Greetings,

My name is Mario, and I'm a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player. For those who do not know, CS: GO is a videogame created by Valve, an entertainment software and technology company, also the one which created Steam, the PC gaming platform. Periodically, Valve releases new content for the game under the name of "Operations". I'm writing this petition with an idea for a possible operation in the future, hoping that Valve takes it into consideration.

Recently, the Steam user Blade x64 submitted a map called "Dust 2 Night" into the CS: GO Workshop in Steam (a place where users submit the content they create so Valve can check it out). This map is, basically, the classic Dust 2 map created by Valve transferred to the night, along with all the work that such action would require (such as lightning changes, for example). The map recieved plenty of positive feedback and votes from the community, causing the map to reach the front of the workshop so everyone would see it when they wanted to launch the game. The response from the community was so good that a Steam user and fellow CS: GO player, KrispV9, created a discussion in the map's webpage, placing the idea of an operation based on night-time maps on the table for all of us to discuss, and this idea also recieved great feedback. More thoroughly, the idea was to, as I said, make an operation full of night-time maps - the actual, loved and known maps, but transferred and facelifted to the night. Ideas were debated by the community about Train, Inferno, Nuke, Mirage, and the other most played maps (and also not-so-much played maps like Vertigo, Office, Assault or Aztec), on how cool would the change be and about how could they make it special and particular even though, after all, they'd be the same maps. Just a few examples for the giant list of possibilities: imagine entering bombsite A in Nuke from outside to see it barely lightened up, by low-power lightbulbs or purely the moon's light through the skylights. Or Train's dark trainyards hardly illuminated by some floodlights. Or Vertigo's obscure sectors brought to a dire life by the city's lights. Or Inferno's lights from the apartments shining down into Second Mid, while the moon shines infront of you.

But, why the normal maps and not new, "innovative" maps? Well, KrispV9's argument stated that it'd be an "extremely smart decision for Valve to craft an Operation based around night-time maps, taking the already loved maps from Active Duty [or even some from the Reserve Group, which would also look beautiful] and make a night version of them." He also speaks truth when claiming that whenever he tried to find a match for an Operation Vanguard map, the long times were exasperating, and sometimes it wasn't even possible to actually find a match in the map you desired (talking from personal experience, whenever trying to play Back Alley). This was probably (and this is possibly a fact) because people didn't want to spend time learning the new maps, which drastically decreased the number of people that queued for Vanguard maps, making it hard for people who actually wanted to play the beautiful maps that Vanguard offered, and usually causing them to be abandoned and forgotten in the abyss. "So how do you solve that problem?", KrispV9 asks, and then proceeds to reply: "You take the maps that people already play [know and love!] and you shift them to night time! This Dust 2 map is a great example. Instead of learning totally new maps, players will just need to readjust to the night-time atmosphere of the new maps [which, like many players and I myself claimed, would bring a lovely and refreshing effect, which is what an Operation seeks after all]". It'd give a very intersting visual twist, while maintaining (or not altering, so to speak) our knowledge about the maps, knowledge necessary to play and win, and which takes a considerable amount of time to learn for each new map.

Finally, he concludes his posts with the following text: “Same maps = More players = Shorter queue times = More matches = More players get drawn in = More players buy the operation pass = More sales. Valve, this is a Win/Win situation, I have seen people on /r/GlobalOffensive talk about this from time to time, and I think this would satisfy a very large part of the CS: GO community”. And I do agree with him. I don’t absolutely know how a company works, but I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in between of making money and satisfying the costumer, or the community in our case. And so far, not only this seems like a great idea, but the community seems to be responding incredibly well to it. The fact that they’d be the “same maps” doesn’t seem to bother noone, but rather the opposite – that’s the catch. Not only that, but people say they’d love to have them transferred to the night, calling it a nice and refreshing change of pace. Having the maps we already know, but under the grasp of the dark, and in the obscure warfog of the night – on the dire atmosphere that the night has to offer. And also, users, fellow players and community members, we all claim that, obviously, none of us would mind paying the average price for the pass, and neither would it bother us that they’re the “same maps”, pretty much because, well, they aren’t. So, Valve, just in the case I haven’t explained it enough yet; “Operation Blackout” – a masterpiece of a name that the community came up with –, an operation based on the maps we all know, transferred to the sinister beauty of the night.

And another thing that even though wasn’t spoken about a lot in public discussions but always pops up when I’m talking about this with somebody is the comeback of the flashlights and nightvision. Yes, I’ve said it. There’s just as much people that want them back as the ones who don’t. And even though I really want them in CS: GO, I do agree on the fact that it’s a very debatable topic, with its pro and cons. There’s a lot of examples of this; examples of how great would it be to have them and how they’d create a spectacular environmental and atmospheric essence to the game, specially (if not particularily) on the night maps and also examples as of why it may be a bad idea. I do believe that if developed and deployed properly and in a clever way, like everything that Valve does, it’d make a really cool impact on the night gameplay, specially if we manage to give it an useful purpose (more than in CS 1.6) – but as I said, it’s a really debatable topic. If you guys at Valve believe that it’s open to discussion and there is a possibility of it being added, I’m sure that between you and the community we can get to a clever and balanced conclusion.

Well, thanks for reading. Let’s make this work – Operation Blackout.

Best regards,

Mario.