Counter Strike: Weapon Purchasing, Pickups and the Importance of Accuracy

“This next piece (previous post here) in my extended thoughts on mechanics in CS:GO is all about weapons. One of the most important facets of CS. A player armed with the correct weapon and a few carefully placed bullets can take down two or three other players (like the AWP for example) or even eliminate a much more talented player on the other team (with a Nova at close for example). These few paragraphs are my thoughts on the vital concepts of weapon management in CS:GO.

If you’re not careful about how you spend your hard earned dollars at the start of each round you can severely hamstring yourself in future rounds

Budgeting and planning weapon purchases: Somewhat surprisingly, Counterstrike is also a game about personal budget planning. I say this jokingly but it is quite true. If you’re not careful about how you spend your hard earned dollars at the start of each round you can severely hamstring yourself in future rounds. This is where the concept of  “”saving”” comes in. Sometimes you and your teammates may decide to spend sparingly one round and just hope for the best (with the expectation that the other team will come out quite well geared) so that in the next round you can match their current loadout (instead of attempting to meet them halfway and failing despite having spent all your money). Generally, you want to be able to purchase body armor and a helmet so that you’re not quite as fragile as well as a decent gun or better (guns worth purchasing typically start at about 2250$). If you’re really doing well you can add on grenades to give yourself an advantage in firefights or things like a defuse kit should you find yourself at a bomb with very little time remaining on it. This equilibrium is disturbed in the first round of each half where you start with pistols and a base $800 as well as any match point scenario (where you are on the verge of losing) or if your team decides that you must stem the bleeding and go for broke in the hopes that you can turn the tables on your opponents. This mechanic adds yet more weight to your decisions in game because you can blow the bank and fully equip yourself and then foolishly die without making an impact. This means you’ve lost money that you could have used to recover from that death and have potentially gifted a prized weapon to the enemy team (high value weapons like the AWP and SCAR-20 are particularly sought after. The AK is also strangely beloved despite it’s relatively low price point (at $2700)).

Weapon pickups: This leads into the mechanic of being able to pick up a fallen ally or enemy’s weapons and grenades. Though this mechanic may be present in other games, it is especially potent and relevant in Counterstrike due to the fact that one cannot simply equip a weapon. They must purchase it first! This leads to moments of great joy when you are sorely in need of an actual weapon and have but a pistol to your name and happen to come across a corpse of a fallen friend that is no longer in need of its M4A1-S or somehow slay a better-equipped foe and gleefully seize his weapon. However, it can also lead to moments of sadness of anger when your time comes to an unexpected end and your opponent proceeds to use your weapon to kill you for the next three rounds.

Weapon recoil and the value of accuracy over weapon spraying:In most shooters you run into the issue of running out of ammunition if you’ve managed to stay alive for a few minutes. Strangely I have yet to run into this issue while playing CS: GO. There have a few occasions where I’ve picked up someone else’s weapon with little to no ammo remaining in it but I have yet to run out of ammo on my own. There are several reasons for this: extended firefights tend to be quite rare in CS:GO because one of you is probably going to die by the time you’ve had two exchanges of weapon fire (due to the fragile nature of your character), firing an un-silenced weapon for a sustained duration in the same area is just asking to get killed by someone flanking you or sneaking up from behind and, finally and most importantly, accuracy is highly valuable in Counterstrike due to the fact that you can instantly kill someone with a well placed shot when using many weapons but that accuracy is completely eliminated if you fire more then a few shots in a row with most weapons. The effect of weapon recoil on weapon accuracy leads to an interesting dynamic where it is better to attempt to carefully place your shots instead of spraying wildly when you see an enemy. The effect is so significant that you can pick off someone rushing towards you and firing full force if you calmly place a few shots into them as their bullets spray all around you. Initially this can be quite frustrating as you somehow manage to miss with every one of your twenty shots that you fired at point blank range but it starts to make more sense as you consider the dynamics of weapon recoil and how much depth it adds to the game. Accuracy is so important that many times you are better off stopping momentarily to improve your weapon accuracy and making yourself a more stationary target in the hopes that it will allow you to place those few necessary shots before your opponent can.

Accuracy is so important that many times you are better off stopping momentarily to improve your weapon accuracy and making yourself a more stationary target in the hopes that it will allow you to place those few necessary shots before your opponent can.

[responsive_slider]

[/responsive_slider]

That’s all for now. Have a pezant day!

Note: If you liked this article. Consider donating or installing this Chrome Extension I made that gives me credit for your Amazon purchases (by adding in my referral tag when you’re browsing Amazon).”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *