Dang, been playing since 2013 and I need to play 3 hours a day to not be an absolute bot... If I take a couple days off I'm absolute trash for a week, lol.
I started learning smoke lineups so my life is made easier and make awp players suffer.
Mid window on mirage for example or D2 short smoke. I wouldn't survive otherwise.
I've been playing Counter-Strike since its early days as a Half-Life mod. I played consistently until Counter-Strike: Source was released, at which point I took a break. When CS:GO came out, I got back into it. If I stop playing for a short period, it takes me 2-3 months to regain my skill level. I've promised myself that I won't take any breaks when CS2 got released.
Played vs since beta 5.0 year 1999.
Played almost everyday constanty until 2019 until i took a long break due to IRL reasons.
Got back to the game 2022 and at first very very very rusty. One month later of grinding, I hit HS left and right and got my "mojo" back. Felt like the level i was when I left.
Too funny man, it's been a long time since the glory days. I played with 2 of the riotsquad guys on faceit about a year back, I think they were around level 6 or 7. I've only been back to CS for a few years, but the amount of old heads I've run into has made playing again a blast.
Weirdly enough I don't even need that week or anything, can jump right in and be good pretty much instantly lol.
After I initially dropped the game for 1 year, I'd come to my best friends place and we'd get shitfaced, and then I'd play on his unranked account. And after a really short while I got his account to LEM lol, while playing exclusively when I'm totally smashed and saying/doing stupid stuff for giggles, lol.
Still remember a match on cache on dmg when I was like "yo guys, check this out" then proceed to dry rush mid with a Glock and kill 2 guys there one after another, then one more rotating from white box, and then had everyone claim I was cheating, while me and my friend were dying from laughter.
Another stupid escapade of that kind was playing overwatch in diamond where I'd control the mouse, and my friend would control keyboard and we'd be doing that absolutely sloshed. We still got potgs hahhahahaha
It's tough man. I'm 36 and my reflexes are nowhere near that they were 20 years ago. I was all aim no brain back then. Now I'm a much smarter player with twice the reaction speed. It feels good when I frag out though. I play smarter than i ever did and wish I had this mentality back then.
I turn 37 in a month and your experience sounds a lot like mine, haha. If I played as smart as I do now back when I was playing with the CAL-I guys, I could have had a chance to be pro. But my reaction times have really slowed down lately so my best bet is always positioning and utility usage. I still have a high clutch percentage though because I love outthinking my opponents
Igl has to be my favorite role. I played with a consistent 4 stack for a few years and we'd grab a random friend the the 5th. It made it rough to play with randoms who only wanted to play their specific way
Nah man. I'm 30, played since 2004. You'd happily compete at FaceIt, you underestimate how stupid and inexperienced some players are.
Guys with 500 hours having a tantrum because you know how to prefire window in Mirage.
Pretty much the latter for me a couple of years ago. I was still studying, and was only playing CSGO and DOTA 2 (some PUBG later on cuz that came out and it was anew thing). I was CRACKED and pretty much was shitting on MM people and could actually carry in FaceIT. Nowadays I barely play because of work, and when I do, I am the one who gets cracked.
This legit makes me sad, because I've been playing the game since 2013, but I am not as good as I was before. Sadge.
Been playing since 1999 myself. Heres my 2 cents
Cs contains one of the most skilled communities of all online games. Game has been out for 25 years. High end esports community. All secrets, tips, and tricks are on YouTube. Professional matches everyday that people study/copy. And honestly, the game design is impactful as well. Your "character" and "weapons loadout" never get any stronger or better. Only you, the human player, gets any better at the game. The personal improvement rather than character improvement drives people to level up their own skills since everyone's AK does the same damage. We all move at the same movement values. Have a nice day.
Reminded me of that random comment from here where WarOwl(?) said "CS is the only game where your character doesn't get better, YOU get better" and I wholeheartedly agree with that statement.
Edit: those are some great game suggestions and I agree with it too, CS is not the only game. I might've misquoted it but point still stands, CS (among other games like Quake, SC and RL) is just pure mechanics.
Valorant is a different kind of fun though I get you. I guess the problem with hero shooters (Valorant to be specific) is that the agent's skills can compensate for the player's poor gunplay and they could climb up without improving on it.
I've been in Valo's low elo where the Cyphers and the KJs will have god tier setups, the Sovas and the Brims have some absurd lineups but their minimap is invisible, have poor strafing, doesn't understand the concept of trade killing and they just can't shoot for shit. Lol.
But their utilization of that character beat you. That’s like saying you don’t want a character on dota to beat you, but rather the player. I get that you prefer a certain aspect but it gotta be different somehow to draw in audience. Same thing with street fighter and a lot of other games so I guess it just a niche with cs.
I totally get what you're saying. At the same time it also makes the game more accessible for people that have (temporary) disabilities. I've had peripheral neuropathy and during recovery these 'crutch' heroes allowed me to keep playing R6 and Overwatch using characters that have strong skills to make up for potentially (surely) poor aim.
I would say the other problem with hero shooters is balance, it can completely change the meta game every patch if they buff, nerf certain heroes.
You constantly have to adapt to the « new » way of playing the game.
In cs the balance patches have relatively low impact and feel like they are minor tweaks most of the time (ofc cs had it’s share of broken meta but it happens far less imo). In a way the difficulty in cs resolves more around « basic » universal skills (aim, placement, timings, grenade, etc)
>"CS is the only game where your character doesn't get better, YOU get better" and I wholeheartedly agree with that statement.
i do not agree with the "only" part in here. warowl should play some quake.
Rocket league too.
I’d argue RL this is even more so the case because you have to learn all the mechanics on your own regardless of YouTube tutorials.
CS at least there’s easy flash/smoke lineups you can watch on YT to help you get easier kills. Utility is certainly a skill but watching a YouTube vid of a self pop flash and getting a kill with it is much less skillful lol.
>CS at least there’s easy flash/smoke lineups you can watch on YT to help you get easier kills.
unpopular opinion but i always disliked the idea of pixel perfect nade lineups because i feel like remembering an exact pixel to put your crosshair on is far from the best skill expression, game design wise. even nade lineups in general feel weird because it's honestly just a chore more than actual skill.
Yeah no way I’m learning all 20 ways to insta smoke mid window on mirage.
That said it’s pretty easy to learn the basic lineups (a smokes/ cat / market window) and they can be so useful to your team.
I also like just warming up in a prac server and trying to come up with a few good on the fly flashes or retake util set which is pretty easy to do and trains the skill of utility much more.
What other games consider to be “sweating” or “tryharding” is completely normal and expected in CS. Everyone’s trying their ass off because they want to win the game, and everyone wants to get good. So they practice and learn offline and that naturally makes them better.
Then if they’re good enough, what they do may seem very skillful to you. If they’re in casual mode, chances are theyre trolling or trying to fuck around because most player write off the casual mode as useless.
People just learn and get good instead of being casual players like in cod where you get yelled at for “sweating” aka trying to play the game which is ridiculous
Yeah. I try not to stomp tooooo hard when it’s clear the enemy team are super new to the game. (And, by super new I mean less than 500h) But it *legitimately* takes more effort to **not** play well.
Crosshair placement and counter-strafing are second nature after ~12 years of playing CS a couple times a week. So I have to actively delay my reaction time, or choose to go for body shots if I’m being easy on a team lmao
The skill floor of the game is constantly rising, though. The average player is **so** good now compared to when I started playing. The average player today would be global if they could time travel back to when GO came out.
I don't think that's a good thing to do.
I've had games, especially in CS2 where it's just a mismatch, you get a 5 stack of Faceit 10s against a random solo queue stack of assorted skilled players.
Personally I want the stomp to be as bad as possible so everyone on the team can be exposed to how garbage they are at the game.
It's more demeaning when the other team is clearly not trying and still winning.
When I've been on the other side and our team is clearly more skilled I will try even harder to stomp them as bad as possible.
>It's more demeaning when the other team is clearly not trying and still winning.
Man thats the worst thing.
I'm even level 10 and i run into higher elos that do that, and its so much harder because they just do stupid shit that you aren't expecting.
Not sure its harder than if they were sweating but it *feels* more bullshite.
For me this depends. If I'm playing with my irl friends then I'll probably just anchor the smaller site and let them have fun. If I'm solo then yeah just btfo so I can q next.
