As expected, Valve’s CS mapmaking community support efforts continue today with another $5.99 ticket. Buy one, and you’ll be ushered through the doors of official matchmade, low-ping dedicated servers for eight top-voted community maps. All eight are playable in Casual, Deathmatch and Competitive modes until January 20, and their authors will all get to stick a hand in the pot of money they generate.
Less expected are the 15 map-themed weapon finishes to match, and a brand new thing: the Operation Bravo Coin.
The Coin isn’t a real coin, but one of those flat ones that appears on your computer screen. It’s upgradable through playtime and wins, and shows up wherever your avatar does. The Coin also plays a secondary role as a Bravo-specific scorecard: click on it, and you’ll find a complete record of your competitive match stats over the course of the Operation.
The effect of that, I suppose, is to have Bravo feel more like an Event. Which is nice: perhaps CS hasn’t been getting enough of those lately.
Seven of the maps are new to competitive mode – Puddy and Rick’s Agency, Squad’s Ali, FMPONE, Volcano and penE’s Cache, Skybex’s Chinatown, FMPONE and Kikette’s Gwalior, 3Dnj and Moroes’ Siege and 3Dnj’s Ruins. The eighth is Seaside, previously featured in Operation Payback. If you’ve bought a pass, you can invite non-pass wielding friends to play on any of them.
The weapon finishes will pop up as timed drops on both Bravo and non-Bravo maps for pass-holders. And those same pass-holders will have a much better chance of finding separate Bravo case drops before the end of January.
That’s about it! Buy a thing, get some other nice things, support some nice people. Do you think you will?