward you for your precision with the guns... or more to encourage spamming through walls and smoke.
It is a bit surprising to see Valve take the stance that your magazine should be completely discard though. In many titles, if you reload, the magazine simply goes into your rotation again so if you reload enough times, you're eventually going to come back around to those leftover shots. I suppose one could argue the fast-paced nature of CS2 says that you are in the middle of fast-paced combat and don't have time to do anything but throw the old mag on the ground.
Escape From Tarkov, and some other FPS titles, have a "quick reload" feature which you do drop your mag on the ground when you double tap the reload key so you cut time off the reload animation. But, in Tarkov at least, you can go back and pick up your physical magazine on the ground.
It could be interesting to see a change where you could opt to buy additional magazines or even make it so that guns only come with 1 and you have to buy extra ones. For players who are very trusting of their ammo usage during a round, they could come out far ahead in a system where they need to spend less than others.
Changing a core mechanic like this decades later is so wild to see though. Definitely worth a few rounds on Dust 2.
More Updates in CS2
The patch also introduces a limited-selection of map guides that can be activated inside of competitive matches which allow you to learn maps easier. You can activate a guide in the pause menu (of which there are official map guides for active duty maps) and that will let you see guides during the first five rounds in the first half of the match.
We also are getting the ability to join a friend in custom games!
Quote From Valve Over the past several months, the CS community has been hard at work building custom game modes using special scripting tools. Now, you can join your friends in the fun!
Whenever you're playing a custom game, whether on a community server or hosted locally, your friends will be able to join you directly from the Friends list (as long as the server allows it).
Want to set up your own custom game? Head over to your Workshop Maps tab in the Play menu, and make sure to turn on "Open Party." Now, when you start playing your workshop map you'll host a game on your machine, and your friends will be able to join.
So head to the Steam Community Workshop, subscribe to some maps, and try something new!
That's a couple of smaller updates and a massive gameplay change. How do you feel about the reload change in CS2?
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