What the new CS2 recoil update means for players

Counter-Strike players are excited about developers at Valve making needed adjustments to CS2 recoil after listening to one particularly ambitious player who provided detailed feedback and performed research to show what exactly could be improved.

Valve’s Counter-Strike 2 is one of the world’s most popular games, with more than a million players often in the game together at any given time. CS2 recently saw another surge in players that broke Steam’s all-time player count record. The game’s fans are loyal and often provide constructive criticism to Valve so the developer can continue to improve the game.

One player in particular painstakingly researched and compared CS2’s erratic viewing angle behavior due to weapon recoil to the seemingly more stable view angle of CSGO. The user shared their extensive feedback on social media for players and Valve to review. Valve apparently decided the feedback was sufficient as the developer quickly released a new CS2 patch addressing the issue directly. The patch has only one featuring change, making recoil recovery smoother visually by implementing the aforementioned research.

CS2 recoil now calculated per frame

Valve apparently used the user’s data to make recoil visually smoother by rendering view angle adjustments and calculating it per frame.

The player had specified that the view angle values they shared in a graph may appear similar between both CS2 and CSGO, but that wasn’t the case in practice. They shared a table that directly displayed the differences between the two games. The values showed that the recoil behavior is significantly different in real terms, and that CS2’s streak values are massively inconsistent compared to CSGO.

The user explained the reason for the recoil feeling “off” for many players in CS2 after highlighting the data and the differences between Counter-Strike 2 and CSGO. It was apparently due to how players would experience recoil in-game, as CSGO had a steady amount upfront and then a staircase-like drop after firing a weapon. The drop was linear, which is visible in the data and makes the action feel smooth within the game. In stark contrast, the drop was wildly inconsistent when firing a weapon in CS2. This is why the recoil could feel shaky and not as smooth as it should be for veteran players.

Valve released a new CS2 patch less than a month after the user posted their findings publicly. The new patch makes it so that recoil is calculated per frame. Many players who have tested the change claim they have noticed a significant difference and that recoil now feels much smoother. Fans have appreciated the developer’s commitment to bettering the game by listening to players’ feedback.