Overview
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Photo Credit: Polygon.com
In what could be considered one of the more controversial updates, Valve has removed one of the oldest maps, Inferno, from the Active Duty map pool and replaced it with their revamped, Nuke. This has sparked outrage from many of the professional players in the Counter-Strike scene due to the popularity of Inferno, and the many problems that the new Nuke has.
Both Inferno and Nuke have been around since the beginning of Counter-Strike with both maps going through several makeovers. Inferno has seen only a few minor changes since the beginning of CS:GO while Nuke was removed a few months ago from the Active Duty map pool to undergo a change. The result was a beautiful map that was rife with problems due to the lack of professional testing. One of these problems is a massive fps drop when “outside” because of the increased features and added textures. Several other immediate problems also need to be changed soon if the map is to be competitively viable.
The Pro Scene
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Photo Credit: TweakTown.com
The response from the professional scene for this update has been negative for the most part. Players from top teams such as Na’Vi, Fnatic, and other teams have expressed dislike that Inferno has been removed. The only team that has expressed a positive response is the Ninjas in Pyjamas, but that could likely be due to the fact that Nuke was the map that anchored NiP’s brilliant 87 win streak in the early days of CS:GO. How this change will affect the professional scene remains to be seen, but it is likely that teams who had Inferno as their best or better map will struggle. Additionally, teams such as the aforementioned Na’Vi and Fnatic were previously not that good on Nuke and this change could force them to train on an additional map to supplement their map pools.
Gameplay on Nuke
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Photo Credit: Adzerker
For the old Nuke, the map was the most CT sided maps of all the maps in the competitive map pool. The Counter-Terrorists held a huge advantage because there were only three main avenues of attack that the Terrorists could use. Smoke grenades, incendiary grenades, and flashbangs would be able to hold these chokepoints and force the Terrorists into an unfavorable engagement resulting in every single round on the T-side being precious. This map was also one that saw huge comebacks being accomplished due to the one sided nature of the map.
The new Nuke has seen a shift to the Terrorist side with some of the new features added to the map. The outside catwalk has been extended all the way to the Terrorist’s side and the B site of the map has seen a complete overhaul that gives the Terrorists easier access. Still, when the map was played in the All-Stars game at MLG Columbus 2016, the Counter-Terrorists won an overwhelming amount of rounds with both teams picking up 11 rounds on their CT sides.
Last Thoughts
Whether or not the map will become a good competitive map still remains to be seen. There are still a lot of problems with the map that will need several updates to fix. Many professional players do not like the changes so far, but hopefully with testing and patches, the map will rise in popularity and become the fan favorite that it was in previous iterations of Counter-Strike.