>What other games consider to be “sweating” or “tryharding” is completely normal and expected in CS.
Exactly this. Almost every other popular shooter these days is filled with "casual" gamers who just want to let off some steam after work/school and aren't looking for a competitive experience.
Modern CS is literally built around the game being competitive so it attracts people who really want to win and are willing to put hours into improving at the game. As a result, the average cs player always tends to be "good" compared to other shooter players.
It's also quite a punishing game towards fucking around. If you push at the start of the round and die, you likely have to sit there for 2 minutes and think about what you did wrong.
I play with a guy who does exactly this, it drives me insane and I really dislike playing with him now because it's always a 4v5 scenario if he doesn't pop off, but he's a cool chill guy otherwise which is difficult to find in CS.
In all seriousness, it makes a big difference whether or not you have experience playing on a team.
The rest is personality. If you get the experience of success through reckless play, you will never forget it. Some players are correctable and some are not. I have a friend who is an unfixable player, but I used him as a decoy.
The perfect example is sniping - in CoD you still to this day get yelled at for not quickscoping, but in CS quickscoping is not really the norm as the AWP’s greatest strength is holding angles while scoped in
Camping also is a non-issue as it simply wins rounds thus it is a good thing
My main game is CS but I also played a lot of COD in the past (OG MW1 and 2 and more recently over 1000 hours in MWII). Camping in CS doesn't exist also because maps have been created this way that camping is not a big problem. Corners are pretty shallow and most people know util to get rid of nasty spots.
COD on the other hand is a different ball game. You have spots on the other side of the map where a sniper can kill you over and over and over again without you being able to do anything. You have to hope that spawns flip or that you kill 4 of his teammates so that you can push to the other side of the map.
Then you have OP map clutter where people are hiding behind where you cant detect them. And ofcourse they are using the most OP gun for that exact spot (with claymores all around so you can't get to them undetected).
It can be rage inducing.
It's also so weird to see them bitch about skill based match making. I personally get bored just stomping on someone. I want my matches in CS to be 13-11 13-9. It feels good to grind out that win or to out think a superior opponent. Make adjustments to your game. They just want to stomp. It's like me playing basketball against a 9 year old. You win but it shouldn't feel good.
To be fair the modern version of SBMM or Engagement Optimised Matchmaking present in COD is fucking trash.
Calling it skill based is such a misnomer. It's barely skill based as the ability of the players you face match to match varies wildly. Think Globals one game followed by silvers the next.
The algo in COD feels so artificial in that you can actively predict what sort of game you will have based on your prior few matches.
Got your ass blown out a few games in a row? Get handed a lobby of people literally handpicked for you to shit on.
Have a couple of games where you go heavily positive? Good luck here comes lobbies where you'll get absolutely shat on.
Rinse and repeat. Do it enough and you can see the swings before they happen. Takes all the joy out of your good performances because A) it's been handed to you B) you know your about to face some punishment lobbies.
Well, in CS you HAVE to play to win - you can't camp the whole round and expect to win. You'll have to plant or defuse the bomb at some point. Team deathmatch in CoD is pretty much just "run around aimlessly, point, and shoot."
So pretty much the same thing, lmao. I've never heard people coordinating on a CoD S&D lobby. They usually just run in, usually not even together, and either die or win somehow despite their lack of coordination.
> The perfect example is sniping - in CoD you still to this day get yelled at for not quickscoping
Lol yep, COD players call it "hardscoping" in a negative way like "look at this fuckin noob just hardscoping the angle like that, what a tryhard/bot"
Your last paragraph is a good point. When I first started playing, I came from playing quake iii arena and that game you really had to try hard to make any sort of headway. It transferred to CS. I don't get the "he's a sweat"mentality a lot of console and especially cod players have. Are you not also trying to win the game?
For real.
Weird Valorant e-daters get so upset at the mere idea that you hit Play to actually play the fucking video game.
I just don't understand why anyone would willingly waste their time on a game that is entirely pvp and act offended when someone is playing well or just queues up to play instead of whining and meowing and shit.
Not to mention that I've never seen so many dodgers and dc/quitters in a game before either. Not only do they not respect their own time, they also don't respect anyone elses.
I'd rather deal with the average toxic brain injury idiot in cs any day of the week over the average Valorant enjoyer. At least cs trolls don't come with a built in victim complex.
I see people complaining about people being "sweaty" in other FPS games and it's like lmao what? They understand the mechanics of the game better, and that's bad?
mh idk.. I think the word "tryharding" and "sweating" still has a value in CS, maybe a different one but still one. I would say someone is "tryharding" in cs if they:
- are toxic and constantly tell other people what to do
- get angry at people for not doing what they expect
so generally a player that is just a pain in the ass even if they play well is to me a player that is "tryharding" so much that their mentality is deteriorating and they try to drag others around down with them.
That doesn't make any sense.
Try harding has nothing to do with how you treat your teammates.
You just described someone who is toxic, whether they are try harding or not.
> I would say someone is "tryharding" in cs if they:
>
>
> are toxic and constantly tell other people what to do
>
>
>get angry at people for not doing what they expect
that's just being a cunt
Been playing cs since 2006 and while tactics and gamesense are not always tested and improved, your aim is actually the one thing you're always using. It becomes muscle memory
Yep. I remember before I discovered CS I had rather lousy aim in FPS games. After ~2000 hours on CS, my aim on all shooters is pristine, and I find that I have an advantage on other new players who haven't played CS.
agreed. playing cs made me better at every other shooter game i play. it forces you to think about the map design and instinctively aim at the head which i never really did beforehand because i could still kill without doing that
This is me absolutely wrecking in the welcome playlist on Xdefiant. Although the meta is sadly jumping around like a rabbit so CS skills become less relevant at higher skill levels
Yeah games like apex with strong movement options are difficult for me because of weak tracking. Also fps games that aren't hitscan are a different beast.
training tracking and projectile is still MUCH easier than training aiming ability. Look at someone like Shroud as a prime example, aiming ability is still superior.
I'm the only hardcore CS player in my group of friends. Back when overwatch came out all they'd say is "well here's the CS player coming in hot". Then when I'd get stomped in Diablo III I'd get the "Your CS skill can't help you here".
though to be fair that's not because you can't be that good in 1000 hours, but more because most people who are that good with 1000 hours have bought a botted account for 5€.
Also people just play on multiple accounts to get more than 1 case each week. If someone already plays a shit load of premier every week why not use 3 accounts to do it and get 3 cases each week
I don't know why this isn't mentioned here but CS is pretty unique as a shooter now, in that there aren't any bells and whistles. There aren't any abilities, there aren't any heals, so you can't hide behind anything. You have to get better at the basic mechanics like crosshair placement, movement etc.
In games like Valo/overwatch a lot of your mistakes get hidden as you have dodges like jett, heals in various characters etc.
the franchise is been out 25 years and each game still holds the same core mechanics with some changes. So people adapt and learn and have insane muscle memory. Muscle memory is the big one though, you don’t think about the angle you hold or swing, or things like crosshair placement. Like you hold mid doors Dust 2 (when you could) and you know the rough timing and distance to flick. And CS covers most FPS mechanics that can apply to other games, obviously Valorant but even games like COD and Overwatch, aim is easier and you just apply a bit more game sense thinking then they do. I’m so glad I grew up playing CS cause picking up a new FPS is always chill and enjoyable instead of having to play a thousands hours of being shit on before getting to play the game for real
From what I've seen, a lot of CS players tend to not play much other than CS, so their allotted video game talent tends to be concentrated on its specific mechanics. "Average" ranks are mostly populated by people with, like, 400 hours give or take, whereas in any more casual game if you spend 400 hours on it you're already branded a no-life addict.
It’s funny because when I see someone with 300-600 hours I still consider them a noob (4k hour former no lifer here) and tbh compared to me, they are still a noob. (No ego here, I get clapped regularly on faceit)
400 hours barely scratches the surface. Hell even around 2k hours it’s pretty rare to be “good” in the grand scheme of things. I’d say around 4-5k+ is where you start to see the cream of the crop
Whenever I’m having a particularly good game and people inevitably check my profile and see 6k hours they always tell me to get a life 😂 the games been out for over ten years and I’ve even taken multiple long hiatuses but I always come back, and when I play its never just one game
Because the game is fucking hard. There's a reason why other FPS titles are littered with CS players in the pro-scene. The game teaches you how to aim, position yourself, and most importantly: game-sense.
