The CS:GO Casual Matchmaking map pool has been revamped for the first time this year.
In last night’s game update, Valve took out two community map creations, Subzero and Austria, in favor of one brand new map and one old fan favorite. Zoo mades its return to the game after being absent from the game since the conclusion of Operation Bloodhound in 2015.
Abbey, the newly-introduced map, is a bomb defusal map based on a Mediterranean village. Its appearance closely resembles the old Mirage (css_mirage) in terms of aesthetic and not layout. The map follows a typical, three-lane layout with bomb sites and player spawns on opposite sides of the map.
To play Zoo and Abbey for yourself, hop into a Casual or Deathmatch game. They’ll later be put into competitive Matchmaking in the coming weeks, according to Valve. Players will eventually need to vote on whether they’ll stay in the game.
Related: The latest CS:GO update introduces new maps and economy changes
These changes are the first to occur since Subzero and Biome were put into the game last October. Biome, on the other hand, is staying in the game, unlike Subzero, as Valve made a few tweaks to the map. The improvements to Biome from the patch notes are shown below.
- Improved performance.
- Removed connector between A short and A long.
- Removed mid lower entry.
- Added ladder to mid upper entry.
- Moved T spawn towards A to give CTs better mid timings.
- Fixed several bomb stuck spots and clipping issues.
Additionally, a newer version of Vertigo is available for queueing in the Wingman matchmaking playlist. So this means that “VertiGlobals” (good players who only play Vertigo) will finally be commonplace in Wingman as well.
The remainder of changes in last night’s update relate to general game, matchmaking, and sound issues. Those are displayed below as well.
- Accounts are now automatically upgraded to Prime by reaching Lieutenant Rank 21.
- Fixed a regression for some Perfect World accounts with completed Identity Verification and restored their Prime Account Status.
- Fixed scoreboard team names truncation in some languages.
- Fixed random map behavior in offline with bots game modes.
- Adjusted velocity value for when jump ‘step’ sound plays for more consistent behavior.
- Fixed a bug where player fall damage sound wasn’t playing most of the time.
- Fixed a bug where “the bomb has been defused” and “counter-terrorists win” VO lines could overlap each other.
