Many people in the CS:GO community has pushed and advocated for a change in the competitive map pool, where especially maps like Mirage, Dust2, and Vertigo has been heavily criticised.
It seems like Valve has listened to the critique – or only some of it. The renowned game developer published on Monday a quite ground-breaking update to the game. In the update, you can see that Valve has decided to remove the iconic Train and replaced it with the map called Ancient.
Ancient is the new boy in CS:GO’s active map pool
Thanks to everyone who took part in Operation Broken Fang. As of now the Operation has concluded. Players have until May 15th to spend Operation Stars.
We have a few updates today, beginning with the Active Duty Map Pool—Train has been removed and Ancient has been added.
— CS2 (@CounterStrike) May 3, 2021
Here are some of the reactions to the decision.
I spoke about it in different interviews, Having a totally new map in the map pool, so excited about it ? gonna love to learn how it can be played with tons of new stuff to find!
Do We know when it Will be effective as competitive? (Maybe i missed the information)— Richard Papillon (@shoxCSGO) May 4, 2021
But… WHY TRAIN.
— Astralis Counter-Strike (@AstralisCS) May 4, 2021
CS community: We want changes in Active Duty map pool!
CS community after map pool changes: Fuck this new map ???
No comment. ?
— NIP CS (@NIPCS) May 3, 2021
Here’s the full update from Valve:
[ OPERATION BROKEN FANG ]
– Operation Broken Fang has come to an end. Players who have unredeemed operation stars will have until May 15th to claim their operation rewards.
– Introducing CS:GO 360 Stats – A subscription service for players that want to continue collecting official Competitive and Wingman stats.
– Premier Competitive remains available for all players featuring pick/ban process across the entire Active Duty Group map pool.
– Retakes remains available and has been moved into Wargames.
[ SNAKEBITE CASE ]
– Introducing the Snakebite Case, featuring 17 community-designed weapon finishes, and the Broken Fang Case set of gloves as rare special items.
[ MISC ]
– Chicken models have received a visual upgrade.
– Fixed community maps whose textures would appear black as a result of previous security fixes.
– The key can again be bound to commands. If you were using this key before, you will need to bind it again.
– Additional security and stability improvements.
– Added an option for large community maps to fade the Boost Player Contrast feature beyond the far-Z fog plane by setting fadeplayervisibilityfarz to ‘true’ in info
map
parameters.
[ MAPS ]
– Ancient has been added into the current competition map pool Active Duty Group and Train has been removed from Active Duty Group.
– Grind and Mocha have been added to official matchmaking in Scrimmage, Casual, and Deathmatch game modes, replacing Apollo, Engage, and Anubis.
– Calavera and Pitstop have been added to official matchmaking in Wingman game mode, replacing Elysion and Guard.
– Ancient:
— New route from CT spawn to A site
— Widened T entrance to left side of mid
— Opened up skylight in T tunnel to A site
— Extended plantable bomb zone in B site
— Opened up ledge in A site
— Various minor bugfixes
– Nuke:
— Fixed a clipping issue on window in T lobby
— Centered a lamp that was bugging me
– Frostbite:
— Overhauled interior lighting
— Fixed delivery drones being stuck in the bottom right corner of the map
— Added drone clips to improve delivery drone navigation
— Fixed rare cases of loot spawning in inaccessible areas/inside terrain
— Made a window frame in Alpha non solid (thanks Musti)
— Clipped wood railings in the frozen lake area
— Improved the look of the ice texture when Shader Detail is set to Medium or lower
— Fixed a missing face on a wooden beam in Town
— Added a sound effect in server room
