CS-Nation

Covering the future of Counter-Strike
insurgency mod
Spawn Protection - Rather, the complete lack of spawn protection. With it quite easy for the enemy to venture into any of the spawn areas, you would hope that the mod team had the foresight to include some sort of spawn protection. Nothing kills the game faster than spawning only to die instantly from one or two guys sitting there with a machine gun. Further protections will also work against those who find it simply hilarious to team attack or team kill right from the start.

Obscure Objectives - They're right there on the loading screen. How many of you knew about them? Probably not many, and those that do know about them probably can't always find them once in game. You will occasionally see faint markers indicating an objective, but they're too faint. Squad leaders are supposed to place waypoints, but they usually do not. That is because pubbers (and I'm one of them, I'll admit) will usually not want to perform the micromanagement aspects of the game, they just want to shoot things until they die.


Obviously, this aspect tries to borrow from games like the Battlefield series. While this is great for the large scale maps common in that series, these are small, often close-quarters environments. Give us a map. If not a map, then make the way points more apparent both in our view and on our hud. Look at the picture here. Would you have any idea that right in front of me on this road is an objective I'm supposed to capture? Taking out the commander aspect may be a bit drastic, but perhaps a change in how it is handled is in order.

Having the commander emphasize a waypoint on each squad member's hud may be a viable option. Highlight a waypoint in a subtle "glow" effect that tells the player "we need you here more" might be something. Really, this is just a personal thought on the matter.

Random - Furniture physics objects indoors with little to no light? Not the best of ideas. It certainly disrupts the flow of the game when you go to look out a window and realize you can't simply because you couldn't see a chair or a table right next to you.


Do you see these steps? You'd think they go somewhere, but they don't. In fact, you can't even walk up them. These steps are in the spawn area for the U.S. Forces. Either remove them, or allow the player to walk up them and just have a door at the top that cannot be opened or something. I already know I'm in an arena type of setting, I just don't need to be further removed from the realism factor by being stopped by an invisible wall.

Seeing that reinforcements have been depleted is quite disheartening. Once they're gone and you die, your fun becomes a huge waiting game. I've seen a number of people just disconnect once this occurs in a round, while others opt to switch to the other side for some point stacking, and with there being an integrated ranking system (also much like Battlefield 2), stat whoring is already beginning to become apparent.

There are also a few exploits in the mod. Server crashing exploits that were patched in games like CS: Source back in mid-2006. Also, and again, this one might just be on my end, but why does this happen during a map change?

Make the crouch an option you can toggle to either "hold c to crouch" or "press c to crouch and stay crouched until you hit c again." When you're on the streets, chances are, if you aren't sprinting between cover points, you'll be crouching down behind some cover. You don't want to have to constantly hold down a button to do this.

The smoke grenades just disappear just a second after the smoke begins to appear. The smoke doesn't even make an effort to come from the grenade either, it just appears. It seems to be taking after CS: Source in this regard.

So you chose the support class and you've deployed your bi-pod on the ground or another surface. Why is it that you can quite freely look and move your weapon? Often times, the bi-pod will leave the surface you deployed it on but you are still benefiting from the more steady aim. Restrict the view freedom a LOT when you have deployed your bi-pod. Yes, you have some movement restrictions in place, but it doesn't much matter with the amount of freedom you've given the player. Bi-pod = keeping the weapon steady and near stationary while deployed.

One last thing that comes to mind is that the kill notices and chat area are in the same location on your screen. You'll often ignore the text that says "BingleDerry was KIA", and in the process you'll miss the notice from your squad leader that 5 enemies are converging on your location. Seperate these two or remove the "KIA" notices completely. They are far more distracting than they are useful.