New CS:GO Update Removes Bots From Tournament Matches
The latest CS:GO update introduced a controversial change in ranked matches. The gaming community has not responded with enthusiasm, to put it mildly.
Saying that Counter Strike: Global Offensive is popular is like saying a tornado is quite windy. Valve's online shooter has been successfully attracting many users for over eight years. Despite the passage of time and worse periods, numerous prophecies of its "death", the game is alive and kicking. Last month, about 1 million people played on the servers at the hottest moments. In the latest update, however, Valve has decided to take quite a controversial step.
The biggest change introduced to the game is the lack of AI-controlled bots in ranked matches. So far, when a player was leaving the team, a bot automatically took its place, which was a kind of compensation. Its usefulness on the battlefield was limited - rarely was it able to kill someone. It was also unable to use grenades and did not care for meta economy, buying random weapons. In some situations, however, bots were useful. At the moment of death one of the players could enter the body of the computer companion and thus level the playing field.
Unfortunately, this option is no longer available because January 7 update removes bots from the classic 5 vs 5 tournament matches as well as from Wingman mode (2 vs 2). Perhaps this is how the devs wanted to prevent excessive use of the option to kick a team member by voting. This was intended to remove toxic players from the game, but often led to abuse and kicking people who were not at fault. Players are hardly enthusiastic about the new changes, as can be seen in the comments under the official CS:GO post on Twitter.
The dissatisfaction of the CS:GO community is understandable. Until the recent major update with operation Broken Fang was released, Valve's flagship title remained stagnant. In fact, little changed in that matter. According to the players, one of the most needed issues are: improved matchmaking, improved anti-cheat system and reform of the rank system, which often does not reflect the true skills of players. None of the above was implemented in the latest patch.
Apart from the removal of bots, the new update includes several other changes, such as removing bugs from several maps and improving their optimization. The recently introduced ping system was also changed, which from now on does not allow to mark weapons in tournament mode. You can see the full list of changes in CS:GO here.
