Follow Up | Top Plays in CSGO History

In my previous post, I included a video which contained some of the top moments in the history of CSGO and opened up the comments to all of you. This week, I want to address some of these comments and give my own personal opinion on the video.

Without a doubt, Counter-Strike is a game that requires insane skill, reaction times and dedication in order to compete at a high level. In regards to Tyler's comment, I was also surprised when I first realized that some of these CS teams are part of organizations which also field teams for other games.

To answer my own questions that I asked last week, I feel that this video contains key impact plays in CSGO history. In fact, off the top of my head, I am unable to think of any others that I would have added to this video. Since this video contains so many extraordinary play, I had a hard time picking a favorite, so I narrowed it down to two. First, is Happy's Deagle ace which can be found at time-stamp 1:11. This play is absolutely insane and while it incorporated a ton of luck, the amount of skill and confidence displayed by Happy shows why he is one of the top professionals in the scene. The second is the play from Snax at time-stamp 0:44. Patience is something I struggle with in CS and this clip is an excellent example of how it can pay off.

With all of this Global Offensive talk, we cant forget about the roots of this game. Counter-Strike 1.6 and Source were massive games during their time, and provided moments on par, if not better, than the video I included in my last post. So with that being said, I hope you enjoy these videos highlighting the old-school days of CS.

Counter-Strike 1.6 

Counter-Strike: Source 

Top Plays in CSGO History

A little over three years have passed since the release of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Since then, there have been some unforgettable plays that have surfaced from the professional scene. I recently came across this video, and felt that it did a great job of highlighting some of the best moments of CSGO.

I would love to hear your thoughts on these plays. Are there any that were missed? Which one was your favorite? Please feel free to leave a comment below.

Dreamhack Open 2015 | Cluj-Napoca

In case you weren't aware, the most recent CSGO major tournament just finished up this past Sunday. Disappointed with their second place finish at the previous major (ESL One Cologne 2015), the French team EnVyUs came out on top this time around. If you are unfamiliar with CSGO majors, let me fill you in.

A major is the top level of tournament offered to Counter-Strike players. They are officially sponsored by Valve and offer massive prize pools. The top 16 teams in the world competed at Dreamhack Cluj-Napoca. 8 of those teams came in as "legends" meaning that they placed in the top 8 at the previous major. The remaining 8 "challenger" teams had to go through a vigorous series of online and offline qualifiers to gain a spot at the major. Here are the 16 teams which attended Dreamhack Cluj-Napoca:

Each team is placed into one of four groups which consist of two legends and two challengers. From these groups, the group stage rounds are played. Here is the aftermath:

Once the group stage is complete, only 8 teams remain. It is not much of a surprise, but the 8 legends are the 8 teams who made it through the group stage. Each match up after the group stage is played in a BO3 (best of 3) format. Here are the results:

Once again, a North American team has failed to make it into the top 8, not to mention the top 4. There are three native NA teams that attended this major. Counter Logic Gaming, Team Liquid and Cloud9. This really begins to raise some questions regarding the NA Counter-Strike scene. Why are these teams under performing? Or are they just not on the same skill level as top tier European teams? Some people argue that these NA teams should relocate to EU in order to have access to better top tier competition. While I do not think that this is the best answer, I also am unsure as to how NA teams can improve their major results. Feel free to leave some comments voicing your opinion on this matter!

Setting up a Configuration File

When playing Counter-Strike competitively, it is crucial that you are using a proper configuration file. Below, you will find a link to the configuration that I currently use in-game. This configuration was put together by my team after extensive research and through trial and error. Within the config, you will find comments explaining what most of the commands do. You can ignore the section that talks about setting up game launch settings. That will be discussed in an upcoming post.

Config

The next step is to actually "apply" this config. You can set it up so the config automatically executes, but I actually prefer to manually execute it each time. If you wish to use an autoexec, search for "autoexec csgo" and you will see a ton of guides that will tell you how to set it up. First, you are going to want to create a new text document in notepad or notepad++. Copy and past the entire config, which I linked above, into this document. You can name the config anything you want, but mine is called tobin.cfg after the player on my team who put the most work into setting up the config. Be sure to throw on the extension .cfg so CSGO recognizes it as a configuration file. I'm sure you are wondering where you save this file to. You're going to want to navigate to your CSGO cfg folder. Typically, you will find it located here:

          E:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo\cfg

After you save the file, right click on it and set it to read only so the game will not overwrite your settings. After launching your game, open up the console by hitting "~". You should have enabled your console if you followed my guide on setting up your in-game settings. After opening the console, type exec configname and press enter. Of course, configname should be replaced with whatever you named your config. If you left the config unaltered, you should see a little graphic once it executes. 

