BLAST World Final in Abu Dhabi Rocked by CS:GO Gameplay Changes
CS:GO competition is going to be changing significantly, and there’s no telling yet how it’s going to influence the tournament circuit because there hasn’t been a tournament held since the November 18th CS:GO update that brought changes to the game. The first indication of how it will influence the circuit will be on December 14th, when the top players in the world descend upon the United Arab Emirates for the BLAST World Final in Abu Dhabi.
November 18th brought some changes to the game that will impact competitive play, and they’re going to be noticeable. Dust II, one of the best maps in the game and absolutely iconic, was removed from the Active Duty map pool. Its replacement, Anubis, was added to the game in 2020 so it’s fairly new. It will be interesting to see the reaction from the top professionals as the move was definitely interesting to say the least from the game creators. Anubis is a community-created map, and it’s only the second one ever to make it to the Active Duty map pool, along with Cache.
Along with the drastic map change, there have been some very big changes to some highly-used weapons as well. The magazine size of the AWP sniper was reduced from 10 to 5, making it a bit more difficult to use with reloading being more frequent. Additionally, the M4A1-S rifle was tweaked a bit in the form of its range modifier. The range modifier was reduced from 0.99 to 0.94. This is fairly important since the amount of damage it creates at a distance decreases with this statistic change. The rifle will be less attractive to use because of this.
Interestingly enough, Valve waited to make the changes until after the completion of the biggest Major of the year, the IEM Rio Major in early November just a couple weeks ago in Brazil. Valve most likely didn’t want to implement such drastic changes right before the biggest Major of the year to throw a curveball at all the professionals as it would have appeared to be inopportune timing.
This seems to be the perfect time considering that the next Major isn’t until next May, which is the BLAST Paris Major in France, so there’s plenty of time for professionals to get accustomed to the changes in smaller tournaments before competition for the big hardware begins again in 2023. The tournament in a few weeks in Abu Dhabi will be a good initial indicator of how it will change strategies for competitive play, and the top pros will need to adapt accordingly. As we’ve seen over the years, they are the best of the best and it should be a fairly easy transition for them.
Some of the top teams in the world, such as FaZe Clan, Natus Vincere, Outsiders and Vitality have already qualified for the World Final after their previous wins this year that awarded them direct qualification. Therefore, we know the top teams will be in the UAE and will officially be testing the new structure at a competitive level, and that’s very important in the early stages of the update.
From a spectator standpoint, the update shouldn’t change much. CS:GO fans always show up in large numbers and this particular update doesn’t do anything that should impact those statistics unless the pros boycott it or severely dislike the updates, which is pretty improbable. Valve’s decision making usually coordinates with the best interests of both the CS:GO community and the top professional teams in order to maximize its chances of continuing to build a healthy ecosystem for CS:GO. Regardless, the changes are here, and in a couple weeks we will know some early thoughts, and also what to expect moving forward.