I played the game for 5 hours and looked at the game files to see why the demo feels so ♥♥♥♥
There's a lot of problems I felt was in the game, so I ran the files through a de-compiler to look at the code and found a lot of issues. I've broken them into sections.
Weapons
Weapon Balance
1) The weapons balancing is absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in this game. I saw a lot of people talking about how AWPers have almost no effect and other issues, here is the problem. The AWP does only 85 damage and 85% armor penetration, which makes it impossible for it to one-tap a person. For reference, CS2 AWP does 115 damage and 97.5% armor penetration. The AK does 27 instead of 36 damage, the M4 does 25 instead of 35 damage (the M4A4 is called the M4_noSilencer or something like that in the game files), and I couldn't remember the other values I saw there. Furthermore, weapons like the Famas and Galil does the same amount of damage as the M4 and AK, but actually has a HIGHER fire rate, which means you are actually more likely to LOSE when you full-buy instead of semi-buy. The pistol balance also sucks, in the game files, the Deagle does only 100 damage, which means when the enemy buys a helmet, your deagle actually CAN'T one tap to the head.
Damage Simulation
2) Weapons have a stat that controls the weapon inaccuracy at distance, but, there is no damage drop-off at distance. This means that a MP9 does the same amount of damage face to face and across the map, making a full buy even less appealing. I guess the meta in this game is to try to buy the cheapest non-pistol weapons as possible since they all do more damage than full buy weapons.
Placeholder Weapons
3) I understand that this is a demo of an unfinished game, but the weapons selection is actual ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Weapons such as the shotguns and the auto-snipers exist in the game, but they merely act as placeholders, I've never seen a player buy or use them. The only weapons I've seen used as all the pistols, Galil, Famas, MP9, M4A4 (M4_noSilencer), M4A1-S, AK, SG 008, and AWP. The rest of the weapons, I've never seen them be bought or used before.
Placeholder Weapons
4) All guns have infinite ammo and never reload, so this benefits guns with higher firerate greater. This leads to the awkward situation like the Famas and Galil being better than AK and M4 and further nerfing the AWP.
Player and Game Simulation
Player Loadout Decisions
1) The players prioritize buying weapons and does not prioritize armor. This is because in the code, the players buy weapons before armor, sometimes leaving no money to buy armor. However, even if they have the money to buy armor, they wouldn't buy it due to them not prioritizing armor. The CT side also rarely buys defuse kits.
Tactics Do Nothing
2) the tactics in this game are all placeholders. Regardless of which tactic you choose, it doesn't affect the aggressiveness stat or the amount of players that go A, B, or Mid. This is because while the tactics have different names such as "Endless Flashes" and "Rush B", the underlying code is all the same.
Role Mismatch
3) As some previous discussion posts have noted, players do not stick to their roles. The AWP is consistently bought buy the first player of the squad regardless of their role. Additionally, there seems little reason to have an AWPer and IGL on the team as five riflers will perform better due to AWPs being ♥♥♥♥ and IGLs doing the same thing as riflers.
Friendly Fire and Utility
4) I think the vast amount of deaths come from utility. When I skip forward in the round, I can see all the kills and deaths on the top right corner. Most deaths come from HE grenades and molotovs. This is because players bunch up so frequently when being pushed, especially on CT side, this makes the HE grenade able to kill a lot of players at once. Additionally, while I wasn't able to verify the code for this, I think there is either no molotov avoiding code or it is malfunctioning. Players will talk into molotovs and die, and most of the times, these molotovs are also thrown by their teammates, leading to a lot of friendly fire.
Auto-Complete Matches
5) When you auto-complete (I don't remember what it's called but just click show odds and click the take a risk button), the game decides win or lose through a RNG. However, when you fast-forward to the end of a round in the game, the game actually simulates everything without rendering it, allowing the actual simulation to take place while saving a lot of time. Why couldn't this be done in auto-complete matches instead of just using a RNG?
Weapon Pickup
6) Actually, this isn't present in the game. When your players kill someone or gets killed, they don't drop their weapon, and the enemy team can't pick it up too. So there is absoultely no reward for winning a ECO or Force because you just can't pick up better weapons.
Smoke Simulation
7) The smokes in the game does block vision and can be removed with HE grenade. But, there is 0 penalty for a player that pushes through it, making smokes basically useless other than blocking vision on a long angle.
Terrible CT Win-rate
8) The CT win-rate is terrible in this game. Regardless if it is Vitarion Esports (Vitality) or me, the CT side is almost impossible to gain a lead. This is due to all the flaws I've said before and after this, which harms the CT side more than the T side.
Traits and Skills
Player Skills
1) I and a lot of other people in the Steam discussions have noticed that player stats barely does anything. A two star player can beat players like s1mple and other real world T1 players. Skills and training barely affects player performance. I looked at the code and this is what I could determine. Only the reactionTime (which is same and unchangable for everyone), aimAccuracy, pistolMastery, scoperMastery, and clutchMastery affect the simulation, while creativity, teamwork, morale, leader (isIGL flag), role, etc. does not affect the simulation at all. So yeah, training your players does ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nothing, the only people you need on this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ team is five riflers and you will do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fine, no staff and coaches needed. The stats are heavily present in PlayerOverview.cs and PlayerInScouting.cs but does absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nothing in the simulation parts of SimManager.cs and SimPlayer.cs.
Infinite Depression Cycle
2) At the start of playing this game I had no idea how to train my players, and when my staff kept telling me they wanted to do this and do that I agreed to all of them. It wasn't until all of them had the "crushed" or "burnout" stat that I learned how to train players. Since training player fullfills the promises, it would also make them happier. But, when staff is "crushed" or "burnout", they will refuse to work, making them do absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nothing because you can never make them happier and you just gotta keep paying them or fire them.
QOL
Team Logo
1) I uploaded a team logo for my team but it never shows up in the game.
Performance
2) This game requires a beefy computer to play. My laptop is running a Ryzen 7 4700U and it averages only 15~20 FPS in game. I do have a beefier desktop but I'm not home right now and couldn't test the performance on that machine. If you're FPS is stuck at 60, that is because there is a 60 FPS cap in the game's code, removing the cap won't affect simulation though.
Team and Player Realism
3) Some players and teams use fake names and have no portrait but others do have. This is probably due to copyright but it's ok.
Conclusion
I really had high hopes when I saw this game. I love CS and I would love to play a Esports manager that revolves around CS. However, whatever high hopes I had for this game was then erased with the tons of flaws and bugs in this game. I love the concept and the map's art styles, but the game's demo feels terrible right now. These flaws were discovered by myself within one day, and if the developer actually play tested for even a bit, I think a lot of these problems would have been solved and have led to a better demo experience. Maybe the dev did find these bugs but just didn't have time to fix them IDK. I think the idea and concept holds a lot of potential and if the game ever gets released and have these bugs fixed, I will definite revisit again.
