Premier Season 2 is here

The second season of Premier begins today and will run through the BLAST.tv Austin Major. According to Valve's announcement the second season will conclude after the Austin Major in June. Everyone with a CS Rating in the first season has received a commemorative medal and ratings have been reset, which can be reopened by winning 10 premier games.

The much awaited map pool change is also here, retiring Vertigo from the active duty map pool and adding a reworked Train which will now be listed in the map veto for Premier games. Season 1's end also comes with a statistics dashboard, reflecting the player's performance in the inaugural season.

With Season 2 comes a few gameplay changes, the biggest one being the price drop of the M4a4, making it only as expensive as the silenced M4 at $2,900. FAMAS gets an accuracy buff along with a price drop to $1,950, in an attempt to make it a viable choice during partial buys.

The maschinenpistole family SMG's- MP9, MP5 and the MP7 have undergone several modifications that decrease their crouching accuracy. The dot on AUG and SG's scopes have been reworked to adapt in size using depth perception. A dynamic radar feature now expands and contracts the mini-map depending on the action across the map to reveal enemies when spotted by teammates.

A fallback logic has been added to facilitate viewing incomplete demo files and many suspect that this could be to combat cheaters who corrupt the game demo at the end of a match to stay out of the surveillance logs. Here are Valve's release notes for the update:

PREMIER

• Premier Season Two is here, and Premier matchmaking has resumed

• Every player who earned a CS Rating during Season One will receive a commemorative Premier Season One Medal which includes detailed Season Statistics

• Every player will have their CS Rating recalibrated based on their Season One performance, and will need to re-establish their CS Rating by winning 10 matches

• Train has been added to the Active Duty map pool

• Vertigo has been removed from the Active Duty map pool

GAMEPLAY

• M4A4 price reduced to $2,900

• FAMAS accuracy improved and price reduced to $1,950

• Reduced crouching accuracy for the MP9, MP5-SD, and MP7

• Adjusted scope dot on AUG/SG to be more useable at range

UI

• Added a new radar dynamic zoom option that will grow or shrink the radar to include your team mates, bomb and other detected elements

• Adjusted grenade order in spectator UI to match weapon selection order

• Increased brightness of carried C4 in UI

MAPS

• Train

• • Removed a boost angle from Long Dog to Bombsite A

• • Fixed lighting artifacts on double-sided materials

MISC

• Added fallback logic to allow playing incomplete demo files, either copied from an ongoing live match or recovered after a game server crash

• Fixed an exploit where users could use secondary fire on R8 Revolver and then sell it back

• Counter-strafe summaries are now available in game server log data distributed via log address in addition to console logs