What would make YOU play new maps?

New maps face greater challenges than ever before.
It’s hard enough for them to rise above the spam and manipulation on the workshop.
It’s even more unlikely that they get officially chosen by Valve to be included in operations.
But perhaps the most difficult challenge of them all is to be accepted by the players.
To show this, just look at the current Competitive mappool. Of these 11 maps, only 4 of them
are younger than 13 years old. And only 2 of these are community-made.
This is kind of weird, isn’t it. Think of another game where you’d rather replay the
same map than you would a new one. We pay good money for sequels and expansions that
give us new maps to explore! If we were content with the same old maps over and over again
then Valve wouldn’t even have to make Half Life 3!
But clearly, things are different with Counter Strike. I think, one of the reasons at least,
is how competitive it is. As much as it should all be about enjoying the game and so on,
a lot of the fun comes from WINNING. And you can only get so far by mastering the weapons
and economy. The rest comes down to perfecting the maps. And it makes a big difference! If
you want proof of this then simply boot up a match on Office, Assault or Vertigo (Oh
wait it’s gone). Those of you who have tried this know what to expect and will never, ever
want to do it again. For the rest of you, let me tell you what
to expect. You’ll be put up against players of a far lower skill than yourself, but they’ll
put up a worthy fight simply because they know which corners to hide in and which walls
to shoot through. It makes a huge difference. You may even say it’s unfair, before realising
that you could learn a lot from these guys and have the best of both worlds.
But even on the popular maps we all know and love, the benefits of mastery can be massive.
Watch as pro players pull off elaborate attacks on bombsites. As smokes rain down and block
vision from key locations, and as molotovs force players out into the open. It’s a
sight to behold. The beautiful culmination of thousands of hours of practice, condensed
into just a few key seconds. When the stakes are so high, it’s no surprise that the top
teams would rather perfect a paltry map-pool than to botch a bigger one. They go as far
as to veto some of the classics from an already limited mappool, just so they can invest more
time into the others! But the rest of us don’t play on such a
high level. What’s our excuse for booting up Dust2 for the 1000th time? For me, it’s
familiarity. I know the contact points. The risks in different places. Cheap kills are
unlikely to catch me out. Sure, I’ll still have bad games from time to time on it. But
I know what to expect. At least with a map I know, it’s fair-game.
But a new map? The BEST case would be if nobody else knows the map as well. At least then
it’s kind of fair. But the chances are, some of the other players DO know the map
already, and I’ll be at an unfair, un…fun disadvantage.
When you look at it this way, is it any wonder that most of the maps we play have been in
the game since 1.6? I’d argue they’re still here BECAUSE of this, rather than despite
it. The maps back then weren’t made by pros. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that they
were made by people who at the time had a limited knowledge of the game- far more basic
than what most of us have these days. The layouts of Dust2, Inferno, Train and Nuke
probably aren’t the best that Counter Strike is capable of. They were just the best of
the early ones. And they were good enough that players would rather return to them than
deal with the hassle of searching for better ones.
I’m not saying these maps are unworthy. They still had to beat out the competition
and have had tweaks and adjustments ever since to keep them relevant. There’s no better
example of this than Cbble, which has changed so much since the original that it’s hardly
the same map any more. And others that used to be popular have fallen out of favour- cases
where progress has perhaps triumphed over nostalgia. And despite what I said earlier,
I do think that Dust2 is the product of divine inspiration.
But I think it’s safe to say that our map preferences aren’t unbiased. We are heavily
influenced by familiarity and risk missing out on new and exciting experiences because
of it. We simply don’t care enough to change things.
But Valve? OOH, this is where it gets interesting. Before CS:GO, we had the old serverlist. Most
of these servers would host old favourites alongside new potentials that over time the
playerbase would grow familiar with. But Valve’s approach with CS:GO has changed
all of this. Unless you go to the hassle of loading up the serverlist, the options available
will drop you into Valve-hosted servers that are running maplists of their choosing. I’m
not saying this approach is better or worse. It’s simply different. And it is actually
worse for new maps, which will no longer have the chance to be played.
But Valve have been aware of this for a long time and have done some pretty major things
to try and fix it. Most notably, the Operations, where the best of the workshop is bundled
together and then thrown in everybody’s face for a number of months to help give the
maps some exposure. This was rather successful at the beginning.
I still remember the first few operations and their maps well. Over time I’ve paid
less and less attention to these, seeing these new maps as a hassle to learn rather than
something to get excited about, mostly because I know that when I do choose to play them,
I’ll be up against people who have played them a lot more than I have. Which like I
said earlier, isn’t as fun. It’s a shame because a lot of these have potential to be
as good, if not better than the ones already featured in the game! It’s just getting
over that first stage of learning them in the first place.
To show I’m open-minded I’ll pick one or two of these when searching for a game…
but I’ll also tick the old favourites, knowing full-well that the chances of Canals being
picked will be super low and I always breathe a sigh of relief when Cache is selected instead.
