CS:GO Competitive Map Rotation

CS:GO Competitive Map Rotation

With the largest-prize-pool- Counter-Strike tournament behind us, DreamHack Winter 2013; I was left with an overall excitement for the Counter-Strike scene. However, as a fan and a CS enthusiast, who wants the scene to continue to grow, I knew things still weren't perfect. One of the areas I noticed particularly as a spectator was the redundancy of maps being played. This is the area I would like to focus on for this blog entry.

The Data

I started my venture to confirm my theory (that only a few maps were being used at the most important Counter-Strike tournament in history) by heading over to ESEA. I would like to note that ESEA and others provided great coverage of the event (here is where I obtained my information: http://news.esea.net/csgo/index.php?s=scoreboard&date=2013-11-27 ). Here were my findings:

Date/ Maps	Inferno	Dust2	Train	Nuke	Mirage	Total Games per Day
27-Nov	1	1	0	0	1	3
28-Nov	8	3	2	1	2	16
29-Nov	6	3	1	2	1	13
30-Nov	3	2	1	1	1	8
Total:	18	9	4	4	5	40
% Played	45.00%	22.50%	10.00%	10.00%	12.50%	^ Total Games Played

As I suspected the times each maps were played were quite uneven. I understand that part of this was determined by the teams picking/banning maps but in my opinion having only five maps in the pool generated this result. The other culprit being the unbalancing of sides in specific maps, thus forcing teams to limit the usage of specific maps. From my research I determined there were 40 official games played over the event, 18 of which were on De_Inferno. This was double (played 9 times) what the second most played map, De_Dust2. De_Mirage was played 5 times, just narrowing out De_Nuke and De_Train, which were both played a total of 4 times. From this information I determined the percentages that each map was played in the tournament.

What Does This Mean?

 Essentially if a spectator was to tune in for a match they had almost a 50% chance to see a match on De_Inferno. If that same spectator returned later to check out another match they would again have a high chance of seeing another match on Inferno. For Counter-Strike enthusiasts this probably wasn't an issue as Inferno is highly regarded as a fair map (with slight edge generally going to the counter-terrorists side). However for the general viewer and potential newcomer to the CS scene, this redundancy may have been enough for them to move on to other activities. We live in a day and age where there are so many opportunities available and games/scenes only have mere moments to capture audience’s attention. This means that every moment in the spotlight counts and providing new and interesting content is essential to growing the game/scene. While enthusiasts are great, only with a continual growth of fans will there be more tournaments like DreamHack Winter 2013.

More Balanced Competitive Maps!

Ultimately my conclusion is that we need more balanced and competitive maps used in tournaments. It is clear from the data that teams at DreamHack clearly stuck to the most balanced maps. But this method created map redundancy. I keep asking myself where was/is De_Season, De_Mill , De_Russka and more importantly De_Contra. As a former player, I believe these maps have merit and much needed balance in them. There is so much history with maps like De_Nuke and De_Train but these maps are notoriously CT sided. I believe these maps truly hinder close and nail-biting matches, which thwarts the efforts of increasing the scope of the CS scene. Note: I like the addition of “secret” on nuke but I believe more needs to be done to this map.

Counter-Strike has always placed importance on pistol rounds but I believe general audiences want to see many gun rounds on each side of play (Not a 16-2 like we saw in one of the DH finals matches). I have yet to play Volcano’s version of train but have heard it is on the right track toward balancing the map. I contend that this needs to keep happening until professional teams are frequently achieving at least six rounds on the non-dominate sides of these unbalanced maps. This means map makers need to keep working hard and professional players need to embrace changes aimed at balancing maps or flat-out accept new maps in general. De_Cache is a great map and it is good to see it in play (at least at ESEA lan), but we need more like it! I hope that we, members of the CS community, accept and understand that we have not reached our full potential and that there is still much work to be done. My request to aid in these efforts is to have community members embrace change and embrace the newer members to the scene.  I believe the larger our community is, the stronger our voice is, which will put pressure on sponsors into funding more teams and tournaments and thus making our gaming scene stronger.

-          Jeremy ‘McCl0udY’ Muller

Thank you for your time. I’m hoping to write a CS:GO/Gaming related blog once a week.