A new patch has been released in CS2

Valve surprised the CS2 community by releasing a new patch last night, marking a long-awaited update. The update, named “A Call to Arms,” introduces several new features and addresses some of the biggest issues in CS2. As always, there are those who criticize Valve for this update, claiming it’s just another money grab from players. However, some players praise this patch, stating that they can finally enjoy the game more than before.

The “A Call to Arms” update for CS2 brings so many excellent changes that it’s difficult to highlight the most important ones. The return of the “Arms Race” mode and beloved maps like Baggage and Shoots is undoubtedly a highly anticipated event. Players also note other changes, such as the “Restore All” button, the Kukri knife, the new Kilowatt case, and adjustments to the advantage of peeking.

Let’s go through the patch

The “Restore All” button has been a desired option for many players. In the chaos of competitive gameplay, you often find yourself caught up in your tactics, bombarding teammates, and other intricacies of the game. This excellent feature allows you to return all purchased items during freeze time before the corresponding buy window is closed. It may seem like a small function, but in reality, it is incredibly convenient and prevents you from wasting money on something unnecessary, especially if you decide to change your strategy at the last moment.

Furthermore, the developers have finally addressed the issue of “peeker’s advantage” and minimized its impact. They reduced this advantage by 16ms, making it more balanced. The community has reacted positively to this news, but players know they will have to thoroughly test it before praising Valve.

Although it’s still too early to be entirely satisfied with Valve’s actions, “A Call to Arms” looks like an excellent patch.

“It might be an illusion, but the game feels significantly better now,” wrote one user, H, in their patch review. And there are indeed many similar reactions on social media.

It’s not surprising, as Valve remained silent for most of December and January, without making significant changes to CS2. Player frustration reached new heights, and online numbers hit record lows. However, the latest patch brings much-needed relief to the community by addressing several major issues with the new game. It’s just unfortunate that, once again, they did not add an operation, which we will probably have to wait for until after the Major.

PATCH LOG

Arms race

1. Added Arms Race mode to available game modes
2. Added “Baggage” and “Shoots” maps

Weapon

1. The Kilowatt Case has been presented, including 17 original skins for weapons, as well as a Kukri knife with unique patterns
2. Various bug fixes and tweaks

STICKERS

1. Added a new capsule with stickers
2. Now stickers can be placed in any place, and not in 4 zones as before
3. All weapons now support five stickers
4. Added a zoom function while placing a sticker for more accurate sticker placement
5. Various bug fixes and tweaks

MUSIC SETS

• NIGHTMODE Music Pack is now available for purchase in standard and StatTrak versions

Zeus

• Zeus can now be reused in all game modes and has a 30 second cooldown
• Added the ability to apply stickers and nametags to Zeus
• Adjusted the visual position of weapons in first person
• Added Zeus kill icon to kill cards and updated damage report from him after a round

SMOKE

• Smokes now create shadows
• Improved smoke display and animation

GAMEPLAY

1. Added “Return All” button to the buy menu
2. Added setting to disable first person tracer traces
3. Silencers can now always be reinstalled regardless of whether this feature is enabled or disabled
4. Game pings (tags) are no longer blocked by invisible texture geometries
5. Various improvements to sub-tick shooting
6. Fixed several cases where players could silently slide down vertical surfaces
7. Improved smoothness of sliding on surfaces
8. Fixed an issue where collisions between players would cause the image to shake
9. To ensure that your chosen loadout is displayed correctly before starting a match, you can no longer change your loadout when searching for matches in Premier, MM or Wingman

SOUND

1. Added option to select an audio device (IN) for voice communication from the sound settings menu
2. Added the ability to change the microphone threshold (the minimum volume before audio starts transmitting) from the audio settings menu, as well as a metric for the current microphone volume
3. Added the ability to listen to your own microphone from the sound settings menu to evaluate the sound
4. Replaced sound for M249
5. Changed the sounds of reloading, lack of charge and readiness to use Zeus
6. Minor mixing adjustments
7. Fixed an issue where some player-oriented sounds were perceived as coming from slightly behind the player

NET

1. Reduced the advantage of the pick player in many cases, and time was reduced by 16ms
2. Also reduced the frequency of situations leading to a very large advantage for the picking player due to in-game collisions
3. Added the cl_ticktiming console command, which prints a report breaking down the various sources of latency
4. Added option to buffer server and user command updates into one or more batches. This can be used to smooth out packet loss at the expense of increased latency

USER INTERFACE

• Added support for separate map settings for the background image in the main menu and item view
• Added “Baggage” and “Warehouse” maps as options for main menu background and item view maps
• In-game team-only messages will now have a team prefix (“[T]” or “[CT]”)
• A new status and nickname icon have been added for those who have already fulfilled the weekly quota of experience earned during the week. It is awarded to players who have earned their full allotment during the week (11,166 XP) and have reached the reduced XP threshold. This status is attached to player names, main menu, death notifications, etc.
• Experience overload is awarded for a minimum of one week.
• Additional levels of the experience overload condition can be unlocked by earning all the experience over a few weeks
• Agents with unique joy animations at the end of a match now also have unique defeat animations.
• You can disable playing defeat animations for the player in the settings
• Added more praise at the end of the match

MISCELLANEOUS

1. Adjusted the range of acceptable CS ratings for Premier co-op
2. Fixed a case where a high DPI mouse would cause the mouse cursor to jitter
3. Added minor animation improvements when playing demos
4. Disabled high update priority when running the Steam client in Steam client tournament mode

CARDS

Minor changes affected the maps:

• Inferno
• Ancient
• Anubis
• Overpass
• Mirage
• Nuke
• Vertigo
• Italy
• Office