Counter-Strike 2 Update: Major Changes to Loadout and Buying Mechanics

The latest Counter-Strike 2 update arrived on the servers on April 25, but there has been no real content or changes since the end of March. Just when we thought that Valve had completely forgotten about the Source 2 version, we could read of movement behind the scenes again.

This was already hinted at by uploading the game’s skin files to the Workshop interface, but late on Tuesday evening, SteamDB detected several file movements. In such cases, it is impossible to know how quickly Valve will publish new products. Sometimes they were put on the servers for weeks, but there were also times when they were available to everyone (or at least the Test participants) within half an hour. It seems that we are now closer to the latter, as the official changelog and several gigabytes of updates arrived shortly before midnight.

Even shopping is completely transformed!

The update list is particularly long. Some of these will not affect everyday users in the future either, so we will not go into them now. However, there have been a lot of changes that can change mechanics dating back 10 years.

Purchase and loadout

Loadout

Any 5 pistols, any 5 mid-tier weapons, and any 5 rifles. Today’s Counter-Strike 2 update introduces a revised loadout system where players select 15 weapons from 3 categories on CT and T-side to bring with them into matches. Including the M4A4 and M4A1-S. pic.twitter.com/enl7mW9qnT

— CS2 (@CounterStrike) June 6, 2023

Players can now divide weapons to use in matches into a 5-5-5 loadout. Of course, the CT and T sides are still separate, but we will have to calculate with the following slots:

• 1 starter pistol, 4 pistols, 5 mid-tier (SMG/Heavy) and 5 Rifle slots will be available per side
• Yes, this also means that we can bring both M4 types into a match, but we have to sacrifice something instead
• We can no longer use T weapons on the CT side and vice versa
• Drag & Drop system helps to organize things more easily

Buying

Bought the wrong thing? Meant to buy a different weapon, armor, or grenade? Sell your purchase back and buy again (during buy time). pic.twitter.com/7KJ4WN82XU

— CS2 (@CounterStrike) June 6, 2023

We can expect several changes here as well:

• The “wheel” disappears, now we get a much cleaner grid structure
• We see the purchases of our teammates in the buy menu
• We will also be able to read the statistics of the weapons in a much cleaner and understandable way
• Incorrect purchases can now be canceled during the buy time, similar to Valorant’s solution

Changing the Loadout and Buy mechanics could shake up the current meta, as both M4s will be able to be brought into matches, but we can only calculate with 5 slots. Changes to the buy menu have also been requested for a long time, it seems that Valve really takes the future of Counter-Strike seriously, its community is listening.

More news

In addition to the above, there have been several changes and updates, the most noteworthy of which are:

• Players can now fight on Mirage
• The developers refined the Sub-Tick system
• Tweaked the smoke grenades, the HE grenade will take less time to make a hole in it
• The animations have also been improved in several places
• Now you can apply multiple commands to one key without crashing the game, except for jump-throw
• From now on, VAC can strike even during matches, immediately interrupting the given match
• Designers of tracks and skins also received valuable development tools

Valve specialists did not share any official information about the expansion of the Limited Test. Many people believe that the Workshop will allow more people to enter the company within days. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait long for even more people to try Counter-Strike Source 2.

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