Most of us are still out of the office this week for the holiday break, so we're doing something a little different this week in Triggernometry. I'm streaming CS:GO for an hour or two on our Twitch channel, and after that I'll continue to stream Team Fortress 2 on our community server. Come play! 

How to join us for TF2 at 1 PM PST:

1. Join the PC Gamer Steam group
2. Look for a server announcement at 1 PM PST
3. Join!

Our server's on the West Coast of the USA, in San Jose, CA, so keep that in mind if you're joining from a faraway land. Hope you're having a nice end of the year.

In what comes as a nice Christmas present for any Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players who don't engage in nefarious deeds - or cheating, if you will - it's being claimed a huge amount of those falling on the naughty side of the fence have been banned.

The claims come from the Global Offensive community on Reddit, where estimates put the number of banned cheaters at around 1,600 - and that's a conservative guess. That's a lot of banhammers dropping through the Valve Anti-Cheat System.

The new detection abilities of VAC means more than 16 cheat-selling sites can be detected, and anyone caught using their hacks and the like risks being kicked, banned and losing everything.

Well, everything in Counter-Strike: GO. Probably not everything in real life. But they also lose the money they've put down on the cheats, so there's that.

Anyway, head over to the Reddit thread and join in the celebrations. Unless you've been banned, in which case probably just enjoy your lump of coal this year, you naughty types you.

Experienced players know the importance of fighting quietly in Counter-Strike. You're slower when you walk, but a single footstep or over-cautious reload can give away your position and intentions. I took a moment to talk over a quick eco round where I found success by taking advantage of my opponents' inability to hear over the sound of their own gunfire.

There isn t enough poetry being written about guns. Not literal limericks or sonnets (that would be creepy), but words that dig into and capture what makes one game s AK-47 more fun than another s.

Weapon feel continues to be the nebulous catch-all for the nuances that make guns fun. Most of the reviews of shooters I read offer the same praise: guns feel great or feel really powerful. If the writer s being generous, they ll use a word like punchy to describe an SMG. I ve been guilty of this too during my six-year term at PC Gamer.

Months of work goes into designing, animating, and balancing the things that put the S in FPS, so maybe we should take a moment to talk about what makes a good gun good.

I think the visual design of weapons matters far less than we think it does. There s a tendency, probably because they re planted right in front of our perspective at all times, to think of guns as a collection of aesthetics: firing and reload animations, SFX, screen shake, particle effects, and the death animations they produce. Those things make a gun, right? So if those things are good, surely we have an interesting and fun video game weapon, right?

No. Consider the AWP: it s olive green, it s bland, and its simple animations are more run-of-the-mill than Rambo. The only aesthetically remarkable thing about the most revered, iconic, and infamous sniper rifle in a video game is that it s a bit loud. And yet thousand-comment debates erupt when Valve tweaks the way the AWP s scope works. Why?

A gun s look and sound are part of its personality, sure. But if you ask me, great video game weapons have meaningful, interconnected relationships with other game elements. Those elements differ from game to game, of course. In CS case, the appeal of the AWP is born from the fact that CS is an FPS with body-part-specific damage modeling and no respawns. In that context, it s the only gun that grants an instant kill if you tag someone above the waist.

That feeling of possibility is fun within the strict rules of CS movement: if you can hit it, you can kill it… but you also can t be moving too much when you fire. With that power comes responsibility, too. Killed players surrender their equipped weapon in CS, and stolen AWPs not only save your team $4750 but act as a kind of trophy. This is doubly the case in CS:GO, where a player s custom AWP skin reminds all spectators which irresponsible player allowed their AWP to fall into enemy hands. Buying an AWP, then, to some extent, announces to the rest of the server: I think I m a good enough shot to protect this valuable asset from the other team.

All of this makes the AWP a weapon with abundant meaning. Even its shortcomings (slow rate of fire, difficult to use in close quarters) are a source of fun: the noscope is a revered skillshot.

In Tribes case, its weapons shake hands with its player movement really well, arguably the quality that defines it as an FPS. Again, like the AWP, the Spinfusor isn't visually extraordinary: it fires discs at a medium speed, and its animations and SFX are pretty modest. But the Spinfusor is the perfect fit, the perfect baseline weapon in a game where your targets are typically skiing along the ground at high speed. Its splash damage leaves room for error and its relatively slow travel time creates an exciting feeling of uncertainty as you admire your shot. Like throwing up a three-pointer in basketball, you get to experience that arc of Will it go in? It might not go in. It went in! as the disc travels toward its target.

The Fusion Mortar creates the same sort of feeling while operating as a parabolic siege weapon. The design of the weapons actually encourages you to spend as much time as possible in the air: the threat they pose encourages you to master movement to have the best chance of staying alive. In each of these examples, the weapons strengthen the meaning and significance of core systems like movement, damage modeling, or weapon purchasing.

Valve gave classic Counter-Strike map de_train a makeover in this week's update (and thank goodness—it needed it). The overhaul to the map's layout and look has mostly been well-received—the new Train has a high-contrast look and a less complicated A bombsite. 

But one new map element that Valve snuck in has already been removed: vile, map-unbalancing birds.

Not long after Train updated, players discovered that they could jump atop the pigeons that were placed along the long route to A from Terrorist spawn (aka "ivy") and pigeon-piggyback into the heavens, blissfully escaping the horrors of combat. Or, as the video below shows, players could use the pigeons as a flapping platform to glitch into the rooftops overlooking bombsite A, giving them a huge advantage over the CTs.

