Less than a day after introducing the new Animgraph 2 animation framework to the live servers of CS2, Valve has shipped yet another major update to the shooter, bringing some much-needed updates to weapon recoil and aim punch that the community has been requesting for years.
For the uninitiated, after several weeks of beta testing in the “animgraph_2_beta” build, the Animgraph 2 update officially went live yesterday. The new framework saw all third-person animations in the game getting reworked, resulting in much smoother and more accurate animations alongside a surge in client FPS for most players.
Now, it seems that Valve is tackling even more issues that have been plaguing CS2 since its release. In an April 22 update, the CS2 devs improved the camera motion due to weapon recoil to match CS:GO more closely. Bullet trajectories for each weapon still remain unchanged, but overall screen shake when spraying has been reduced.
Additionally, Valve has reworked aim punch when players take damage. Moving forward, armored players will notice the aim punch (albeit to a significantly lesser extent than those without armor) when they’re shot.
As per the official patch notes, players will experience the full camera motion due to external sources of aim punch (e.g. getting shot) regardless of network latency. The effects of aim punch on bullet trajectories are still applied immediately on the server.
Armory Update
Alongside the gameplay changes, Valve has confirmed that several skin and sticker collections will be departing the CS2 Armory in the near future.
While the Armory changes aren’t explicitly detailed in the patch notes, the official CS2 X handle announced that the following collections are getting removed from the Armory soon:
- Train 2025 Collection
- Sport & Field Collection
- Sugarface 2 stickers
- Elemental Craft stickers
The last time Valve announced Armory removals, the Gallery Case, Graphic Collection, and Character Craft Stickers were flagged for removal on September 10th, with the actual removal taking place on October 1st. That gave players three weeks to stock up on the cosmetics before they were gone for good.
CS2 April 22 Patch Notes
Below, we have listed the official patch notes for the April 22 CS2 update, as announced by Valve:
[ GAMEPLAY ]
- Adjusted camera motion due to recoil to match CS:GO more closely. Bullet trajectories should continue to match CS2.
- Players will now experience the full camera motion due to external sources of aim punch (e.g. getting shot) regardless of network latency. The effects of aim punch on bullet trajectories are still applied immediately on the server.
[ ANIMGRAPH 2 ]
- Minor adjustments to viewmodel animations.
- Fixed several cases where crouch transitions in the air were instantaneous.
- Fixed a bug where MVP panel characters weren’t resetting correctly.
