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Counter-Strike 2 Officially Announced by Valve for Summer 2023 Launch, Limited Test Incoming Today

erek

erek

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This is super exciting news!!!

"The UI in Counter-Strike 2 has gotten a complete overhaul, including fresh visual effects throughout the HUD. Not only do these improvements look nice, they also communicate important game state.

ACCURATE AUDIO

Reworked, Rebalanced, Reverbed - Counter-Strike 2 sounds have been reworked to better reflect the physical environment, be more distinct, and express more game state. They have also been rebalanced for a more comfortable listening experience.

SOURCE 2 TOOLS

The Source 2 tools and rendering features will be available for community map makers to make it easier to build, experiment and iterate. And stay tuned for the Source 2 Item Workshop, which will be available later on in the limited test.

THERE'S MORE TO COME

The Limited Test only evaluates a subset of Counter-Strike 2's features, so that major issues can be resolved before the summer. But there's much more to come. In just a few months we'll reveal all of the details of Counter-Strike 2, and we can't wait to share it with you."

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Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/306283/...ummer-2023-launch-limited-test-incoming-today
 
erek said:
"The UI in Counter-Strike 2 has gotten a complete overhaul, including fresh visual effects throughout the HUD. Not only do these improvements look nice, they also communicate important game state.
Click to expand...

They say while posting the usual screenshot with no UI...
 
Some highlights (brought to my attention by DrezKill )







I liked most of that, but the bullets cutting circular holes in smoke cover looked kind of dumb.

That said, while I am happy that Counter-Strike is still around as I have fond memories of it (primarily) from 2000-2002, I have long since moved on. It's not my game anymore.
 
The emphasis on tools almost makes it seem like Valve is trying to make a play for the engine market again by making Source (2) a relevant engine again.

That certainly wouldn't hurt. Unreal Engine has increasingly dominated market share among PC AAA style titles, and we've all seen what happens to a market when just one player dominates it. I think this could be a good thing if they are successful.

They are probably viewing how Epic is funneling developers into the Epic Games Store via their licensing relationship when it comes to the game engine as a direct threat to their existence, so this move makes sense.

There is a huge barrier to entry though, as so many studios are already familiar with working with UE.
 
From what I have seen of this I will give this a try. I hated CSGO but I absolutely loved Counter Strike Source and some of what I am seeing here reminds of of CSS.
 
zamardii12 said:
From what I have seen of this I will give this a try. I hated CSGO but I absolutely loved Counter Strike Source and some of what I am seeing here reminds of of CSS.
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I started playing Counter-Strike in the early Half-Life Mod betas before Valve bought it, so I have no recorded number of hours in it in Steam.

Over the years (especially in college) I probably racked up around 3,000 hours in the game.

The amount of time I spent in Counter-Strike makes me amazed I was able to graduate on time, and with honors, but somehow it worked.

At one point in college I remember remarking that I remember remarking that a week has 168 hours, and I had spent about half of those hours in game in Counter- Strike, but I was also running the Yoda's Barn gaming servers at this point, with two counter-strike servers and a Natural Selection server. So there was moderation, and keeping up with the website, etc. etc which added to the in-game hours.

Either way, I spent a ton of time in the original, most of which probably in the 1.0 - 1.3 era as I considered that the sweet spot when it was the most fun. I played from the very first public beta (beta 4? I can't remember) through to 1.6 and then Source when it came out, but most of my volume playing was in 1.0 to 1.3 somewhere.

Then I continued to play CS:Source for a few years, but my volume of gameplay dropped over the years.

By the time CSGO came out in 2012 it has been many years since I last played any counter-strike. I bought it to try it, and I have had some limited fun in the game, but I can't help but feel like the loot boxes and skins have had a negative impact on the game. That and the official servers and auto-matching has really hurt the social aspect of the game compared to back when you had your regular community servers you logged on to, and knew all of the regulars on.

I also wish there were a way to get "classic map rotations" by era, so I could bask in the nostalgia more. There were some maps that if I am honest were not very good, like de_aztec, but I still have some awesome memories of good times from.

1679515448384.png


I still log on every now and then to see if I still got it. Sometimes the answer is yes, but often definitely no. It slowly comes back if I play a few hours, but I am going to have to admit that at this point in my mid 40's I don't have the same reflexes I did when I was in my early 20's. That and I am horribly out of practice :p

I think chances are very good I am going to buy CS2 if for no other reason than the combination of nostalgia, and to see how the game evolves, but chances of me picking it up ad playing more than a few hours here or there are slim to none.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
The emphasis on tools almost makes it seem like Valve is trying to make a play for the engine market again by making Source (2) a relevant engine again.

