Over the weekend Dreamhack announced they would be making a few important changes to the competitive CS:GO rulebook for 2016. A number of the competitive rules have been in discussion since the burst of popularity, and now with CS:GO still exponentially growing, Dreamhack have offered up a new set of rules for their tournaments in 2016 to keep up in the already extremely competitive scene. Of course, these changes will eventually become the norm as more tournaments organizers pick them up to unify CS:GO across the globe.
Dreamhack sat in discussions with fellow tournament organizers and professional players to ensure these changes are warranted. What’s odd is that nowhere in their press release does it state that Valve were involved in any way. I am confident, however, that Valve will follow suit and perhaps include these rule changes, and perhaps a few more. The rules are effective immediately with Dreamhack Leipzig around the corner (22-24 January), and will thus be our first taste of the new rulebook. Without further ado, here are the changes.
Round and Bomb Timers
“The round and bomb timer will be updated as at the end of last year Valve announced that they would change them for all upcoming Valve-supported events (Minors and Majors). To keep them unified across all tournaments we’ll be updating them to the new values. New round time will be 1:55 and the new bomb timer 0:40.”
Last year we discussed the major changes to CS:GO with their major patch, and there we discussed the changes to round time and the effect it would have on the competitive scene. Smoke timers would change, entire strategies would have to be altered and most of all defuse kits may not be needed. Some CS:GO Personalities, such as Duncan “Thorin” Shields, disagreed with the bomb and round timer saying that the real issue was smoke grenades which lasted too long. However, the changes were made and now Dreamhack will include the new changes as many tournament organizers did not immediately include these new changes late in 2015.
Deathcam
“There were quite a few discussions about the deathcam within the last months in the community. After we internally discussed those changes as well as talking about them with players we agreed that it would be time to shorten the deathcam. Therefore we’ll shorten it down to 2 seconds.”
I’ve always loved the deathcam. It added, for me at least, an extremely important strategic component to the game where people used the deathcam to their advantage. Being the dead person you could see movement and numbers and perhaps relay the information to your team. Being the person seen on the deathcam you could use it to your advantage and perhaps display incorrect information. It was rather lengthy and with the reduction in the time teams will now have to make precise decisions with the information they’re given.
End of Round Delay
“We are also going to change the delay after a new round starts once a round is completed, this will be shorten to 3 seconds.”
Pretty straight forward, but this does offer less time for pre-game calling and strategies. This may not be a major issue, but it one which will have a small impact on teams and perhaps promote an on-the-fly playstyle which benefit certain teams over others.
Jumpthrow Scripts Will Be Forbidden
“The last change will be the addition of Jumpthrow to the list of forbidden scripts. We have gathered feedback from players and after a voting the results were quite in favor of banning it which we now do.”
A jumpthrow script is a binded script which when pressed, jumps and throws a grenade perfectly at the peak height. Up until this point the script was widely used by some players as it was legal. This script removed the random component offered when throwing a grenade which could be crucial to height and distance, thus removing skill from the equation completely. The ban on the script will ensure this randomness is back and players will have to practice to jump and throw the perfect grenade.
The rules above are the first of many changes, I believe, as CS:GO aims to increase its competitiveness in 2016. As mentioned it is effective immediately and more tournaments organizers are going to follow suit.
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Last Updated: January 18, 2016
The Grand Admiral Chief Prime
January 18, 2016 at 13:08
Interesting how small changes like this can affect the game and strategies.
Most interesting
SkittelZA
January 18, 2016 at 15:06
These changes sound interesting.
Although the fact that a jumpthrow script was permissible before is such a joke. How was that ever considered acceptable? Might as well allow pistol scripts to fire all rounds in a single click of the mouse too o_O