Steven R. May 19, 2019
The professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community does not like Vertigo one bit.
MiBR's Fernando "fer" Alvarenga took to Twitter earlier this week and publicly blasted the map. That kicked off a tidal wave of venting from top CS:GO players.
“Btw this Vertigo map is worse than shit. It’s so ugly to watch and even more stupid to play,” fer said.
Team Vitality’s Dan "apEX" Madesclaire agreed.
“Retake A this round. Next round? Retake A. Hm, next? Retake A, maybe," apEX said.
It isn’t just the teams struggling on Vertigo who dislike the map, either. Jake “Stewie2k” Yip plugged a recent highlight on the map, but also labeled the map “AIDS” in the same tweet.
Discussion over the map isn’t particularly new, but the fact it hasn’t died down to this point is somewhat surprising.
Vertigo was added to the professional CS:GO map rotation in a shock move in March, just days after being added to the game's competitive mode. The move was inevitably going to receive some pushback due to it replacing more popular map Cache, but pro players immediately questioned the map’s legitimacy in high-level play. Valve seemingly agreed, which led to four rounds of changes to the map's design in its first month of existence.
Tournament organizers ignored the switch and kept Cache available for selection in the weeks immediately after the move, but Vertigo is becoming the standard at more and more events as time passes. That has pro players getting the full measure of the map, and they're finding it wanting on multiple fronts.
As apEX alluded to, the trouble with Vertigo as it stands right now is how lopsided the map is towards the T side due the setup of the A bombsite. A few well-placed molotovs and smokes cuts the site off entirely for the CT side and allows the bomb to be planted with minimal risk. Even heavy stacks on the site often fail to hold back rushes, which makes most games on Vertigo take place within just a small slice of the overall map.
To top it all off, Vertigo also frequently has players walking over and under each other on different levels of elevation, similar to Nuke. Some pro players have griped that CS:GO’s audio doesn’t handle verticality well, compounding Vertigo’s troubles.
What comes next for the map is unclear. The A bombsite needs an overhaul to offer the CT side more angles to work with. That said, Vertigo may simply be a transitional level as Cache undergoes a heavy retooling. Depending on Valve’s commitment to the map, it's possible more outrage from top players might force it back out of the rotation entirely.