That certainly wouldn't hurt. Unreal Engine has increasingly dominated market share among PC AAA style titles, and we've all seen what happens to a market when just one player dominates it. I think this could be a good thing if they are successful.

They are probably viewing how Epic is funneling developers into the Epic Games Store via their licensing relationship when it comes to the game engine as a direct threat to their existence, so this move makes sense.

There is a huge barrier to entry though, as so many studios are already familiar with working with UE.
Click to expand...

They toyed with that idea when they first made Source 2, but I doubt it is now. S2 is 8 years old and was barely an upgrade over S1 S2 is laughable compared to UE5. Even random ass engines from no name developers are better at this point.
 
For sure gonna buy this! My first CS was 1.5-1.6 on dial-up internet, then CS:Source where my team won Cal-Open Championship :D I forgot what season. I play CS:GO every now and then just for fun and will likely do the same with CS:2. Hopefully the graphics are awesome but also scalable for lower-end systems.
 
legcramp said:
For sure gonna buy this! My first CS was 1.5-1.6 on dial-up internet, then CS:Source where my team won Cal-Open Championship :D I forgot what season. I play CS:GO every now and then just for fun and will likely do the same with CS:2. Hopefully the graphics are awesome but also scalable for lower-end systems.
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"Counter-Strike 2 arrives this summer as a free upgrade to CS:GO. "

So I don't think you'll need to buy it. And I think CS:GO might be going away. Graphics don't look very upgraded so it'll probably still run fine.
 
legcramp said:
For sure gonna buy this! My first CS was 1.5-1.6 on dial-up internet, then CS:Source where my team won Cal-Open Championship :D I forgot what season. I play CS:GO every now and then just for fun and will likely do the same with CS:2. Hopefully the graphics are awesome but also scalable for lower-end systems.
Click to expand...

I feel pretty sure they are going to err on the side of "you can run it on a potato".

20+ years ago you used to at least need a decent computer to run CS, but these days they make their money on all the marketplace transactions and keys to open loot boxes with morons hoping to get a knife skin.

The more people who can play the game, the more people who are going to buy lootbox keys.

If it were me, I'd design it with a minimum GPU requirement of an RTX2060, but that seems like it would never happen.
 
sharknice said:
"Counter-Strike 2 arrives this summer as a free upgrade to CS:GO. "
Click to expand...

Lol. So why even rename it. I mean, they have been piecemeal releasing updates to it ever since it launched in 2012. How is this different (except maybe there being more changes than usual all at once)?

I'm guessing there are going to be a lot of low end PC upgrades this summer then. If it were a new game, people who have very low end systems that cant handle it, could always keep playing CSGO, but if it is a free upgrade (I read this as replacement) then a lot of people will need less obsolete hardware than they were playing CSGO on.

I remember when CS Source launched, and I upgraded our primary server to Source (with the secondary server still running 1.6)

I instantly had complaints of "LAG" from kids who didn't know what low framerate was. :p
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Lol. So why even rename it. I mean, they have been piecemeal releasing updates to it ever since it launched in 2012. How is this different (except maybe there being more changes than usual all at once)?

I'm guessing there are going to be a lot of low end PC upgrades this summer then. If it were a new game, people who have very low end systems that cant handle it, could always keep playing CSGO, but if it is a free upgrade (I read this as replacement) then a lot of people will need less obsolete hardware than they were playing CSGO on.

I remember when CS Source launched, and I upgraded our primary server to Source (with the secondary server still running 1.6)

I instantly had complaints of "LAG" from kids who didn't know what low framerate was. :p
Click to expand...

Yeah it seems dumb to me. So did "Overwatch 2" though. It's almost the same thing.

I remember when lag actually meant network latency. It was so fucking annoying when people would call low frame rate lag. If you say lag now it has no specific meaning.

I remember when they made updates to the original CS and I could no longer run it smoothly on my Pentium 2 350hz Voodoo 3 PC. Maybe people will have problems running the upgrade, but I think they would have to be on an extremely dated rig.
 
sharknice said:
I remember when lag actually meant network latency. It was so fucking annoying when people would call low frame rate lag. If you say lag now it has no specific meaning.
Click to expand...

Nonsense. Lag - in the context of gaming - means one thing and one thing only, and that is unacceptably high network latency, except when you are talking about "Input lag" but then the "input" is specified.
 
