6+1 things we want to see in Vertigo for competitive play

It’s pretty crazy that we’re going to see the meme-map of the Counter-Strike franchise in the active duty map pool, and likely also in competitive CS:GO matches. It truly feels like as if a brand new map was added to the game overnight. Just what does Valve need to do to ensure the games on Vertigo don't turn into a chaotic mess?

1) Reduce clutter

There’s so much junk on the building site that it makes me feel like I’m playing Prop Hunt. While the angles are a lot less broken than they used to be in previous iterations of the map, the place could use a bit of cleaning up.

2) Make sure there’s a balanced role for the AWP

The vertical nature of the map makes it quite unique but it poses special challenges as well. For instance, how do you establish slots where the AWPs are effective enough without becoming obscenely overpowered?

The only other map like this in the game is Nuke, a map that features a massive flat area outside, a cheeky angle on ramp and a tantalizing elevated position on heaven to enable effective usage of the big green gun. While the many sharp corners and short corridors allow for hyper-quick rotations and interesting gameplay, one has to wonder how the snipers will establish themselves in a fully “indoors” environment.

3) Make sure the sound cues are legible

Again, just like with Nuke, the fact that there are two floors to worry about makes it even more important that you can keep track of your opponents even without visual confirmation. Of course, both bomb sites (and CT spawn) are located on the top floor, making this somewhat less of a concern here, but it’s nevertheless going to be important going forward.

The many different floor surfaces seem to be quite helpful, but it’s likely that further updates will be needed. Keep in mind that most of the testing data collected came from 2v2 Wingman matches: it’s quite possible that things won’t work out the same way with ten men in the building.

4) There’s more to be done about griefing

While this likely won’t be a factor in competitive games, it’s important to make sure that the bomb remains accessible even after it takes a 51-floor plunge. While it does respawn after a few seconds exactly where you threw it off, it feels like a bit too long of a wait and an easy way to screw up a round if you hurl it off the top floor with only precious little time left on the clock.

The same goes for the liftshaft: you can pretty much screw up a round by throwing it onto the metal railing, forcing your teammates to drop down to the ground floor in order to retrieve the device. That could very well occur in competitive matches as well if the bomb carrier somehow gets killed close to that position.

5) Keep up the diligent update schedule

It’s great to see a more communicative dev team that is unafraid to take risks, shipping more regular updates. Not just music kits and sticker capsules are included: the changes made really shake up how Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is played. This is going to be important going forward: for an experimental map like Vertigo, listening to feedback is pivotal if you want to make it viable. For every Overpass, there’s a Cobblestone and a Canals…

6) Find a pro team that likes it

Of course, it’s easier said than done, but we all remember how long it took for the revamped Nuke to make its proper arrival on the pro circuit: nobody really wanted to play the map for a long time. If its gameplay is deep enough to incentivize someone to quickly adapt and turn it into their home map, maybe that means they can successfully challenge…

Oh crap.

+1) Enable sv_allow_astralis_utility 0

Hey, that’s the least you could do after removing their permaban…