Thoughts on the new CS:GO Matchmaking Format, MR12

The Bo30 match format stood for the entire duration of CS:GO, which is more than 10 years. People got used to it and regarded it as the gold standard. But in recent years, it became apparent that a shorter format would probably work better from a showmanship point of view.

CS:GO matches, especially when overtime is included, can last for a very long time. In some cases, you get three maps of one hour each, with pauses in between. That can both tire an audience and delay whatever else needs to happen on the same day.

In the past, we saw at one point Blizzard Entertainment changing StarCraft 2 to eliminate those long mining minutes at the beginning of the game, where players had just several workers and needed to slowly increase the number by farming minerals.

The change allowed SC2 matches to get to the fun part a bit faster. Initially, many felt like the change was inappropriate because it changed all the timing and didn’t give the audience enough time to emotionally prepare for what was about to take place. But as time went on, everyone got used to the new way of doing things.

Good morning. Counter-Strike.

— CS2 (@CounterStrike) September 1, 2023

How does the MR12 format change things

The MR12 format simply means that instead of playing Bo30 matches, teams will play Bo24 matches with 12 rounds per half instead of 15. That should shorten the average match duration by 20%, which is enough to dramatically impact results.

What’s strange, however, is that in Counter-Strike, there are plenty of one-sided rounds in which one of the teams loses almost by default because they can’t afford to buy weapons. A shorter match format leaves less room for mistakes and makes the key rounds a lot more important.

Now, if you win the pistol round and likely the next two rounds as well, you’ll be at nearly 25% of the progress you need to complete the map. Winning two pistol rounds could and should easily give you a total of six round wins, which is roughly 50% of the struggle.

That’s not very good from a competitive standpoint because matches become too one-sided. What Valve should do if they want to go ahead with this format is to change the economy a little bit as well, so that the loser of the pistol round doesn’t fall behind so much.

Header: Valve