CS2 matches in casual and professional environments are being played a lot faster after Valve reduced the amount of rounds from 30 to 24 in regulation towards the end of the beta.
Professional players have been very vocal about their distaste for this new format, which is called MR12. The format was previously used in Counter-Strike: 1.6, and is most notably used in VALORANT nowadays. Instead of pushing for MR12, however, Valve could have looked at the beginning of CS:GO if it wanted to make CS2 matches shorter and keep the MR15 format with just some minor tweaks.
Professional CS:GO matches prior to August 2015—when Valve increased the round timer from 1:45 to 1:55 and the C4 timer from 35 seconds to 40 seconds—lasted around 45 minutes in the professional scene. This is less time than games are taking under the MR12 format and would be a much less drastic change for pros.
There are plenty of reasons for pros to dislike MR12. The number one factor is that it’s obviously hard to make a comeback in the second half if you had a rough first half, as there are fewer rounds left to be played.
The second factor is that Valve didn’t make any changes to the game’s economy whatsoever after implementing MR12. CS2‘s economy works in the same way as CS:GO did, but the latter had more rounds to be played.
When MR12 was implemented in CS2, Valve explained that the game’s economy was already in a good state for games to be resolved with fewer rounds and argued that shorter matches mean casuals can play “more, and more often.” But this has already been contested by many pros, including FaZe Clan’s superstar ropz.
It’s looking unlikely, at least for now, that Valve will revert CS2 back to MR15 and ditch MR12 once and for all. But, if the developer is willing to listen to the feedback from the pros, it could set the round timer and C4 timer just like it was in the early days of CS:GO.
