Map Pool

The most played map was Ancient at 333 and Nuke close behind with 328. These two maps have a major impact on the scene. I've always enjoyed these maps because of how entertaining the matches can be. The map played the least was Overpass but was also taken out of the pool for Dust 2 early in the year with the last match taking place on May 10th.

Dust 2 is a classic CS map from the beginning of the franchise with a straightforward Four-Leaf Clover Design. Overpass is notorious for longer matches because the design supports a staggering approach to attacking a bombsite, rather than the fast-paced flash-n-go like Dust 2. Vertigo isn’t far behind in the pick rate, even though it was a map that updated with CS2. If you put the pick rate of Dust 2 and Overpass together, Vertigo would be in last place by 70 picks.

I believe this is strongly indicative of the negative sentiment held by the community over Vertigo's persistent updates and inclusion in the competitive map pool. The rate of picks for Overpass over Vertigo at the beginning of the year shows that Overpass is more comfortable for teams. The design of Overpass is also asymmetrical and provides unique level interactions like Vertigo does.

Train was recently introduced to the game and has seen positive feedback for the design and visuals. The new Train design is replacing Vertigo in the map pool for 2025, which was my first conclusion from the data. Inferno is another candidate even though its history is longer than Vertigo but the map strategy has been exhausted. The negative sentiments prevail for the narrow hallways and bombsite rotations, making a majority of rounds harder to prevent snowballing in the economy. I would suggest removing Inferno from the Map Pool too, given that the data supports the changes and with Train replacing Vertigo already at the beginning of the year. Overpass could be re-introduced to the pool but other beautiful maps are in the works right now and could have a better potential to fill that role, like Cache, Cobblestone, and Thera.