Valve has hotfixed the foul fowl play, but the current version of Train pays homage to this "bird boost," as it came to be known, with a new sign along the way to where it was once possible.

I've used Word Lens on my phone to translate this cryptic glyph:

Immortal words that should inspire us all.

The last CS:GO major of the year, DreamHack Winter 2014, turned out to be an exciting tournament despite a significant amount of it being played on Overpass, one of the weakest maps in CS:GO's competitive pool. With a critical round from DreamHack Winter as an example, I took a moment to talk about why Overpass needs to be cut from competitive play next season.

Article by Tomi "lurppis" Kovanen

Last weekend's fourth CS:GO major,  DreamHack Winter, ended up as one of the most memorable tournaments of the year for a variety of reasons—some good, and some bad. Let's examine the biggest storylines that emerged from the event.

The Fnatic controversy

LDLC came into their quarter-final against Fnatic not only having never bested the Swedes, but having lost two straight tournament finals against them. They split the first two maps in their series, and then put up a strong 12-3 first half on the deciding map de_overpass.

Though Overpass is very counter-terrorist favored, LDLC managed to win their terrorist pistol round, thus giving them a very good chance of going up 3-0 in the second half—and practically eliminating fnatic. At 3-13, fnatic successfully used a previously unknown boost, which was so overpowered that it basically breaks the entire map, and thus was immediately ruled illegal by many.

After losing the second half 0-13, with olofm boosted on nearly every round, LDLC protested about the boost and DreamHack admins spent the next six hours determining what to do. Upon coming to a conclusion to replay the second half, Fnatic protested and the whole saga continued.

Ultimately  DreamHack's ruling was that both teams replay the entire third map, as they found LDLC using another potentially illegal boost. The community was outraged with the decision, and soon after fnatic wound up forfeiting the third map and withdrawing from the tournament.

In reality Fnatic probably knew their odds of winning without the boost were non-existent. They took a risk in using it, as there were no clear rules against it—but it obviously breaks the map when you see it in play. It was a gamble, and it didn t pay off.

It s only too bad it took DreamHack so long to come to a decision, thus making the entire situation exponentially worse.

LDLC are world champions

The French came into DreamHack Winter as the world s second-best team, and were seemingly doomed as they drew their kryptonite Fnatic, who were upset by HellRaisers in the group stage, in the quarter-finals.

Once past the Swedes, LDLC took down Natus Vincere 2-0 in the semi-finals. In the grand final the former VeryGames trio of NBK, shox and SmithZz drew their long-time nemesis NiP, but this time they could not be stopped. LDLC split the first two maps, but came back from a 13-15 deficit on the final map (Overpass, appropriately) to win in overtime with in-game leader and  HLTV.org MVP Happy leading the way.

LDLC are now the official CS:GO world champions and arguably also the best team in the world, given the importance of the major, and their long track record of second place finishes.

It s a shame some will place an asterisk next to their win due to the Fnatic controversy, but LDLC can sleep knowing they had the game in the bag by then, if not for Fnatic s shenanigans. 

Fnatic are no longer invincible

Since their loss at DreamHack Stockholm, Fnatic have been seemingly invincible. In J nk ping last weekend that aura was seemingly gone from the get-go, with HellRaisers coming back from a 4-11 deficit in their match to top group A ahead of them.

Though their 5-8 ^th place finish only comes due to withdrawing from the tournament following the previously covered controversy in LDLC decider, it s hard to make a case for Fnatic standing a chance anymore at the 3-13 deficit they faced on Overpass.

The kings of CS:GO for the past three months have been slain, and with the drama surrounding the team anything but done, it remains to be seen what happens with one of the most dominant teams of all-time.

NiP return to the top

NiP were the defending champions from the previous major in August, but had not made the top four in any tournament since then, or qualified for any online league s finals. Following their roster change that in early November saw Fifflaren retire and Maikelele join on a trial basis, it was unclear what shape NiP would show up in.

The best team in CS:GO history delivered once again, making their fourth consecutive major grand final. Along the way they lost to LDLC in the groups, defeated HellRaisers easily in the quarter-finals, and survived a thriller of a series, including a double overtime game on de_nuke, against their long-time rivals Virtus.pro.

Despite falling just short in the grand final, it s safe to say NiP has returned to the very top of professional Counter-Strike. They have found a way to fit Maikelele in their system—or adjust the system around him—and will only get better as the team has more time to gel.

You can expect an official announcement of Maikelele becoming a permanent fixture in NiP any day now.

What s next?

Coming up next will be  ESEA Invite Season 17 Global Finals this coming weekend in Dallas. The event features eight teams in Fnatic, Virtus.pro, Titan, mousesports, Cloud9, iBUYPOWER and two North American underdogs, but three of those six are using a stand-in.

For Titan, their coach ioRekan, ESWC champion from a year ago—is replacing  VAC-banned KQLY. mousesports star player allu can t make the trip due to school commitments, and former ALTERNATE member and mouz legend from CS 1.6, gob b, is stepping in. Finally, iBUYPOWER s new member desi is not allowed to play, and ex-member adreN will take his spot temporarily in Dallas.

Although it pales in comparison to DreamHack Winter, ESEA Finals will provide three days of solid action, including an all-star match on Friday, and should keep fans entertained for a little longer before the holiday season.

In 2015 the first big tournament will be MLG Aspen, scheduled to take place at X Games on January 23-25, with eight of the world s best teams attending. NiP, Fnatic and Cloud9 have been invited, and online qualifiers for both Europe and North America are set to begin soon.

You can find Tomi on Twitter at @lurppis. For more competitive CS:GO coverage, go to www.HLTV.org.