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hmm im so bad at CS anymore but might still give this new one a go when it comes out
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Nonsense. Lag - in the context of gaming - means one thing and one thing only, and that is unacceptably high network latency, except when you are talking about "Input lag" but then the "input" is specified.
Click to expand...
He's not wrong though. And it's not specific to this game or player base at all. I see it all the time where players refer to their systems poor performance or low framerate as lag. Its almost always someone of the younger generation or someone that doesn't understand technology.
 
zamardii12 said:
Anyone else notice the explosion made the smoke cloud disappear @ 1:00 and shooting through it cleared smoke too @ 0:59? Is that new?
Click to expand...

Yes, they talk about it in the video.

The smoke bullet holes seem kind of unrealistic. Not sure about the explosions clearing smoke. I don't have any experience with that. It is at least feasible that a shockwave from an explosion might blow away some smoke, but as depicted it seems kind of odd.

The bullets creating basketball sized holes in the some seems kind of ridiculous though.

Then again this is Counter-Strike we are talking about. It was one of the first multiplayer games to use "real" guns, but realism overall has never been of high importance.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Yes, they talk about it in the video.

The smoke bullet holes seem.iind of unrealistic. Not sure about the explosions clearing smoke. I don't have any experience with that. It is at least feasible that shockwave from an explosion might blow away some smoke, but as depicted it seems kind of odd.

The bullets creating basketball sized holes in the some seems kind of ridiculous though.

Then again this is Counter-Strike we are talking about. It was one of the first multiplayer games to use "real" guns, but realism overall has never been of high importance.
Click to expand...
It's retarded and really just gives the appearance of Valve stretching hard to justify their new engine features.
 
t1337duder said:
It's retarded and really just gives the appearance of Valve stretching hard to justify their new engine features.
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At first I thought it was a nice subtle effect that would be nice but then i just pictured a spray of bullets to clear smoke grenade clouds, or someone tosses a smoke then someone tosses a grenade to clear the room of smoke lol.

I don't have much (any) experience with grenades and smoke clouds but it just doesn't feel right to me. I've shot through smoke and it doesn't do much.
 
The smoke is incredibly gimmicky and stupid IMO. It looks like something a kid learning programming would do.

> intern/junior programmer tasked with upgrading the smoke grenade graphics
> googles how to program volumentric smoke (something that was done in games over 15 years ago)
> super excited because his copy pasted code works and the smoke now fills up actual areas instead of being a static sphere
> now he wants to apply it to everything including bullets even though it's unrealistic and stupid looking
 
Darunion said:
At first I thought it was a nice subtle effect that would be nice but then i just pictured a spray of bullets to clear smoke grenade clouds, or someone tosses a smoke then someone tosses a grenade to clear the room of smoke lol.

I don't have much (any) experience with grenades and smoke clouds but it just doesn't feel right to me. I've shot through smoke and it doesn't do much.
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Agree'ed. The nade clearning it a temp way... fine... but the bullets being able to punch holes is kinda silly. A swirl effect would really cool, but it clearing smoke doesn't make much sense.
 
Gigabut said:
A revamped UI and enhanced audio are exactly what the game needed to feel fresh and more immersive. The attention to audio detail, in particular, seems like it will make the gameplay experience much richer and nuanced, especially in competitive settings.
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But... its still the same old tired gameplay. I played insane amounts of Counterstrike back in the day... from beta, to 1.6, to source. Eventually I realized the updates are just slapping more lipstick on the same old game with antiquated mechanics.

After playing faster competitive shooters with more depth I have never been able to go back to Counterstrike. It feels like Im firing up a Nintendo 64 and playing Goldeneye.
 
Tengis said:
But... its still the same old tired gameplay. I played insane amounts of Counterstrike back in the day... from beta, to 1.6, to source. Eventually I realized the updates are just slapping more lipstick on the same old game with antiquated mechanics.

After playing faster competitive shooters with more depth I have never been able to go back to Counterstrike. It feels like Im firing up a Nintendo 64 and playing Goldeneye.
Click to expand...

Those "faster competitive shooters" also slap lipstick on the same base game every month or so as well. I'd be amazed if you could name a popular modern title that isn't focusing on skins and general aesthetic.

There's nothing wrong with staying true to a working formula. It's just a bummer they're primarily focusing on the hardcore competitive scene and leaving the casual competitive scene behind. There were a lot of extremely polished maps in CS:GO that came and went with updates/operations but now they're remaining dormant in workshop land as Valve continues to deny an operation introduction. CS2 really needs a refresh in that regard. Comparing it to Goldeneye is pretty absurd though. I can understand if you're burnt out on the same game but what do they honestly need to change besides micro-adjustments finetuning the engine for better performance at this point?
 
discobiscuits said:
Those "faster competitive shooters" also slap lipstick on the same base game every month or so as well. I'd be amazed if you could name a popular modern title that isn't focusing on skins and general aesthetic.
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I have never purchased skins or anything aesthetic. From a simple "fun" perspective, Id play even Apex Legends 100% of the time over Counterstrike.

