Open Communication channel with a CS:GO developer

John McDonald, one of Valve's developers who work on CS:GO, has recently reached out to the community via a Twitter Q&A. Many of the hottest questions around the game were answered - here's the summary.

128 Tick Servers

Tickrate is the rate in which the server updates its information. The number means refreshes per second. 64 Tick, which is the default for official Valve Dedicated Gameservers, means that the server requires users to send information 64 times for a second. Third party Matchmaking services, such as Faceit use 128 Tick, which gives a more consistent experience and is aimed at more competitive players.

Having 128 tick in Valve official Matchmaking has been a huge request for a very long time. However, McDonald explains in his tweet that some players would have a disadvantage with the higher tickrate. He still thinks it might be worth splitting the userbase into 64/128 tick players since it really makes a difference in competitive play.

Panorama UI

Panorama UI has also been a hot topic in various internet forums (such as Reddit) for a long time. With the announcement of release in late 2017, it still has not been deployed to this day.

That being said, McDonald has told the community to just hang on a bit longer, it will come out when it is finished and ready for deployment. It is still a focus in the developer team and therefore still considered important.

Demo Playback issues

Demo playback has also been quite an issue for the more competitive side of CS:GO players. Basically, if a player wants to rewatch a round in a demo, which is a file that contains the gameplay to rewatch and analyze, the game freezes up for a few seconds which is quite annoying to many players.

McDonald has commented on this and said that if the demo playback system was to be fixed, it would be completely remade since the backbone of it is a really old piece of software.

Third party services

Faceit and ESEA provide a more competitive environment than "typical" Valve Matchmaking can. The overall service is more optimised for competitive play. One of the deciding factors is 128 tick (see above) servers.

In McDonald's opinion these services provide "more and varied experiences to (...) mutual customers.". ESEA still serves as a launchpad into the professional scene, even though scandals have come to the surface in the recent years. One of these scandals was a cryptocurrency miner hidden in the ESEA launcher, another was the use of a person with a disability to compare their service (person who does backflips) to competitors (disabled person).

Here's a reupload of the whole ad-bomination (heh):

Custom HUDs

Custom HUDs were once announced to be re-implemented in the game, but as the years went on, the devs' focus just went elsewhere.

McDonald has now confirmed that Custom HUDs will never return to CS:GO since regulations are hard to lock down to ensure a level playing field for everyone.

What do you think?

What are your speculation about future happenings from the CS:GO's developer team? Let me know in the comments!

As always, thanks for reading and see you in the next one,

Q&A with a CS:GO developer