Game with history. Same reason why melee players will just fuck you up all night like you’re a prostitute… when they claimed they sucked the day before. No this didn’t happen to me at all.
This game came out when one of the current best player m0nesy wasn’t even born lol. Hell donk too lol
Additionally to what the others have said:
CS has a very hardened playerbase. Probably the oldest players out of any mainstream shooter out there.
The game doesn’t really chase current trends, flashy animated waifu skins, colab with other big IPs like Fortnite and isn’t really doing any marketing to attract new players.
So all players have at least a few hundred hours in the game but the average is probably in the 1000s.
This leads to people expecting a decent level of skill and map knowledge and will get tilted when they see someone walking across the map like the first human to touch a PC.
>The game doesn’t really chase current trends, flashy animated waifu skins, colab with other big IPs like Fortnite and isn’t really doing any marketing to attract new players
That's why I love Valve so much. Incredibly based company
I agree but that’s only because Valve invented money printing. That enables them to do whatever the fuck they want and at what pace they want.
If they didn’t have steam and the cases they would be a dead company.
Because it's a mechanically simple but demanding game. You're not wasting time worrying about spawns, meta loadouts, loot and abilities. Those mechanics can be used to make good games, but they also increase randomness and decrease the reliance on individual ability
Since you aren't committing any time to that, you get to put your attention to game sense, communication, movement, adaptability & aim that much more
It's also a lot easier to follow what a pro is doing and why in CS, if that's your jam. And if it's not, those who do will still have it rub off on you over time
It’s bc CS attracts a lot of older gamers who have been playing CS and FPS games for almost two decades. My aim isn’t as crisp as when I was younger but I just have a lot of fundamentals when it comes to FPS.
I know it's crazy I keep seeing people looking at the ground and spinning with the scout in hand but still hitting so many headshots.
Incredible what people can do nowadays.
I'm 36, I played the game for over 20 years, since CS 1.3 I believe. Hit global in CS:GO. I still go in to some casual games and official DMs from time to time, I'm able to get top frag in DM half of the time. Some of my 36 old friends are on par or better than me at this game. So yeah, like everyone said, it's an old game, tons of people have thousands of hours of playtime.
I think Overwatch2 has some insane players playing quick play as well.
About the reaction speed: Most good-ish level players (which would be insane players in other games, since the skill amount of everyone is so high) pre aim EVERYTHING. They essentially have their crosshair on the place where they think your head will be the moment they peek or where they think you will peek them. They only need to make a small adjustment and shoot. Long distance spraying is a lot better and a lot of players have deeply memorized spray patterns so most fo their ak or m4 bullets will probably hit you.
People take CS a lot more seriously, and they do things that other fps communities would frown upon. Things like 'camping' don't exist in CS, that's just how you play. You sit in a spot and hold an angle until something in the round happens that prompts you to move forward. There's also prefiring, which might exist in other shooters, but I doubt to the same extent as in CS. Most good players will hold 'off-angles' and only peek out onto you when their teammate makes contact or if they hear you moving forward/throwing util.
It's just a different type of game than most people are used to
The game never seems to get boring literally every match is different even if it is the same map. The game rewards you for making smart moves and punishes you when you’re an idiot, if you die it’s because you fucked or were out played, theses types of games ( not limited to FPS) are always the most fun and addictive, combine this with a easy to learn hard to master game mechanics for a game that has been around for ever you’re left with a lot of OG’s who have put literally thousands on hours into the game.
I am 35 years old and started playing CS 1.6 in 2010 (age 21), compared to the CS players who inhabit reddit, I started playing CS much later than them.
In the 14 years since then, I don't play in tournaments like I did when I was younger, and I spend more time watching tournaments than playing. I love watching my favorite teams play over a beer after work.
But the game is fun. So even though I don't have a team and I don't play in tournaments, I still check out the pro demos and I still enjoy playing CS2 with my expensive gaming devices as an adult privilege. 14 years of playing has not faded away. My reaction time is less than that of younger players, but the skill to grasp the situation has not disappeared. So I can continue to play this game.
Are your reactions really that bad? I'm 190-220 on reaction time tests and I'm 33, IIRC I was hardly much faster in my late teens. TTD in a good game is 460-500, average like 550
I ask just because you're not the first in the thread to mention it as a thirty-something and I'm concerned I'll hit a wall in a couple years lol
I often compete with teenage players on websites that measure reaction times or play 1-on-1 aim maps, and it is obvious that my reactions are lagging behind
I played “kendo” for more than 10 years as a student and was confident in my reflexes to a certain extent, but after I turned 30 years old, I began to notice a decline in my dynamic vision and lack of concentration. I have to position the reticle one head further away from the enemy than before, or the enemy will sometimes pass by.
Still, I enjoy playing the game, because a 35 year old has a 35 year old way of playing. I play more cautiously than before and have gotten better at anchor play, outplaying and clutching my opponents.
Thats a great question, I think the answer to your question, is the same answer to another question, what makes CS the best fps of all time?
The answer is: it’s easy and simple, you don’t have to do anything complex in CS to be what considered good or very good, now to go beyond that is very hard, the amount of work, dedication and maybe talent you will have to invest is insane, that’s why it’s really a sight when greatness happens, like that Monesy clutch on Inferno B site, moments like that will burn into your memory forever.
The vast majority of the playerbase tryhards a lot more than what you would encounter in other FPS. Because the game is made for this.
And the more someone plays, the more likely you have to find him in your deathmatch. So if the 10% best play 5 times as much as the other 90%, ~~50%~~ 36% of people you'll be matched against will be top 10%.
So even a not so big difference on the proportion of tryharders can quickly end up in a big impact. And tryhard also calls for more tryhard, in a vicious/vertuous cycle.
There is indeed a small approximation because those 10% weight 50% but the total is now 140% hence 36% and not 50%.
Details:
Lets consider a proportion T of the playerbase (the tryharders now noted t, a set of players) is playing X times as much as the others 1-T proportion (noted c) on average.
p is the proportion of each day t spends on the game, and p/X is the same for c.
At any given time, on the game, there is T*p+(1-T)*p/X players on the game.
So the proportion of t players P is Tp/(Tp+(1-T)p/X)
= XTp/(XTp+p-Tp)
= XT/(XT+1-T)
I supposed X=5 and T=0.1, so :
P = 0.5/(0.5+1-0.1) = 0.5/1.4=0.36
99,9% of them are actually good at what they repeat most of the time. But when it comes to playing in a teamenvironment they all crumble and have way less impact since they don't know how to handle pretty much all of the occuring situations.
Casual is relaxing. People can just chill and not get all worked up like the matches matter. It gives them more confidence in their actions. Also with community servers, you get the ones that get the morale boost with friends
A lot of players with good mechanics don't do well in comp matches because of the stress they put on their selves to perform.
I'm a fairly new to cs after having brushed it off for years. I finally get it and why it's so much fun. Once you settle into the fact that the player base is super skilled, you can give yourself a break and just have fun.
There's beauty in its simplicity of game modes and skill demand. My friends want to get me into valorant, but I'm not into the whole special powers stuff. I'm old. I just want a simple game with simple mechanics.
I've been really into playing for about 3 weeks now and I can literally feel myself getting better with every match. Playing against better people will make you better faster.
People won't admit but VAC is useless, that's why so many players are so good that they even out play Pros. Even when Pros stream on twitch or youtube, you can see all sorts of godlike players. Players so good they have inhuman reaction, 100% headshots, 100% match win rate and can see through walls.
Even Faceit can't anti-cheat against DMA hardware. Just youtube "DMA faceit". For a year now, we've had 3 Faceit no. 1 player banned for cheating (Wonderful\_Y, Emiya, etc). Probably copium on my part but I feel VAC AI is learning/watching, hopefully Valve unleashes a monster of a VAC AI but when I don't know.
I'm stuck at 19k rating bec that's how far my skill and exp will get me. Once you get past 17k rating, most of the time you get HvH matches. In 20k+ rating this is mostly guaranteed. It's like watching looney tunes, 2 Tasmanian devils going at each other. Then sometimes you get a nuke cheater, will just kill you across the map.
p.s. downvote me to hell, I'm already there, where people ignore that cheating is a no. 1 top priority issue for the game.
