At the end of 2023, Counter-Strike 2 is not as good as it could be, and is lacking the features and polish that were established in CS:GO. Over the last couple of months, the pro play community has given feedback to Valve, trying to improve the game and get it competitively ready for its first Major in March.

CompLexity player Ricky "floppy" Kemery took to Twitter to submit his Christmas wishlist to the famous guy with a white beard. No, not Santa. We obviously mean Gabe Newell.

The wishlist

While floppy's list addresses some issues which are commonly requested by the CS community, it also expands on a couple of more technical requests. No worries, we'll explain those to you.

Ability to hold angles (especially online)

Peeker's advantage is a major point of contention in Counter-Strike 2. The concept describes issues arising from holding an angle and trying to win aim duels based on the defending player's reaction. Due to how the game handles latency, it has become increasingly difficult to win these duels.

The player swinging on the holding player has an advantage in seeing the opponent much earlier, leaving the defending player much less time to react. This issue is exacerbated online because of additional latency as the peaker gets even more frames to react.

Ability to spray

Inconsistencies in how the spray works in CS2 have been called out. While spraying has a much different feel than it did in Global Offensive, it might also be due to the way the opponent's model and hitbox are displayed - leading to misses that feel like they should've hit.

Sv_jump_spam_penality_time

For time immemorial, Counter-Strike has been a game in which players can tinker around with their settings via the console, both of their own client and the server. These options have been severely limited for CS2, also imposing restrictions that have changed how movement works.

The specific concern with jump spam penalty time is a limitation the game puts on the player when it recognises a jump command, and with the current setting in place, hitting bunny hops has become rather inconsistent. The value suggested by floppy would help 128 tick servers to smooth out the bhop experience.

Ability to run boost and boost on teammates without bugging out

Runboosts in Counter-Strike are the practice of having a teammate jump on your head and give them increased speed on lift-off for various purposes. Currently, they work much differently than in the past.

Moreover, regular boosts in which you let a teammate jump on your head to allow them to look over walls or get up certain spots are also inconsistent, causing various issues for both the booster and the boosted.

Cl_bomb_lower_amt

This setting reduces the amount that a weapon will swing while the player is moving. In the past, players were able to change the setting almost to remove all gun movement. It doesn't change the way the gun shoots.

Cl_righthand 0

Allows the play to the side the gun is displayed in the first person view. The default has the gun on the right side, but some players have gotten used to the ability to customise it to display on the left side.

Decreased bomb radius

With CS2, Valve had increased the bomb explosion radius and damage on some, but not all maps. Considering how deliberate these changes appear to be, it seems that the developers actively thought about how large they would like them to be for each map and what kind of gameplay they wanted to facilitate. This is one of those changes that are unlikely to be bug fixes or a yet-to-be-introduced feature.

Making noise in water from strafing small distances fix

On a couple of maps, such as Overpass, water puddles have been a great source of frustration for players trying to sneak through them. When slow walking or crouching, a player should not make any noises in Counter-Strike and yet those puddles will, at times, give an audio cue that someone is travelling through them, giving the play away.

Both the improved anti-cheat and demo viewer are self-explanatory problems that have been plaguing the game. Over the past couple of months, several players have shared their concerns. With just over three months left until the start of PGL Copenhagen, Valve has its work cut out for it to get the game into a more competitive state.