Secrets of success: Counterstrike (pt. 2)

An in-depth look at what makes Counterstrike accessible to new players.

Accessibility

For developers, ensuring that your game is accessible to new players is critical.

Now, there are a lot of ways in which a game can be made more accessible; however, not all accessibility features are created equal, and I do believe some developers take things too far.

For example, I’m not a huge fan of tutorials, difficulty settings, on-screen navigation cues, etc. To me, games need to be easy to learn and shouldn’t require any extensive handholding—I’d rather learn through actually playing the game as opposed to someone or something telling me what to do.

In addition to being easy-to-learn, games should also take steps to manage the skill gap so that new players always feel like they have a fighting chance against opponents of greater skill and/or experience.

This fighting chance may literally just be a feeling, but so long as it’s there, players should stick around even if they’re losing.

And when it comes to accessibility, I believe Counterstrike gets several things right, including its simplistic movement scheme, easy-to-understand game modes, and more.

So, let’s take a closer look at everything that makes Counterstrike newbie-friendly to see what we can learn.

Ready?

Let’s get to it!

Movement

Compared to its 1999 counterparts, Counterstrike had (and still has) an easy-to-understand movement scheme, which is important for onboarding new players and preventing them from feeling overwhelmed.

Indeed, part of the reason why old-school arena shooters like Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Quake, Doom, and Unreal Tournament failed to capture a wider audience is their unintuitive and difficult-to-learn movement mechanics.

Granted, having a complex movement scheme isn’t necessarily a big deal when the game is new, but over time, advanced movement mechanics widen the skill gap to such a degree that the game is no longer fun to play for inexperienced players.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal if new players could figure out how to execute advanced movement mechanics like bunny hopping or strafe jumping on their own, but unless you have a coach or watch an extensive amount of YouTube, most players will find learning these techniques extremely frustrating.

Counterstrike, on the other hand, is a much slower-paced game and there are only a handful of movement mechanics to master. Indeed, there’s no sprint mechanic; there are no character-specific abilities, and although you can sort of bunny hop, the situations in which you can use this mechanic are limited.

This makes Counterstrike much easier to newcomers to play and allows them to focus on what really matters: hitting their shots and coordinating with their teammates.

This isn’t to say that all first-person shooters need to be slow and tactical like Counterstrike, but movement schemes in general need to be easily understood from the get-go.

Trust me, I love movement-focused shooters, and I wish more players were willing to take the time to learn games like Quake and the like, but I also understand it’s not a great experience for new players when some bunny-hopping nerd zooms past them at a 100 mph while nailing them in the face with a rocket.

Now, I know some of you might be thinking to yourself, hold on a second, what about games like Apex Legends and Warzone? Both games have relatively advanced movement mechanics and they’re still widely popular, so what gives?

Apex Legends has a few advanced movement mechanics, but success in Apex Legends doesn’t heavily depend on them: coordinating with your teammates and hitting your shots is still way more important than wall jumping, bunny hopping, or using character abilities to get yourself out of sticky situations.  

And the same goes for Warzone: sure, slide canceling was an important technique if you wanted to play aggressively, but playing the game at a slower pace was also viable, especially if you were working with your teammates to hold corners and set traps.

Granted, there was a point when the movement in Warzone went too far (Caldera-era), and when this occurred, players started to drop off due to the skill gap becoming too large.

The hilarious part of all this is that, when Warzone 2 came out, the developers decided to simplify the movement, which according to everything I’ve said thus far, you’d think that Warzone 2 would be a huge hit.

Unfortunately, when you couple slow movement with an extremely low time-to-kill (TTK) and an awful net code, you end up with an extremely punishing experience, but that’s another topic for another day.

The point is that movement in games like Quake or Team Fortress Classic isn’t optional if you want to be competitive: you need to know how to strafe jump if you want to succeed in a duel or a round of capture the flag because everything is extremely time sensitive, and you need to get to your spots ASAP.  

As such, if you want your game to be successful, don’t overdo it with the movement, and if you want to include a few advanced movement mechanics, they can’t be difficult for new players to figure out on their own.

Objective

For the most part, figuring out the win conditions of a round of Counterstrike is pretty straightforward: to win, you either need to kill every player on the enemy team, plant or defuse the bomb, or rescue the hostages.

Granted, it may take a few rounds to grasp the intricacies of these conditions fully, but overall, that’s really all there is to it.