Its the same slow movement, methodical rinse and repeat gameplay that its been since the beginning. Get to this point on the map before your opponent, throw a grenade over the wall just right so it bounces off this box and lands next to the flow of traffic, throw a flash bang here through this crack, no scope this corner, blah blah blah. There is no variety. Its been the same for 20 years.

Its the same reason I hated Starcraft 2 after putting probably a thousand+ hours into Starcraft and Brood War as a kid. It was the exact same game in a new engine with some new units... I wanted a new experience to play and master.
 
Tengis said:
I have never purchased skins or anything aesthetic. From a simple "fun" perspective, Id play even Apex Legends 100% of the time over Counterstrike.

Its the same slow movement, methodical rinse and repeat gameplay that its been since the beginning. Get to this point on the map before your opponent, throw a grenade over the wall just right so it bounces off this box and lands next to the flow of traffic, throw a flash bang here through this crack, no scope this corner, blah blah blah. There is no variety. Its been the same for 20 years.

Its the same reason I hated Starcraft 2 after putting probably a thousand+ hours into Starcraft and Brood War as a kid. It was the exact same game in a new engine with some new units... I wanted a new experience to play and master.
Click to expand...

Guess it's a matter of appreciating the meta of whatever game you're playing then. I still enjoy dueling in Quake titles even though I know I'm just going to get torn apart by the few veterans who remain active in a microscopic community. I can't get behind Apex Legends because it's the same loop every other battle royale game falls victim to in that the amount of time wasted between enjoyable combat encounters is yawn-inducing to say the least. Not to mention the randomness that comes from hot-dropping against the looting simulator conversion when your group wants to play it safe or "smart."

Seems like you would probably get a kick out of Deadlock then if you haven't gotten an invite to it already.
 
I can't get behind Apex Legends because it's the same loop every other battle royale game falls victim to in that the amount of time wasted between enjoyable combat encounters is yawn-inducing to say the least. Not to mention the randomness that comes from hot-dropping against the looting simulator conversion when your group wants to play it safe or "smart."
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That is part of what makes it enjoyable... youve got something to lose. Winning makes it that much more exciting.

This is the reason I cant get anyone to play Hunt Showdown. It has a steep learning curve to be highly effective and youve got something to lose. You have to understand its unique gameplay mechanics. Everyone I know doesnt like it because its not a run and gun shooter so I have pretty much stopped playing it because playing by yourself is no fun and randoms rarely use a mic.
 
Tengis said:
That is part of what makes it enjoyable... youve got something to lose. Winning makes it that much more exciting.

This is the reason I cant get anyone to play Hunt Showdown. It has a steep learning curve to be highly effective and youve got something to lose. You have to understand its unique gameplay mechanics. Everyone I know doesnt like it because its not a run and gun shooter so I have pretty much stopped playing it because playing by yourself is no fun and randoms rarely use a mic.
Click to expand...

I think I would have liked Hunt Showdown.

I'm really not a fan of the 19th century "wild west" aesthetics, but the game play speed and "tactical" nature of it are right up my alley.

There is nothing I hate more than an unrealistic, fast and twitchy run and gun game. Even Counter-Strike is way too fast and "run and gun" for my tastes.

That said, finding the time to set aside to play a multiplayer game with teammates at a predictable time is nearly impossible these days.

The only time I play games at all is late at night after everyone in the house is in bed. Only then can I get some peace to myself, and that is a pretty shitty time to get excited and yell into a microphone :p

The mast multiplayer game I truly enjoyed was Red Orchestra 2. I played with a group of fellow old guys on a mature server with regulars and it was lots of fun. We had a TeamSpeak server I signed in on, everyone was there, then we'd shoot the shit and play.

Eventually Red Orchestra 2 pretty much died off. There are still a handful of servers up, but most of them are just full of bots, at least the time of day I tend to sign on (after midnight Eastern US time). It might be more popular in Europe, but my game time here is like 5am there, so yeah, not going to be too many people online.

Because of this I almost entirely play single player games these days. But even that is slowing down, as there are fewer and fewer of them I actually like. I haven't actually played anything at all since I wrapped up my play-through of Starfield late last year. I was going to play Phantom Liberty, but I ran into some statically mapped control issues I didn't have in the vanilla game way back, and I also found it difficult to get into after already having completed the main game.