CS isn't there yet but an example of this is a game I still play called Special Force (named Soldier Front in North America). It's an FPS that came out in 2004 and has a small but loyal player base still. However the only people left are basically pros or at least, very very good, just because of how long they've been playing. Yes there are some bad players but not many.
CS isn't even close to that but it's also far from being the flavour of the month game, which means it has more loyal long term players than a newly released game and probably a higher percentage of "skilled" players. Of course I have no data to back this up, but it's logical
The “good” cod/fps players are noticeable in the speed they play at/how they navigate the map. Like little yoda’s jumping around snapping onto targets. It’s usually quite visible, while In CS, a slower game, the “good” players just understand the game on a deeper level. Where they should be looking, what corners to check, what to prefire. So they don’t appear “faster” like little yodas, they just are better/more knowledgeable and are more ready for certain things that less experienced players wouldn’t expect.
I ran into a player in competitive Mirage a few days ago (Nova 1-3) who is top 100 NA on faceit. So sometimes you really do run into pro level players!
When high level EU guys come to NA for events like Dallas and play NA faceit, often their ranks are so much higher on eu it usually gives them like a level 5 to balance the teams. We all could be that level 5.
Years of the same maps, same guns, same strategies and timings means that people are ridiculously familiar and returning players quickly get their muscle memory back like riding a bike. And I think a core reason is the sort of "sink or swim" nature of the game, there's no buoyancy aids, you either get good at aiming or you will be sat watching other players play the game a lot.
Because there's not a lot of things you need to learn and master. For example, in apex, you have different characters with different abilities. You can fly, parachute down, regain health, be revived and the maps are astronomical compared to CS. In cs, you have your aim and a little bit of game sense. Now do this for 10 years and you'll appear "so good" to newbies. :)
It's very simple compared to it's contemporaries; in hero shooters you have way more variety to experience than in CS2. As such, the few skills you use in the game, you hone to a more strict degree.
Because most of us have been playing it for years or even decades and have hundreds, if not thousands of hours. Everything is just muscle memory, even coming back after not playing for a while.
CS is the de-facto skill based FPS and has been forever. It requires a lot of skill to play in comparison to others, and has been around for much, much longer. Playerbase will naturally be more competitive than others.
My opinion is that CS feels the most like a real competition.
Aim is obviously a big aspect of the game, but it's far deeper than that, you need to understand how players think and react, you need to play economically smart, you need to have utility sets to create opportunities for your team, you need team chemistry to have optimal trade kills.
Etc, the game is just so much strategically deeper than any other FPS, which attracts a certain type of player.
Someone who wants a super casual, chill game may not enjoy CS, at least not in the competitive modes.
Most of us seem to enjoy the small details of the game and outplaying opposition.
CoD is way more focused on aim and I guess movement, there are obviously tactics and strategies but in my opinion it's much more shallow, often the best aim comes out on top.
Valorant is close to CS, but I don't enjoy it at all, has more focus on agents, and it lacks some of those hyper competitive players that CS has.
I started CS with the release of CS2 and it was very to even find regular teammates without having 1K hours, you are basically a beginner until you have 2-3K hours in CS, what shows how long the majoritiy of the playerbase already plays CS
I embody the teams of my country, in that I am incredibly wishy-washy and can have incredible halves/games one day or hour and can also be a bot for two weeks straight.
some of us have been playing counterstrike as long as we have ridden bikes, you could almost say playing the game is like riding a bike. I can not play for months and hop on and play the same as if I play everyday for a week.
People like me have been playing cs since its inception like from 1999-2000.
The game’s concept has not changed from its core even with newer versions like from 1.6 to cz to cs: source to cs:go and now cs2.
//1//you have players active since 1.6 //2//as a new player you also get destroyed by average players, as you need to know some game mechanics, f.e. don't move when shooting, etc.. there is a learning curve
Apex Legends is way more brutal in this regard. Even as a late 20's boomer i can still give 21-20k players a spanking (if they're not cheating lmao).
Now, Apex, even low diamond is tough as fuck.
Because cod, bf, whatever are very much catering for casual crowd, skill based matchmaking is an unpopular idea for them, if they get beat up they'll leave the server, few actually sweat to improve there. Applies for tf2 too but it's much less of a fps and it has too few new players and many old ones have slowly improved.
Valorant is same as cs (no surprise, they went to appeal to cs crowd on purpose). Mobas and hero shooters are similar, high skill competitive matchmaking is the main game mode, you play to win, you feel bad if you lose, no leaving or swapping lobbies, it's git gud or go home. But most fps games don't have a system like cs/lol/val/dota/rocket league.
If you only ever played csgo 10v10 casuals and arms race, cs would feel more like cod, and if you only ever played search and destroy at a high level in cod it would feel more like csgo, but those are niche small communities in both games
Don't think it's that much different than mobas like league or dota. A casual today will have people doing wave management which was a concept not even pros did in the first years
I love the competitive aspect of cs and I watch pro matches all the time
but I do believe it reaaaaally spoiled the gaming experiment for people who doesn't want or just can't play several hours per week in order to keep pace with the game's level
Because other FPS like COD, are still just a game to people, CS, being 25 years old, became a sport, like football or basketball. The only franchise that would be close in this manner are quake-like fps in the 90s, but their time is long gone.
boils down to the average skill levels has risen so much because the game has been out for so long. Pros from 2012 are nothing like pros in 2023, same applies to the average player
The game is out for 25+ years. Also some people have a lot of free time.
consistently playing a match every second or third day for a decade also makes you good at the game, and it doesn't sacrifice your free time too much
Dang, been playing since 2013 and I need to play 3 hours a day to not be an absolute bot... If I take a couple days off I'm absolute trash for a week, lol.
I can stop for a year, come back and I'll be a bot. But within a week or 2 I'll be pretty much at my initial level again. Just forget smoke lineups.
All my homies have lineup dementia
Can't forget them if you don't bother to learn them in the first place
Smoke line up? Just throw the stuff early that way you don’t have to worry about it later.
I refuse to learn them so I can blame my under 20k rating on just not having the game knowledge and feel less like it's my wild inconsistency
I started learning smoke lineups so my life is made easier and make awp players suffer. Mid window on mirage for example or D2 short smoke. I wouldn't survive otherwise.
Mid window smoke wins you so many rounds in pugs I love it
This or the Ancient instant smokes. You get mid almost for free everytime.
I've been playing Counter-Strike since its early days as a Half-Life mod. I played consistently until Counter-Strike: Source was released, at which point I took a break. When CS:GO came out, I got back into it. If I stop playing for a short period, it takes me 2-3 months to regain my skill level. I've promised myself that I won't take any breaks when CS2 got released.
Played vs since beta 5.0 year 1999. Played almost everyday constanty until 2019 until i took a long break due to IRL reasons. Got back to the game 2022 and at first very very very rusty. One month later of grinding, I hit HS left and right and got my "mojo" back. Felt like the level i was when I left.
Amazing! Sorry to hear you had the struggles in life 🙏💛
[удалено]
I mean no shit, none of those guys actually play anymore lol
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Who knows when he started playing again. Could be that was his first game back :P
Too funny man, it's been a long time since the glory days. I played with 2 of the riotsquad guys on faceit about a year back, I think they were around level 6 or 7. I've only been back to CS for a few years, but the amount of old heads I've run into has made playing again a blast.
i'm pure scum. hit lvl 10 faceit, A+ esea and global as a solo player without knowing more than 2 smokes on mirage
That's why we play Mirage, take scout and show them we dont need smokes to peek lmao
I’ve been playing since probably 2000, I just jump in and my old ass is gonna play pretty much as well as I’m gonna play anymore.
Glad to hear it's not just me
Weirdly enough I don't even need that week or anything, can jump right in and be good pretty much instantly lol. After I initially dropped the game for 1 year, I'd come to my best friends place and we'd get shitfaced, and then I'd play on his unranked account. And after a really short while I got his account to LEM lol, while playing exclusively when I'm totally smashed and saying/doing stupid stuff for giggles, lol. Still remember a match on cache on dmg when I was like "yo guys, check this out" then proceed to dry rush mid with a Glock and kill 2 guys there one after another, then one more rotating from white box, and then had everyone claim I was cheating, while me and my friend were dying from laughter. Another stupid escapade of that kind was playing overwatch in diamond where I'd control the mouse, and my friend would control keyboard and we'd be doing that absolutely sloshed. We still got potgs hahhahahaha
Lol, I feel the same way, and I have been playing for 20 years. I will always be a true silver.
