The latest update for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has addressed the game’s most controversial weapon and map.
The CZ75 is a powerful secondary weapon that has caused much discussion among Counter-Strike fans and players. While the weapon comes loaded with very little ammunition, the speed at which it fires and the power of the shots made it effectively worth much more than its cost.
The effect? Teams and players struggling with their in-game finances after losing a series of rounds can circumvent the disadvantage relatively easily. And considering the importance of Counter-Strike’s economic system to the game’s structure, this could be a significant problem.
The game’s developer, Valve, already made changes to the weapon earlier in the summer. The accuracy of the CZ75 was toned down at medium and long distances, giving the rapid-fire pistol a wider spread at all but the closest of ranges.
The developer has now gone a step further, however, raising the value of the weapon from $300 to $500. While this may seem a small change, it’s likely to have a measurable influence. Whether that influence is enough to satisfy both Valve and the game’s players remains to be seen.
Valve also made changes to a map, Cobblestone, which it more or less imposed on professional players during the recent ESL Cologne tournament. The changes generally improved visibility of certain positions and affected player spawn locations in order to affect how quickly a team could reach a choke point on the map after the round begins.
But the most significant change made to the map may be an additional access point for the terrorist team.
One potential problem with the use of Cobblestone in competitive play is that the value of controlling the middle section of the map, which serves as its biggest choke point, does not provide the attacking team with the significant advantage it would on most other maps. This is because the area allows for direct access to only one of the map’s two bomb sites.
The new route provides a more direct pathway from the choke point towards the second site. Only time spent in the competitive rotation will tell if this alteration is enough to address the problem, however.
Screengrab via DarkPixelBlade/YouTube