Getting old sucks.

I am looking forward to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 though.
 
Tengis said:
That is part of what makes it enjoyable... youve got something to lose. Winning makes it that much more exciting.

This is the reason I cant get anyone to play Hunt Showdown. It has a steep learning curve to be highly effective and youve got something to lose. You have to understand its unique gameplay mechanics. Everyone I know doesnt like it because its not a run and gun shooter so I have pretty much stopped playing it because playing by yourself is no fun and randoms rarely use a mic.
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Simple no-respawn game modes also raise the stakes to make it exciting.

All the other fuss like needing a PhD on character progress and items... that's just nonsense and makes it complicated for no reason.
 
I've never understood why any of these round-based games (or at least barely any) don't have a "respawn lobby" where dead players can just play deathmatch while they are waiting for the round to end. You could sharpen your skills so you don't have to sit out as much next time... barely any games do this, it should be the standard.
 
Blakestr said:
I've never understood why any of these round-based games (or at least barely any) don't have a "respawn lobby" where dead players can just play deathmatch while they are waiting for the round to end. You could sharpen your skills so you don't have to sit out as much next time... barely any games do this, it should be the standard.
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While I agree to an extent, that just introduces optimization challenges server-side and potential performance degradation on the client's end. They do that in custom 1v1 servers pretty well but I think for housekeeping packet flow it's simply unnecessary during competitive matches. There's also a lot you can learn from spectating your teammates if you're looking to provide constructive criticism or adjust your playstyle as well. Not to mention the role of IGL who needs to monitor the team's activity to notice potential windows during a match.

Watching replays/demos is one of the best ways to learn best practices and concepts that go unnoticed when you're stuck in the same loop of actual gameplay. It's one of the modern bummers that comes with some of the other popular tac shooters but thankfully CS2 still has a working demo system in-place even if it was heavily broken upon initial release.
 
Tengis said:
This was one of my favorite games 😭
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I was never great at it or even good, but I absolutely loved it it.
They'll probably never make another because it just doesn't port well to console.
 
alxlwson said:
I was never great at it or even good, but I absolutely loved it it.
They'll probably never make another because it just doesn't port well to console.
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Arena shooters will never be as big as they used to be, people just aren't interested in them anymore.

Unreal Tournament 3 was on Xbox 360 and PS3. They made Unreal Championship 1 and 2 for Xbox, which was just a consolized UT2k3. They also ported the original UT to Dreamcast and PS2.

They were making a new Unreal Tournament in 2014. It in alpha and very playable despite being unfinished. I played it a bunch, it was fun, there were usually a couple hundred people on at any time. It was supposed to be a completely free community developed game with Epic's help, but they canceled it in 2017. There just wasn't much interest in it. A handful of people updated it and have a version out there so it's still playable without Epic's support, but it's for the most part dead.


There have been numerous indy and small studio arena FPS games released over the past couple decades. None of them ever came close to attracting a AAA playerbase.

Look at Quake Champions, which is about as close as you can get to a new Unreal Tournament game. It came out a couple years ago and no one cared.
It had 15k players for a week then rapidly lost all it's players. Now it has less than 300 active players.


No one is going to make a AAA arena FPS, it would be a massive loss of money.

The best we're gonna get are indy games and maybe a remaster.
 
sharknice said:
Arena shooters will never be as big as they used to be, people just aren't interested in them anymore.

Unreal Tournament 3 was on Xbox 360 and PS3. They made Unreal Championship 1 and 2 for Xbox, which was just a consolized UT2k3. They also ported the original UT to Dreamcast and PS2.

They were making a new Unreal Tournament in 2014. It in alpha and very playable despite being unfinished. I played it a bunch, it was fun, there were usually a couple hundred people on at any time. It was supposed to be a completely free community developed game with Epic's help, but they canceled it in 2017. There just wasn't much interest in it. A handful of people updated it and have a version out there so it's still playable without Epic's support, but it's for the most part dead.


There have been numerous indy and small studio arena FPS games released over the past couple decades. None of them ever came close to attracting a AAA playerbase.

Look at Quake Champions, which is about as close as you can get to a new Unreal Tournament game. It came out a couple years ago and no one cared.
It had 15k players for a week then rapidly lost all it's players. Now it has less than 300 active players.


No one is going to make a AAA arena FPS, it would be a massive loss of money.

The best we're gonna get are indy games and maybe a remaster.
Click to expand...

Fortnight is what the people want now. I guess it's fun(never played it) and generates a ton of income.
 
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