Since its launch in 2013, CSGO, V's ace product, has been in operation for ten years. At this important point in time, players are looking forward to what the official can do. And today (March 23), V finally released a big move that has been held back for a long time - "Counter-Strike 2" (hereinafter referred to as CS2).
According to official reports, CS2 will be developed by the all-new Origin 2 engine. Thanks to the next-generation performance of the engine, CS2's graphics, gameplay, and performance will also usher in new changes. The final full version will be officially lifted this summer, when the first generation of CSGO will be able to get free upgrades and completely retain the cosmetic items.
As the orthodox sequel to the classic FPS game "CSGO", CS2 will bring a high degree of topicality, which many players have long expected. But when the news became a reality, the super popularity of this IP was still beyond the expectations of the outside world, and the official community account could probably see some clues.
Under the official number of V Society, the "CS2" trailer PV uploaded in the early hours of this morning has been nearly 3 million views in less than a day.
On the Twitter platform, the official account of "CS2", which was also created in the early morning, its user followers have quickly reached 1.6 million, and the number of likes on the first Twitter is as high as 3 million, which is enough to see the high expectations of global players for this sequel.
As a veteran of CSGO, GameLook can somewhat understand the excitement of players around the world at this time. On the one hand, quality upgrades will bring a new visual experience, allowing all aspects of the game to keep up with today's mainstream next-generation masterpieces; On the other hand, the trinkets with market circulation value are completely retained, which also makes the player's previously hanging heart fall.
In the words of players, this wave belongs to the V Society "opened a great favor".
The quality and gameplay have all been upgraded, and CSGO has entered the next generation
In the official Chinese introduction page, the changes in CS2 are mainly grouped into three points, which are simply to make the gameplay more diverse, make the competition fairer, and make the quality more sub-generation.
Let's start with the diversification of gameplay. In CSGO's regular matches, both sides usually revolve around three key items: flash grenades, smoke grenades, and flame bottles. In the past, flame bottles and flash grenades had obvious restraint methods, such as flash bombs can be dealt with by turning their backs, and flames can be extinguished by smoke, but smoke grenades rarely have shortcomings.
In order to add restraint to the smoke grenades, and to make the game's tactical arrangement more diverse, the smoke bombs in CS2 changed from the original flat map to a three-dimensional dynamic object. This means that smoke bombs will now be able to interact with the environment, such as naturally filling the surrounding space according to the laws of physics.
At the same time, smoke grenades also respond to light, gunfire and explosions. From the official demonstration, it is not difficult to see that players can now use the impact of the grenade explosion to briefly disperse the smoke and gain vision. If there is no grenade, you can also shoot through the smoke with a bullet, and these changes will be visually expressed.
In terms of enhancing competitiveness, CS2 also launched an algorithm architecture called "sub-refresh rate", which solved the problem that the server did not evaluate the character movement and shooting time point accurately due to different refresh rates.
In short, thanks to the sub-refresh rate architecture, players with different display devices no longer have to worry about the impact of refresh rate on shooting accuracy. And the server always knows exactly when your character's movement begins, shoots, or throws objects, so your bullets hit enemies quickly and accurately.
CS2 is a more important update in its quality. In this game, based on the Origin 2 engine, the official introduced a new physical rendering system, which can produce more realistic materials, lighting and reflections. At the same time, the development team also evaluated each map, and based on the evaluation results, decided to renovate the material, refurbish + semi-redo, or redo it all.
Judging from the performance of the current beta version, the above three updates not only did not have much impact on the past gameplay, old players can quickly get started, but also have many new tactical options to make the experience more interesting.
The secondary market boiled over, and the price of jewelry skyrocketed by 30% overnight
For old players, what really excites themselves in CS2 may not be the so-called quality iterative upgrade, but the account props that can completely inherit the previous generation.
As we all know, the gun skins, stickers, gloves and other props called accessories in CSGO are allowed to be bought and sold in the secondary market. Therefore, a considerable number of players in CSGO are not just to play games, but to buy and sell accessories.
After V announced that the jewelry could be completely inherited, the news also caused a commotion in the secondary market of jewelry, and the price of many jewelry ushered in a wave of skyrocketing. Some of these popular gun skins, such as AK Two Simov, Agent Old K, AK Queen, M4 Cyber, etc., have all received significant gains of 20%-30%. Both also stimulate the trading volume of the market, and some trading platforms even cause the server to crash due to players trading too frequently, which makes people cry and laugh.
Many players who sold this scene bluntly said that they lost money, and some people complained that the jewelry they bought for 17250 yuan in the previous two weeks did not hold back when the price was 18200 yuan, but today it actually continued to rise to 18700 yuan. Another jewelry has a magical phenomenon of rising 1,000 yuan a day.
Some merchants who specialize in video trading say that they used to have a small number of 350,000 tons, which is worth 450,000 at the current price.
Some Buddhist players said that they generally buy their own accessories for their own use. But I didn't expect that the claw knife and butterfly knife I bought last month actually rose by more than 3,000 yuan today, and even I felt outrageous.
As for some old players who have seen the big scene, they are not surprised by this, and said that this increase has only just begun, and even before the launch of CS2, the accessories will basically maintain a skyrocketing trend.
Under the trend of anti-cutting leeks, V Society has become the conscience of the industry again
In GameLook's view, V Club completely inherits the player's previous account data while launching the sequel, which is actually quite contrary to the common practice in the industry today.
Generally speaking, manufacturers often start from scratch after launching sequels, at which time players' equipment and props must be reacquired. Once an old player chooses to enter the new pit of the sequel, it often means that the huge energy and money invested in the previous game are all lost, which is undoubtedly a harm to the old player.
Of course, the operation of sequels is generally not easy to try for well-known products, even classic FPS games such as "CSGO" have been operating for ten years before choosing to produce 2 generations, and V Company allows it to directly inherit account data in order not to harm the interests of old players.
Another well-known competitive game "Overwatch" also chose to launch a sequel 6 years later, and the player's skin props were also retained.
However, in some page games and terminal game products, it is already a common operation to frequently use new versions or new servers to start over, and even this has evolved into a general profit model. Of course, nowadays people are more accustomed to calling this operation "rolling suit" rather than version iteration.
The reason why these online games choose rolling servers is basically the same, often the old area can not continue to operate, can only open a new area to activate users, so as to achieve the purpose of revenue. With the continuous development of the industry, anti-cutting leeks have gradually become the consensus of players, and rolling suits have also become a tiger that causes players a headache, and they cannot be avoided.
In contrast, V Company's approach undoubtedly seems to be much more conscientious, not to mention whether the new engine iteration is in line with the player's appetite, at least in terms of account value, V Society has given players a good explanation, so as not to let the past efforts go to waste. This is worth learning from all manufacturers.