I feel terrible for admitting this! As a large Youtuber I’m supposed to be the one leading
the charge into these new maps. But I just can’t be bothered. You may remember the
Pulse Servers hosting that I did for over a year, where numerous new maps and gamemodes
were tested. I got the feeling that this quickly became a chore for a lot of you, who would
rather be watching instead of playing, even if you did enjoy the experience if you bothered
to join! As much as I love CS:CO and other imaginative gamemodes, I feel they’re up
against the same sort of resistance from the community.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with the way that things are. CS:GO is CS:GO, and if people
would rather watch 2 elite players duelling each other around a familiar corner, why not?
But what if we wanted a change? You know, like to see if it makes the game better in
the long-run? Let’s have a look at the new maps that have already made it. What did these
do right? Overpass is a Valve-made map. That’s what
it did right, it was made by Valve, who immediately blessed it with a premium place within the
game, where it was then forced upon the playerbase and professionals. We didn’t like it. It
went through numerous changes, no doubt aided by the amount of analysis that Valve could
do with it and the extensive playtesting it received. And now we do like it! Can you believe
that it’s almost 4 years old? Overpass is proof that new maps CAN work and that we can
grow to love and appreciate them if they’re shoved down our throats for long enough. But
honestly, with the changes it’s gone through I genuinely think it’s now one of the strongest
maps in the game. It’s littered with original ideas, cool grenade throws and… boost spots.
Then there’s Cache and now Agency, both community-made maps that were first featured
in the second Operation of all time: Operation Bravo. These are the purest of the new maps,
that were made by, and then accepted, by the people! Well done to you guys for being so
open-minded. They now have what’s as close to a permanent place in the game as they can
get. I can’t imagine CS:GO without Cache now.
And lastly there’s Canals, which is Valve’s malicious attempt to sabotage the game and
everything we love about it. Or maybe it’s just like Overpass, a map that they update
and refine until we DO love it. It’s more complicated than the maps that we’re used
to. I believe that this is intentional, an experiment by Valve to see if an elaborate
layout can result in a higher skill ceiling and more imaginative strats.
Okay, so for a new map to be accepted into the game permanently, it seems a map either
needs to be made by Valve, or has to win the affections of the community from the Operations,
of which only 2 maps have managed so far! Which doesn’t seem too hopeful for new maps,
does it. Part of me would love to see what would happen
if, for the next Operation, Valve were to remove every other map from the game to force
people to learn and to love some new ones. At the end of this we may be left with 2-3
that are worthy of official inclusion into the game permanently- which would be great!
Of course, Valve wouldn’t risk something this drastic since in the meantime the community
would hate CS:GO and it would cause irreversible damage to the player numbers. But since the
end of the last Operation, they’ve been doing something similar, if less dramatic.
Not that I’m trying to shoe-horn redwoods into every video I now make, but did you know
these FANTASTIC trees rely on forest fires to survive? Fires kill off everything else,
but the redwood’s thick bark allows for them to remain standing and to then sow seeds
in the now-cleared space around them. In a way… a very vague way (you’ll have
to use your imagination), CS:GO’s maplist is a bit like a redwood forest. The good maps
are like redwoods and the rest are just clutter, stopping new redwoods from growing.
After the latest operation ended, Valve effectively set fire to the maplist forest, killing rubbishly
little tree maps like Vertigo, Aztec, Dust and Militia in the process. That’s right.
They’re no longer in the game. Shed a tear for them. But where they used to stand are
now spaces. Gaps for new, bigger and better maps to sprout from! Operations, it seems,
aren’t enough. Getting players to try out new maps actually involves complete removal
of the excess, and by giving new potential maps the same status in the game as the likes
of Cache and Dust2. That’s where Agency now sits, and I expect more to follow.
One of the reasons for me not bothering with operation maps was because I knew that once
the operation was over, the maps would be removed from the game again, never to return.
Why waste time learning these when the time spent on, say, Inferno would remain relevant
for far longer? Time on CS:GO isn’t just for short-term
payoff. It’s an INVESTMENT into our future ability! Valve needs to reward the time we
invest on new maps in some long-term way if it’s to persuade us to take a rest from
our old favourites. Making new maps more permanent is one such way in which this can be done.
But at the same time, I don’t expect a ‘permanent place’ to actually be a ‘permanent place’
any more. From now on, expect the official map list to be fluid, with maps coming and
going over time. By concentrating the player base into a smaller number of maps, hopefully
the newer maps will get more playtime. Somewhat counter-intuitively, I think Valve are more
likely to remove a map if it gets played a lot and if our dislike is still vocal at the
end! The important thing is that we at least give maps a CHANCE to be good and that we
consider the terrifying possibility that we might even like them, once we’ve learned
the layout enough not to get insta-killed every round.
Or at least, that’s what I think Valve are doing to try and encourage you to play new
maps. But who am I to speak for them… or for you? That’s why I’ve left this video
as a question. To YOU. I want YOU to say why you prefer to play the same maps again and
again, and what it would take to make you play a new one. Comment below with your reasons
why. And then like and share and subscribe and follow and pay and worship and fear me.
And on Twitter, as well!
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What would make YOU play new maps?

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