Keeping the win conditions simple is important for onboarding new players because if they don’t know how to win, then there’s a good chance that they won’t have fun playing your game.

Additionally, it’s important for players to be funneled toward the objective; otherwise, players might get distracted and start doing their own thing.

Now, there isn’t anything wrong with players wanting to do their own thing—some of my best experiences playing first-person shooters came when everyone was just hanging out and creating their own personal win conditions, like out sniping another player on an opposing team’s battlements.

However, these experiences primarily occurred on private dedicated servers, so playing the objective wasn’t a priority.

That said, this kind of experience isn’t for everyone: some players need and want to be told what to do, which is why I believe Counterstrike has been so successful: it caters to both audiences—those who want a streamlined, objective-based experience, and those who want to simply hang out on a private dedicated server and joke around with their friends.

So, how does Counterstrike funnel players toward the objective?

Well, Counterstrike is round-based, and each round only lasts for about 2 minutes.  

This forces players to at least contend with the idea of completing the objective and leaves little room for shenanigans.

And if players don’t play the objective and decide to fool around, there’s a good chance they’ll end up dead and watching from the sidelines until the round ends.

It’s a punishing dynamic, but it works.

Indeed, if you want to stay alive and win the round, your best shot is to work with your teammates and play the objective.

Headshots

Although headshots may seem like an odd thing to include under accessibility, ask yourself: do headshots make Counterstrike easier or harder to play?

If your answer is both, then I think we’re on the same page.

However, if you don’t think headshots make Counterstrike easier to play, consider what Counterstrike would be like without them: the time-to-kill (TTK) would be much higher, which means securing kills would be harder and aiming would be even more important than it is now.  

This all might sound counterintuitive but think about it: without headshots, players can’t score kills or deal bonus damage with a single bullet, which means players will need to land more shots with a greater degree of accuracy to get the kill.

This isn’t to say that headshots decrease the skill ceiling, on the contrary, mastering the headshot mechanic is extremely difficult and takes a long time to perfect.

However, as all Counterstrike players can attest, not all headshots are intentional, and getting a random headshot isn’t exactly difficult—you just point your crosshair in the vicinity of your opponent’s head and hold Mouse 1 until you run out of bullets.

Back in my day, we used to call this tactic “spray and pray”, and while its effectiveness isn’t great, it still got us through a lot of sticky situations. However, if there are no headshots, then your prayers will go unanswered.

As such, I believe Headshots make Counterstrike more accessible since they allow inexperienced players to score kills fast, even if it’s by accident.

The ability to score kills quickly is also an excellent tool for leveling the playing field.

Indeed, headshots allow players who are at a health disadvantage to deal enough bonus damage to give them a fighting chance. If headshots weren’t in the game of Counterstrike, then players would have to rely on a utility item, like a grenade, to make up the damage, which to me, isn’t as intuitive as shooting your gun and requires a greater degree of hand dexterity.

Remember, I’m talking about new players, and new players don’t have the muscle memory and or the hand dexterity to quickly switch to their utility item on the fly.

Private dedicated servers

The last thing I want to include under accessibility is a little something called private dedicated servers.

I don’t want to dive into too many details here, but if you’re curious, you can find a longer discussion on this topic here.

In short, private dedicated servers allow players to experience the game on their own terms.

Without private dedicated servers, players would have to rely on Counterstrike’s official matchmaking systems, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not as interesting or fun as what can be achieved on dedicated private servers.

For example, for players who want to dial in their aim, private dedicated servers allow players to set up their own practice arenas where players can respawn and change their equipment on a whim.  

This provides inexperienced players with a carefree way to practice their aim against other humans, and what’s more, many of these servers become a place to hang out and chill for people who not only want to practice their aim but also goof around.

You see, games like Valorant might have their own practice servers, however, they’re not persistent.

Instead, Valorant kicks players out of the server once the round ends and sends them back to the matchmaking queue.

For many of us, this isn’t as fun as hanging out in a dedicated server.

Why?

If I’m jiving with the people on the server, I might want to stay. And what’s more, if the server is always available, I can come back and maybe play with the same group of players.

As such, I believe private dedicated servers are an essential accessibility feature for new players to not only practice their aim but also ingratiate themselves within the community, which should help them stay engaged for the long haul.

That’s it for part 2, stay tuned for 3!