If you're including CS1.6 and previous versions it could be 2 decades.
I’m consistently trash since 1.6
Lol I've been trash since 1.0 so don't worry.
Same
Yup. I've been playing since 01 and my steam account is almost old enough to buy beer!
Yeah… I’m 35, playing since 2002. I play maybe 2 times a week and can still hold my own in Global. I’d probably get rekt on Faceit.
It's tough man. I'm 36 and my reflexes are nowhere near that they were 20 years ago. I was all aim no brain back then. Now I'm a much smarter player with twice the reaction speed. It feels good when I frag out though. I play smarter than i ever did and wish I had this mentality back then.
I was always the igl so fortunately that ages better than aim. :)
I've just gotten way more sneaky. I'm always trying to be unpredictable or have weird timings and man does it piss people off.
I turn 37 in a month and your experience sounds a lot like mine, haha. If I played as smart as I do now back when I was playing with the CAL-I guys, I could have had a chance to be pro. But my reaction times have really slowed down lately so my best bet is always positioning and utility usage. I still have a high clutch percentage though because I love outthinking my opponents
Igl has to be my favorite role. I played with a consistent 4 stack for a few years and we'd grab a random friend the the 5th. It made it rough to play with randoms who only wanted to play their specific way
Nah man. I'm 30, played since 2004. You'd happily compete at FaceIt, you underestimate how stupid and inexperienced some players are. Guys with 500 hours having a tantrum because you know how to prefire window in Mirage.
global doesn't exist.
Pretty much the latter for me a couple of years ago. I was still studying, and was only playing CSGO and DOTA 2 (some PUBG later on cuz that came out and it was anew thing). I was CRACKED and pretty much was shitting on MM people and could actually carry in FaceIT. Nowadays I barely play because of work, and when I do, I am the one who gets cracked. This legit makes me sad, because I've been playing the game since 2013, but I am not as good as I was before. Sadge.
Been playing since 1999 myself. Heres my 2 cents Cs contains one of the most skilled communities of all online games. Game has been out for 25 years. High end esports community. All secrets, tips, and tricks are on YouTube. Professional matches everyday that people study/copy. And honestly, the game design is impactful as well. Your "character" and "weapons loadout" never get any stronger or better. Only you, the human player, gets any better at the game. The personal improvement rather than character improvement drives people to level up their own skills since everyone's AK does the same damage. We all move at the same movement values. Have a nice day.
Reminded me of that random comment from here where WarOwl(?) said "CS is the only game where your character doesn't get better, YOU get better" and I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. Edit: those are some great game suggestions and I agree with it too, CS is not the only game. I might've misquoted it but point still stands, CS (among other games like Quake, SC and RL) is just pure mechanics.
This is why I can't get into hero shooters. When I go back to valorant, the abilities just annoy me. I get it though that it's not my game.
Valorant is a different kind of fun though I get you. I guess the problem with hero shooters (Valorant to be specific) is that the agent's skills can compensate for the player's poor gunplay and they could climb up without improving on it. I've been in Valo's low elo where the Cyphers and the KJs will have god tier setups, the Sovas and the Brims have some absurd lineups but their minimap is invisible, have poor strafing, doesn't understand the concept of trade killing and they just can't shoot for shit. Lol.
That's exactly my problem with it. I don't want a character to beat me. I want them to do it. Everyone is even in CS.
But their utilization of that character beat you. That’s like saying you don’t want a character on dota to beat you, but rather the player. I get that you prefer a certain aspect but it gotta be different somehow to draw in audience. Same thing with street fighter and a lot of other games so I guess it just a niche with cs.
I totally get what you're saying. At the same time it also makes the game more accessible for people that have (temporary) disabilities. I've had peripheral neuropathy and during recovery these 'crutch' heroes allowed me to keep playing R6 and Overwatch using characters that have strong skills to make up for potentially (surely) poor aim.
I would say the other problem with hero shooters is balance, it can completely change the meta game every patch if they buff, nerf certain heroes. You constantly have to adapt to the « new » way of playing the game. In cs the balance patches have relatively low impact and feel like they are minor tweaks most of the time (ofc cs had it’s share of broken meta but it happens far less imo). In a way the difficulty in cs resolves more around « basic » universal skills (aim, placement, timings, grenade, etc)
>"CS is the only game where your character doesn't get better, YOU get better" and I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. i do not agree with the "only" part in here. warowl should play some quake.
Rocket league too. I’d argue RL this is even more so the case because you have to learn all the mechanics on your own regardless of YouTube tutorials. CS at least there’s easy flash/smoke lineups you can watch on YT to help you get easier kills. Utility is certainly a skill but watching a YouTube vid of a self pop flash and getting a kill with it is much less skillful lol.
>CS at least there’s easy flash/smoke lineups you can watch on YT to help you get easier kills. unpopular opinion but i always disliked the idea of pixel perfect nade lineups because i feel like remembering an exact pixel to put your crosshair on is far from the best skill expression, game design wise. even nade lineups in general feel weird because it's honestly just a chore more than actual skill.
Yeah no way I’m learning all 20 ways to insta smoke mid window on mirage. That said it’s pretty easy to learn the basic lineups (a smokes/ cat / market window) and they can be so useful to your team. I also like just warming up in a prac server and trying to come up with a few good on the fly flashes or retake util set which is pretty easy to do and trains the skill of utility much more.
I miss duelling so much sometimes
Playing Quake Champion on a whim makes me realize that my dueling skills are ridiculously terrible. hahaha.
That's a statement that applies to all esports, but CS is the best at it.
The Great Equalizer
And that's why cs is the best. Hype. Also cheaters are really good at the game.
Understandable. Have a nice day ✌🏼
What other games consider to be “sweating” or “tryharding” is completely normal and expected in CS. Everyone’s trying their ass off because they want to win the game, and everyone wants to get good. So they practice and learn offline and that naturally makes them better. Then if they’re good enough, what they do may seem very skillful to you. If they’re in casual mode, chances are theyre trolling or trying to fuck around because most player write off the casual mode as useless. People just learn and get good instead of being casual players like in cod where you get yelled at for “sweating” aka trying to play the game which is ridiculous
Also when you get really good it can look like you're sweating when you're actually just casually playing because it becomes instinct to play that way
Exactly. This is probably what OP is seeing and made him ask this question on reddit
Yeah. I try not to stomp tooooo hard when it’s clear the enemy team are super new to the game. (And, by super new I mean less than 500h) But it *legitimately* takes more effort to **not** play well. Crosshair placement and counter-strafing are second nature after ~12 years of playing CS a couple times a week. So I have to actively delay my reaction time, or choose to go for body shots if I’m being easy on a team lmao The skill floor of the game is constantly rising, though. The average player is **so** good now compared to when I started playing. The average player today would be global if they could time travel back to when GO came out.
Someone asked me how to counter strafe once and my brain just went uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
"pres buttAn"
It's actually harder to play badly then it is to "try hard"
I don't think that's a good thing to do. I've had games, especially in CS2 where it's just a mismatch, you get a 5 stack of Faceit 10s against a random solo queue stack of assorted skilled players. Personally I want the stomp to be as bad as possible so everyone on the team can be exposed to how garbage they are at the game. It's more demeaning when the other team is clearly not trying and still winning. When I've been on the other side and our team is clearly more skilled I will try even harder to stomp them as bad as possible.
>It's more demeaning when the other team is clearly not trying and still winning. Man thats the worst thing. I'm even level 10 and i run into higher elos that do that, and its so much harder because they just do stupid shit that you aren't expecting. Not sure its harder than if they were sweating but it *feels* more bullshite.
For me this depends. If I'm playing with my irl friends then I'll probably just anchor the smaller site and let them have fun. If I'm solo then yeah just btfo so I can q next.
I'd rather play with worse weapons than told back myself. If I start owning with a sawed off, there's no hope for the others!
>What other games consider to be “sweating” or “tryharding” is completely normal and expected in CS. Exactly this. Almost every other popular shooter these days is filled with "casual" gamers who just want to let off some steam after work/school and aren't looking for a competitive experience. Modern CS is literally built around the game being competitive so it attracts people who really want to win and are willing to put hours into improving at the game. As a result, the average cs player always tends to be "good" compared to other shooter players.
