Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

I used to miss ten shots, but now I miss five.

Since CS was born, AWP sniper rifle, commonly known as "big sniper," has always been the most repressive weapon in the game and has an unshakable status.

AWP has the highest single damage and is often able to break deadlocks, making it a regular in all pro tournaments. In most game modes, both police and bandit players have only 100 health points, and AWP bullets can deal at least 140 damage by hitting any part of the target above the leg. Due to damage overflow, AWP bullets can still cause considerable damage after penetrating some walls, and can even kill multiple opponents with one shot.

AWP also has many shortcomings, which makes it a "high risk, high reward" weapon. As a bolt-action rifle, it has a slow rate of fire and reload, and the player moves slowly when holding the AWP. AWP has accuracy where it points only when it is stationary and using a scope, and its hit rate is greatly reduced as soon as the player moves or even jumps.

In CS:GO, AWP sells for $4750, making it one of the most expensive weapons in the game. Players need to spend at least two or three rounds of revenue to afford AWP, and may have to forgo equipment such as armor, grenades, or bomb defusers to do so. Once the player with AWP dies, AWP will also drop for the enemy to pick up, becoming a "shared sniper," giving the opponent an economic and equipment advantage.

Many players have the idea of buying an AWP for a fight, and compared to fully automatic firearms, which occupy most of the weapon positions in the game, AWP is less subject to official balance adjustment, perhaps because AWP status and existence are very pure.

In 2015 and 2020, developer Valve made two reductions to AWP, both of which were aimed at the movement speed of players holding AWP. To be precise, the first time it reduces the AWP's movement speed when the mirror is open; the second time it adjusts the AWP user's movement acceleration when squatting. These two changes had a huge impact on professional players who were good at instant mirror, gun swing, and emergency stop, but had little impact on ordinary players.

On November 18, 2022, CS:GO's new update log went live. With this update to weapon stats, AWP suffered an unprecedented reduction that most players would experience: maximum magazine capacity reduced from 10 rounds to 5.

V: "So make sure every bullet counts! "AWP magazines take longer to load than fully automatic firearms, and a 50% reduction in magazine capacity means a 50% reduction in fault tolerance. In the default 5 vs. 5 competitive mode, if AWP players lacked accuracy with their guns (after all, professional players could not achieve 100% accuracy), they had to give up long-term gun suppression and reload AWP more frequently, leaving more loopholes for opponents to take advantage of.

However, in other FPS games, bolt action sniper rifles with 10 rounds of magazines were generally rare, and 5 rounds of magazines were the maximum ammunition capacity of standard sniper rifles. In CS:GO's competitor Valorant, the sniper rifle "Operator" with the same positioning as AWP also has a capacity of 5 rounds.

The "Big Sniper" in Valorant received mixed reviews from the CS:GO community for changes to AWP. Many players at home and abroad felt that this weakening step was too big and should provide compensation for other attributes of AWP, or reduce the bullet capacity to a compromise level, such as 7 or 8 rounds.

There were also players who felt that AWP's single damage had not changed, and there was no more suitable substitute in the game. It still had an unshakable core position in professional competitions.

There are also plenty of people complaining about French pro Kenny S. KennyS is considered one of the best CS:GO snipers in the world and was named "Esports Player of the Year" by the TGA in 2015. Three days before this update, KennyS had just announced his return to professional play when he encountered this epic weakening of AWP. But he himself calmly tweeted that after the update, only fewer deadly empty guns were needed,"sounds simple."

However, Kenny S's Falcons lost their first game since the patch was installed.

The same update log also mentions two changes. The first was weapon weakening, with officials adding range attenuation to the Counter-Strike side's M4A1 Muffler (M4A1-S), making it less damaging at long range.

In the game, the rifle with the same positioning as the M4A1-S is the M4A4. The former has only a 20-round capacity, but it has better recoil and accuracy performance than the 30-round capacity M4A4. It also comes with a silencer, which makes it difficult for opponents to distinguish the attack direction from its gunshots. Possibly to adjust the appearance rate of the two rifles, since 2018, officials have strengthened or weakened the M4A1-S once a year, and the most recent update is the second weakening this year.

Another change was that the classic map Dust II was removed from the service map group and replaced with a community-produced map Anubis. Players will still be able to play Desert 2 in most modes of the game, but they won't be able to see the map in the following class matches.

"Anubis" Because this update has been online for less than a week, the sample size of professional competitions worthy of reference is too small, and ordinary players are still adapting to the new weapon ecology, so it will take some time for the above changes to affect the game environment. And because next week is the legal Thanksgiving holiday abroad, even if it turns out that AWP has indeed been cut too much, V Society is unlikely to change it back in the first place.

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Game Research Society (ID: ysaag), author: Zhao Yue

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