And there you go! You have set up a competitive config file for CSGO. If you have any questions, concerns or possible improvements regarding this config, please let me know by posting a comment on the config page that I linked above.

Recommended In-Game Settings

So you have finally made the decision that competitive Counter-Strike is right for you. If you're like me and have a super competitive mindset, I'm sure you want to do everything possible to gain an advantage. As they say, practice makes perfect, but that doesn't mean there aren't other measure you can take to improve your game. The time you spend properly setting up your game for competitive play will be well worth your time.

Everyone has their own theories regarding the best in-game settings for competitive play. Below, are my own personal settings that I have found work best for me.


Keyboard / Mouse
 

There are 3 main options that you want to focus on here. First is Mouse Acceleration which needs to be Off. Playing with it on will give you very inconsistent mouse movement. The second options is Raw Input which you should play around with. I prefer how the game feels with it on, but as mentioned before, everyone is different. Lastly, is your Mouse Sensitivity. Again, this takes a lot of playing around with, but once you find something you're comfortable with, stick with it! There are plenty of guides on how to find your ideal mouse sensitivity, so I will not get into that. 

Game Settings

Everything in this screen capture is really dependent on personal preference. With that being said, I would highly recommend setting Max Acceptable Matchmaking Ping to 50 and enabling the developer console. The latter will be handy in an upcoming article. I will also discuss crosshairs in that same article.

For these settings, I highly recommend keeping Switch Weapon on Pick Up set to No. Setting it to yes will only cause you trouble, especially during a high pressure situation. I also suggest using my Radar Options as a starting point for changing them to your liking. 

Video Settings

 

I want to start off by saying yes, you might be able to run this game with higher video settings. Does that mean you should? If you are playing at a competitive level, no. These options are ideally set for optimal competitive play. Increased visibility, no AA or V-Sync which give you no benefit competitively. There are only two reasons to not use these settings the first of which is because your computer cannot handle the game with them. In that case, play around with dropping some of these options. The second reason is monitor limitations. Regardless, you should set your resolution as high as possible unless you encounter frame rate issues. And please, if your monitors native aspect ratio is 16:9, do not play with 4:3 stretched or 4:3 black bars. CSGO is not 1.6 or Source so you gain no advantages. The only reason why you will see professional players playing with a 4:3 resolution is because they have been playing with that resolution for 10+ years and have grown accustom to it.

Audio Settings    

Audio settings are pretty self explanitory. Some key things to note are Master Volume, Speaker Configuration and Master Music Volume. As you can tell, my Master Volume is set to .9 instead of 1. This helps compensate for slight distortion that you may experience if it were set to 1. Speaker Configuration should be on Headphones because lets be honest, why on earth would you play competitive Counter-Strike with speakers? Finally, Master Music Volume. Youve made it this far, so you want to start playing competitive CS right? In that case, you don't need in-game music. It adds nothing in regards to competitive advantage.

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Hopefully you found this guide helpful and learned a thing or two while reading through it. My next article will show you how to properly set up a complete config file. This will allow you to tweak your game settings in ways that you could never accomplish with in-game settings.

Competitive Play: Where to Start

So, you want to start playing CSGO competitively, but you have no idea where to start. First off, thanks to Valves newly implemented rank system, you now have to reach at least level 3 in order to gain access to the Community Competitive Matchmaking system. If you have yet to reach level 3, your best bet is to buckle up and grind your way by playing Valve Deathmatches and other various casual game modes. Try to focus most of your time on deathmatches because they will greatly help with your aim and out of all of the casual game types, this is the one skill that you can build up that will help you down the line. 

Once you are able to play Competitive Matchmaking, I would recommend playing a game or two to help you understand the basic premise of the game. Fair warning though, be prepared to be talked down to and made fun of for your lack of skill and game sense. While it wont always happen, that is unfortunately how this community is at times. Power through it, it'll will be worth it in the end, trust me. 

After playing a few games of Matchmaking, begin to learn the most popular competitve maps. These maps include:

• Cache
• Cobblestone
• Dust II
• Inferno
• Mirage
• Nuke
• Overpass
• Train 

Learn them well because game sense and map position are two of the most important factors when it comes to playing at a competitive level. After you do all of the above, be sure to check back for more ways to help you get a jump start in competitive play.

 

Welcome!

Hi there! Welcome to Counter-Strike Compendium. Within these pages, you will come across anything and everything related to Counter-Strike. At the time of this post, I have been a part of the Counter-Strike for close to 8 years and decided to finally share my knowledge to help other players, old and new alike, improve their game. I will be posting various tips and tricks that I have learned throughout the years. Additionally, I will be posting the most up to date Counter-Strike news so you are aware of what is going on in our great community.