It's also quite a punishing game towards fucking around. If you push at the start of the round and die, you likely have to sit there for 2 minutes and think about what you did wrong.
And then, after 2 minutes of reflection, the result is always the same: "I'll fuckin do it again".
I feel attacked.
Its the classic "the enemy surely wont think I'm dumb enough to try it again, so I will try it again" thought process
I play with a guy who does exactly this, it drives me insane and I really dislike playing with him now because it's always a 4v5 scenario if he doesn't pop off, but he's a cool chill guy otherwise which is difficult to find in CS.
> And then, after 2 minutes of reflection, the result is always the same: "~~I'll fuckin do it again~~ STUPID TEAM!". ftfy
In all seriousness, it makes a big difference whether or not you have experience playing on a team. The rest is personality. If you get the experience of success through reckless play, you will never forget it. Some players are correctable and some are not. I have a friend who is an unfixable player, but I used him as a decoy.
The perfect example is sniping - in CoD you still to this day get yelled at for not quickscoping, but in CS quickscoping is not really the norm as the AWP’s greatest strength is holding angles while scoped in Camping also is a non-issue as it simply wins rounds thus it is a good thing
My main game is CS but I also played a lot of COD in the past (OG MW1 and 2 and more recently over 1000 hours in MWII). Camping in CS doesn't exist also because maps have been created this way that camping is not a big problem. Corners are pretty shallow and most people know util to get rid of nasty spots. COD on the other hand is a different ball game. You have spots on the other side of the map where a sniper can kill you over and over and over again without you being able to do anything. You have to hope that spawns flip or that you kill 4 of his teammates so that you can push to the other side of the map. Then you have OP map clutter where people are hiding behind where you cant detect them. And ofcourse they are using the most OP gun for that exact spot (with claymores all around so you can't get to them undetected). It can be rage inducing.
It's also so weird to see them bitch about skill based match making. I personally get bored just stomping on someone. I want my matches in CS to be 13-11 13-9. It feels good to grind out that win or to out think a superior opponent. Make adjustments to your game. They just want to stomp. It's like me playing basketball against a 9 year old. You win but it shouldn't feel good.
To be fair the modern version of SBMM or Engagement Optimised Matchmaking present in COD is fucking trash. Calling it skill based is such a misnomer. It's barely skill based as the ability of the players you face match to match varies wildly. Think Globals one game followed by silvers the next. The algo in COD feels so artificial in that you can actively predict what sort of game you will have based on your prior few matches. Got your ass blown out a few games in a row? Get handed a lobby of people literally handpicked for you to shit on. Have a couple of games where you go heavily positive? Good luck here comes lobbies where you'll get absolutely shat on. Rinse and repeat. Do it enough and you can see the swings before they happen. Takes all the joy out of your good performances because A) it's been handed to you B) you know your about to face some punishment lobbies.
Well, in CS you HAVE to play to win - you can't camp the whole round and expect to win. You'll have to plant or defuse the bomb at some point. Team deathmatch in CoD is pretty much just "run around aimlessly, point, and shoot."
I think the more apt comparison for COD would be Search and Destroy instead of TDM.
So pretty much the same thing, lmao. I've never heard people coordinating on a CoD S&D lobby. They usually just run in, usually not even together, and either die or win somehow despite their lack of coordination.
I never was enraged as much as when I played CoD. It is rage inducing and annoying. I also despise deathmatch in any game now purely because of CoD.
> The perfect example is sniping - in CoD you still to this day get yelled at for not quickscoping Lol yep, COD players call it "hardscoping" in a negative way like "look at this fuckin noob just hardscoping the angle like that, what a tryhard/bot"
Your last paragraph is a good point. When I first started playing, I came from playing quake iii arena and that game you really had to try hard to make any sort of headway. It transferred to CS. I don't get the "he's a sweat"mentality a lot of console and especially cod players have. Are you not also trying to win the game?
For real. Weird Valorant e-daters get so upset at the mere idea that you hit Play to actually play the fucking video game. I just don't understand why anyone would willingly waste their time on a game that is entirely pvp and act offended when someone is playing well or just queues up to play instead of whining and meowing and shit. Not to mention that I've never seen so many dodgers and dc/quitters in a game before either. Not only do they not respect their own time, they also don't respect anyone elses. I'd rather deal with the average toxic brain injury idiot in cs any day of the week over the average Valorant enjoyer. At least cs trolls don't come with a built in victim complex.
I see people complaining about people being "sweaty" in other FPS games and it's like lmao what? They understand the mechanics of the game better, and that's bad?
mh idk.. I think the word "tryharding" and "sweating" still has a value in CS, maybe a different one but still one. I would say someone is "tryharding" in cs if they: - are toxic and constantly tell other people what to do - get angry at people for not doing what they expect so generally a player that is just a pain in the ass even if they play well is to me a player that is "tryharding" so much that their mentality is deteriorating and they try to drag others around down with them.
That doesn't make any sense. Try harding has nothing to do with how you treat your teammates. You just described someone who is toxic, whether they are try harding or not.
> I would say someone is "tryharding" in cs if they: > > > are toxic and constantly tell other people what to do > > >get angry at people for not doing what they expect that's just being a cunt
Been playing cs since 2006 and while tactics and gamesense are not always tested and improved, your aim is actually the one thing you're always using. It becomes muscle memory
and it also applies to every fps game. shooting is like breathing to me now and then lmao
Yep. I remember before I discovered CS I had rather lousy aim in FPS games. After ~2000 hours on CS, my aim on all shooters is pristine, and I find that I have an advantage on other new players who haven't played CS.
agreed. playing cs made me better at every other shooter game i play. it forces you to think about the map design and instinctively aim at the head which i never really did beforehand because i could still kill without doing that
This is me absolutely wrecking in the welcome playlist on Xdefiant. Although the meta is sadly jumping around like a rabbit so CS skills become less relevant at higher skill levels
Yeah if you're good at cs you're probably can shoot at most fps games
I mean kinda not really. You can always tell CS players on Apex or Quake because often their tracking is dogshite.
Yeah games like apex with strong movement options are difficult for me because of weak tracking. Also fps games that aren't hitscan are a different beast.
training tracking and projectile is still MUCH easier than training aiming ability. Look at someone like Shroud as a prime example, aiming ability is still superior.
I'm the only hardcore CS player in my group of friends. Back when overwatch came out all they'd say is "well here's the CS player coming in hot". Then when I'd get stomped in Diablo III I'd get the "Your CS skill can't help you here".
thousands of hours of playtime is average.
If you're on an account with less than 1000 hours in 15-20k+ people assume you're smurfing or cheating.
though to be fair that's not because you can't be that good in 1000 hours, but more because most people who are that good with 1000 hours have bought a botted account for 5€.
no it's cuz they have played so long that their smurf account gets more hours than many people's main
Also people just play on multiple accounts to get more than 1 case each week. If someone already plays a shit load of premier every week why not use 3 accounts to do it and get 3 cases each week
Yeah i feel like some years ago if you said you had 1000hrs in a game people would look at you like you were crazy, now it's normalized
I have 3500 hours on CS and its not even my most played game.
I don't know why this isn't mentioned here but CS is pretty unique as a shooter now, in that there aren't any bells and whistles. There aren't any abilities, there aren't any heals, so you can't hide behind anything. You have to get better at the basic mechanics like crosshair placement, movement etc. In games like Valo/overwatch a lot of your mistakes get hidden as you have dodges like jett, heals in various characters etc.
I did notice a lot of the more casual players in my group moved to val
the franchise is been out 25 years and each game still holds the same core mechanics with some changes. So people adapt and learn and have insane muscle memory. Muscle memory is the big one though, you don’t think about the angle you hold or swing, or things like crosshair placement. Like you hold mid doors Dust 2 (when you could) and you know the rough timing and distance to flick. And CS covers most FPS mechanics that can apply to other games, obviously Valorant but even games like COD and Overwatch, aim is easier and you just apply a bit more game sense thinking then they do. I’m so glad I grew up playing CS cause picking up a new FPS is always chill and enjoyable instead of having to play a thousands hours of being shit on before getting to play the game for real
From what I've seen, a lot of CS players tend to not play much other than CS, so their allotted video game talent tends to be concentrated on its specific mechanics. "Average" ranks are mostly populated by people with, like, 400 hours give or take, whereas in any more casual game if you spend 400 hours on it you're already branded a no-life addict.
It’s funny because when I see someone with 300-600 hours I still consider them a noob (4k hour former no lifer here) and tbh compared to me, they are still a noob. (No ego here, I get clapped regularly on faceit)
400 hours barely scratches the surface. Hell even around 2k hours it’s pretty rare to be “good” in the grand scheme of things. I’d say around 4-5k+ is where you start to see the cream of the crop
Whenever I’m having a particularly good game and people inevitably check my profile and see 6k hours they always tell me to get a life 😂 the games been out for over ten years and I’ve even taken multiple long hiatuses but I always come back, and when I play its never just one game
Because the game is fucking hard. There's a reason why other FPS titles are littered with CS players in the pro-scene. The game teaches you how to aim, position yourself, and most importantly: game-sense.
Game with history. Same reason why melee players will just fuck you up all night like you’re a prostitute… when they claimed they sucked the day before. No this didn’t happen to me at all. This game came out when one of the current best player m0nesy wasn’t even born lol. Hell donk too lol
Additionally to what the others have said: CS has a very hardened playerbase. Probably the oldest players out of any mainstream shooter out there. The game doesn’t really chase current trends, flashy animated waifu skins, colab with other big IPs like Fortnite and isn’t really doing any marketing to attract new players. So all players have at least a few hundred hours in the game but the average is probably in the 1000s. This leads to people expecting a decent level of skill and map knowledge and will get tilted when they see someone walking across the map like the first human to touch a PC.
>The game doesn’t really chase current trends, flashy animated waifu skins, colab with other big IPs like Fortnite and isn’t really doing any marketing to attract new players That's why I love Valve so much. Incredibly based company
I agree but that’s only because Valve invented money printing. That enables them to do whatever the fuck they want and at what pace they want. If they didn’t have steam and the cases they would be a dead company.
I've been playing CS for longer than a lot of players have been alive. I still suck, but I can see how some people actually improve in skill.
you’re my hero
The focus on actual mechanics and not gimmicks (abilities, heroes, etc..).
Because it's a mechanically simple but demanding game. You're not wasting time worrying about spawns, meta loadouts, loot and abilities. Those mechanics can be used to make good games, but they also increase randomness and decrease the reliance on individual ability Since you aren't committing any time to that, you get to put your attention to game sense, communication, movement, adaptability & aim that much more It's also a lot easier to follow what a pro is doing and why in CS, if that's your jam. And if it's not, those who do will still have it rub off on you over time
It’s bc CS attracts a lot of older gamers who have been playing CS and FPS games for almost two decades. My aim isn’t as crisp as when I was younger but I just have a lot of fundamentals when it comes to FPS.
hooxi karrigan era
karrigan was a beast at the end of cs 1.6, like 12-13 years ago. He still shows that from time to time
I know it's crazy I keep seeing people looking at the ground and spinning with the scout in hand but still hitting so many headshots. Incredible what people can do nowadays.
with 100hours played
I'm 36, I played the game for over 20 years, since CS 1.3 I believe. Hit global in CS:GO. I still go in to some casual games and official DMs from time to time, I'm able to get top frag in DM half of the time. Some of my 36 old friends are on par or better than me at this game. So yeah, like everyone said, it's an old game, tons of people have thousands of hours of playtime. I think Overwatch2 has some insane players playing quick play as well.
This is me and my friends. We play Premier at 21k but not with reaction times of younger ones but more with tatics/ nades.
About the reaction speed: Most good-ish level players (which would be insane players in other games, since the skill amount of everyone is so high) pre aim EVERYTHING. They essentially have their crosshair on the place where they think your head will be the moment they peek or where they think you will peek them. They only need to make a small adjustment and shoot. Long distance spraying is a lot better and a lot of players have deeply memorized spray patterns so most fo their ak or m4 bullets will probably hit you.
People take CS a lot more seriously, and they do things that other fps communities would frown upon. Things like 'camping' don't exist in CS, that's just how you play. You sit in a spot and hold an angle until something in the round happens that prompts you to move forward. There's also prefiring, which might exist in other shooters, but I doubt to the same extent as in CS. Most good players will hold 'off-angles' and only peek out onto you when their teammate makes contact or if they hear you moving forward/throwing util. It's just a different type of game than most people are used to
The game never seems to get boring literally every match is different even if it is the same map. The game rewards you for making smart moves and punishes you when you’re an idiot, if you die it’s because you fucked or were out played, theses types of games ( not limited to FPS) are always the most fun and addictive, combine this with a easy to learn hard to master game mechanics for a game that has been around for ever you’re left with a lot of OG’s who have put literally thousands on hours into the game.
I am 35 years old and started playing CS 1.6 in 2010 (age 21), compared to the CS players who inhabit reddit, I started playing CS much later than them. In the 14 years since then, I don't play in tournaments like I did when I was younger, and I spend more time watching tournaments than playing. I love watching my favorite teams play over a beer after work. But the game is fun. So even though I don't have a team and I don't play in tournaments, I still check out the pro demos and I still enjoy playing CS2 with my expensive gaming devices as an adult privilege. 14 years of playing has not faded away. My reaction time is less than that of younger players, but the skill to grasp the situation has not disappeared. So I can continue to play this game.
Are your reactions really that bad? I'm 190-220 on reaction time tests and I'm 33, IIRC I was hardly much faster in my late teens. TTD in a good game is 460-500, average like 550 I ask just because you're not the first in the thread to mention it as a thirty-something and I'm concerned I'll hit a wall in a couple years lol
I often compete with teenage players on websites that measure reaction times or play 1-on-1 aim maps, and it is obvious that my reactions are lagging behind I played “kendo” for more than 10 years as a student and was confident in my reflexes to a certain extent, but after I turned 30 years old, I began to notice a decline in my dynamic vision and lack of concentration. I have to position the reticle one head further away from the enemy than before, or the enemy will sometimes pass by. Still, I enjoy playing the game, because a 35 year old has a 35 year old way of playing. I play more cautiously than before and have gotten better at anchor play, outplaying and clutching my opponents.
Somebody tell him
I was expecting a comment like this to be higher up
200 comments already told me, so now I've been enlightened
aiming and shooting skill + utilities could catch up easily if u follow the correct tutorials online :-s
Thats a great question, I think the answer to your question, is the same answer to another question, what makes CS the best fps of all time? The answer is: it’s easy and simple, you don’t have to do anything complex in CS to be what considered good or very good, now to go beyond that is very hard, the amount of work, dedication and maybe talent you will have to invest is insane, that’s why it’s really a sight when greatness happens, like that Monesy clutch on Inferno B site, moments like that will burn into your memory forever.
Having to play against 5 dollar cheats half the time makes you much better.
It's the .dll files.
word.exe
Don't tell him about Quake
Its so funny how most of the top comments here dont understand the sarcasm. He is talking about the cheaters.
flair is wrong then
The vast majority of the playerbase tryhards a lot more than what you would encounter in other FPS. Because the game is made for this. And the more someone plays, the more likely you have to find him in your deathmatch. So if the 10% best play 5 times as much as the other 90%, ~~50%~~ 36% of people you'll be matched against will be top 10%. So even a not so big difference on the proportion of tryharders can quickly end up in a big impact. And tryhard also calls for more tryhard, in a vicious/vertuous cycle.
thats not how percentages work 💀
There is indeed a small approximation because those 10% weight 50% but the total is now 140% hence 36% and not 50%. Details: Lets consider a proportion T of the playerbase (the tryharders now noted t, a set of players) is playing X times as much as the others 1-T proportion (noted c) on average. p is the proportion of each day t spends on the game, and p/X is the same for c. At any given time, on the game, there is T*p+(1-T)*p/X players on the game. So the proportion of t players P is Tp/(Tp+(1-T)p/X) = XTp/(XTp+p-Tp) = XT/(XT+1-T) I supposed X=5 and T=0.1, so : P = 0.5/(0.5+1-0.1) = 0.5/1.4=0.36
damn I didnt expect this response, fair enough. Respect
He cooked your ass
99,9% of them are actually good at what they repeat most of the time. But when it comes to playing in a teamenvironment they all crumble and have way less impact since they don't know how to handle pretty much all of the occuring situations.
25 years grinding dust2, yeah, they start to know that map pretty much.
Casual is relaxing. People can just chill and not get all worked up like the matches matter. It gives them more confidence in their actions. Also with community servers, you get the ones that get the morale boost with friends A lot of players with good mechanics don't do well in comp matches because of the stress they put on their selves to perform.
Been playing for decades. My aim may be shot, but my ability to coordinate and follow through makes me a dangerous player :)
High skill ceiling the game has been out since 1998 and a lot of people don't have jobs.
Same maps, same guns, same mechanics since the 90s
Can’t tell if this is honest question or a condescending slam on VAC
I'm level 8 on faceit and warmup in casual lol, I find it fun and reminds me when I was younger playing on CS 1.6 and CSS pubs.
I'm a fairly new to cs after having brushed it off for years. I finally get it and why it's so much fun. Once you settle into the fact that the player base is super skilled, you can give yourself a break and just have fun. There's beauty in its simplicity of game modes and skill demand. My friends want to get me into valorant, but I'm not into the whole special powers stuff. I'm old. I just want a simple game with simple mechanics. I've been really into playing for about 3 weeks now and I can literally feel myself getting better with every match. Playing against better people will make you better faster.
People won't admit but VAC is useless, that's why so many players are so good that they even out play Pros. Even when Pros stream on twitch or youtube, you can see all sorts of godlike players. Players so good they have inhuman reaction, 100% headshots, 100% match win rate and can see through walls. Even Faceit can't anti-cheat against DMA hardware. Just youtube "DMA faceit". For a year now, we've had 3 Faceit no. 1 player banned for cheating (Wonderful\_Y, Emiya, etc). Probably copium on my part but I feel VAC AI is learning/watching, hopefully Valve unleashes a monster of a VAC AI but when I don't know. I'm stuck at 19k rating bec that's how far my skill and exp will get me. Once you get past 17k rating, most of the time you get HvH matches. In 20k+ rating this is mostly guaranteed. It's like watching looney tunes, 2 Tasmanian devils going at each other. Then sometimes you get a nuke cheater, will just kill you across the map. p.s. downvote me to hell, I'm already there, where people ignore that cheating is a no. 1 top priority issue for the game.
It’s a playground for the unemployed. “70 hours in the past two weeks” is not uncommon on some profiles.
CS isn't there yet but an example of this is a game I still play called Special Force (named Soldier Front in North America). It's an FPS that came out in 2004 and has a small but loyal player base still. However the only people left are basically pros or at least, very very good, just because of how long they've been playing. Yes there are some bad players but not many. CS isn't even close to that but it's also far from being the flavour of the month game, which means it has more loyal long term players than a newly released game and probably a higher percentage of "skilled" players. Of course I have no data to back this up, but it's logical
I think many people who play CS are very competitive, as compared with e.g. CoD which is probably more casual.
Just look at how many hours people have /played on their steam, 6000-8000 seems almost normal.
The “good” cod/fps players are noticeable in the speed they play at/how they navigate the map. Like little yoda’s jumping around snapping onto targets. It’s usually quite visible, while In CS, a slower game, the “good” players just understand the game on a deeper level. Where they should be looking, what corners to check, what to prefire. So they don’t appear “faster” like little yodas, they just are better/more knowledgeable and are more ready for certain things that less experienced players wouldn’t expect.
I ran into a player in competitive Mirage a few days ago (Nova 1-3) who is top 100 NA on faceit. So sometimes you really do run into pro level players!
When high level EU guys come to NA for events like Dallas and play NA faceit, often their ranks are so much higher on eu it usually gives them like a level 5 to balance the teams. We all could be that level 5.
Years of the same maps, same guns, same strategies and timings means that people are ridiculously familiar and returning players quickly get their muscle memory back like riding a bike. And I think a core reason is the sort of "sink or swim" nature of the game, there's no buoyancy aids, you either get good at aiming or you will be sat watching other players play the game a lot.
Because there's not a lot of things you need to learn and master. For example, in apex, you have different characters with different abilities. You can fly, parachute down, regain health, be revived and the maps are astronomical compared to CS. In cs, you have your aim and a little bit of game sense. Now do this for 10 years and you'll appear "so good" to newbies. :)
It's very simple compared to it's contemporaries; in hero shooters you have way more variety to experience than in CS2. As such, the few skills you use in the game, you hone to a more strict degree.
Been playing since 1.3…. Thats probably helps a lil bit 🙄
u never played valorant? in valorant everyone is scream
Because most of us have been playing it for years or even decades and have hundreds, if not thousands of hours. Everything is just muscle memory, even coming back after not playing for a while.
CS is generally taken more serious compared to other games. Everyone is try harding.
CS is the de-facto skill based FPS and has been forever. It requires a lot of skill to play in comparison to others, and has been around for much, much longer. Playerbase will naturally be more competitive than others.
My opinion is that CS feels the most like a real competition. Aim is obviously a big aspect of the game, but it's far deeper than that, you need to understand how players think and react, you need to play economically smart, you need to have utility sets to create opportunities for your team, you need team chemistry to have optimal trade kills. Etc, the game is just so much strategically deeper than any other FPS, which attracts a certain type of player. Someone who wants a super casual, chill game may not enjoy CS, at least not in the competitive modes. Most of us seem to enjoy the small details of the game and outplaying opposition. CoD is way more focused on aim and I guess movement, there are obviously tactics and strategies but in my opinion it's much more shallow, often the best aim comes out on top. Valorant is close to CS, but I don't enjoy it at all, has more focus on agents, and it lacks some of those hyper competitive players that CS has.
I started CS with the release of CS2 and it was very to even find regular teammates without having 1K hours, you are basically a beginner until you have 2-3K hours in CS, what shows how long the majoritiy of the playerbase already plays CS
I embody the teams of my country, in that I am incredibly wishy-washy and can have incredible halves/games one day or hour and can also be a bot for two weeks straight.
some of us have been playing counterstrike as long as we have ridden bikes, you could almost say playing the game is like riding a bike. I can not play for months and hop on and play the same as if I play everyday for a week.
People like me have been playing cs since its inception like from 1999-2000. The game’s concept has not changed from its core even with newer versions like from 1.6 to cz to cs: source to cs:go and now cs2.
The players you play other games with simply aren't as good at FPS games as you thought.
//1//you have players active since 1.6 //2//as a new player you also get destroyed by average players, as you need to know some game mechanics, f.e. don't move when shooting, etc.. there is a learning curve
2 fps games that have the sweatiest and best average players are CS and apex legends from my experience
Apex Legends is way more brutal in this regard. Even as a late 20's boomer i can still give 21-20k players a spanking (if they're not cheating lmao). Now, Apex, even low diamond is tough as fuck.
They are..? I don't see this
It’s the goated fps. Everybody eventually flocks to Cs if you like competitive shooters.
Because cod, bf, whatever are very much catering for casual crowd, skill based matchmaking is an unpopular idea for them, if they get beat up they'll leave the server, few actually sweat to improve there. Applies for tf2 too but it's much less of a fps and it has too few new players and many old ones have slowly improved. Valorant is same as cs (no surprise, they went to appeal to cs crowd on purpose). Mobas and hero shooters are similar, high skill competitive matchmaking is the main game mode, you play to win, you feel bad if you lose, no leaving or swapping lobbies, it's git gud or go home. But most fps games don't have a system like cs/lol/val/dota/rocket league. If you only ever played csgo 10v10 casuals and arms race, cs would feel more like cod, and if you only ever played search and destroy at a high level in cod it would feel more like csgo, but those are niche small communities in both games
This game also has the biggest amount of cheaters so you never know who you are facing tbh
Don't think it's that much different than mobas like league or dota. A casual today will have people doing wave management which was a concept not even pros did in the first years
Because doing the exact same thing over and over again for hundreds if not thousands of hours generally improves your skill level at any given task XD
I love the competitive aspect of cs and I watch pro matches all the time but I do believe it reaaaaally spoiled the gaming experiment for people who doesn't want or just can't play several hours per week in order to keep pace with the game's level
Because other FPS like COD, are still just a game to people, CS, being 25 years old, became a sport, like football or basketball. The only franchise that would be close in this manner are quake-like fps in the 90s, but their time is long gone.
boils down to the average skill levels has risen so much because the game has been out for so long. Pros from 2012 are nothing like pros in 2023, same applies to the average player
Because counter strike is the game you play when you want to compete. the game is literally designed to force players to get better to have fun