I can't say that I have any of those problems, even with the linux client, which is very shitty, apart from missing textures on avatars I have no problems. I don't have framedrops, I'm having a very playable and smooth gaming experience even on a Celeron convertible, that's a bloody quad core Atom (Silvermont) basically. On nVidia, I'm seeing the usual fps drops, but those are there in every application and on every nVidia hardware I've ever seen. On AMD, I'm getting very consistent good fps rates.
What remains a problem with CS:GO, is the bad game mechanics, the chaos, the cheater community, and the fact that a 64 tick rate just doesn't cut it for properly registering hits in CS:GO any more. Every time I play CS:GO, I'm getting situations whereby for instance I'm downed in a fight, where the system registers like 290 damage of me to the adversary, and like 80 damage of the adversary against me, but I'm the one that's killed... yeah... programming wise, there are serious issues with CS:GO...
It's at a point where playing CS:GO on official CS:GO servers is a completely different game than playing through ESEA or even FACEIT. It's just crazy...
Fnatic and NIP are good, but do not completely dominate the scene. There are plenty of teams who compete against them from more than just EU. I have played competitive CS for almost 13 years. Yes, some of the swedish and german teams are better than most, but the top tier american teams compete right along side them. You are correct in some forms for the cheater idea of making money, but the amount of players who cheat is much lower than the amount you are putting out to people. For people who havent played the game, you are only discouraging them from one of the best shooters on the market. There is maybe 1% of the players in the entire community who cheat. Just because someone looks like they are cheating does not mean that they do. Nine times out of ten that person is only better than you.
Much more than 1% of the players are sanctioned in overwatch, and that's the pro-cheater system lolz...
NA teams are just hyped up, they stream a lot, they make a lot of publicity, they have big sponsors, but they don't perform in competition, and now that team tactics are catching up with the gameplay handicaps of CS:GO, and individual performance gets more important again, the supremacy of the EU teams will only increase.
The whole marketing hype around CS:GO does have an effect in the EU competition though, in that players have to look for NA-type deals to continue to make a living out of MLG gaming. This results in a bunch of unrest in the teams, but it doesn't really look like this affects the overall performance that much.
The argument that cheaters are just better players is old and incorrect. If a guy faces a wall in the other direction and hits you in the head without even turning, or if a guy adjusts his aim in spamming through an object, that's not being better, that's cheating. The difference between skills and cheats is often very clear, even if they try to hide it. I do agree that a lot of the shortcomings of CS:GO look like cheating, like hits not registering and hit accounts not adding up, but that's not what I'm talking about, I do know the difference, I've been organizing LANs for a very long time, and I'm very aware of the problems and the incidence.
Actually, if you watch any pro gamer if they are under a name you dont know, you would probably think they are cheating. Spamming through materials is an artwork, such as when you hear a footstep between spams of a door and adjust to hit the sound. That is not cheating that is knowing how to use what information you have. One of my friends has been to every major lan minus the most recent ESL one for the last 5 years and even he has moments where people think he cheats. He doesnt, but people still do double takes and say holy hell. I understand the argument that it is an old saying is true, but it does not make it any less valid. I have played competitive CS since 1.3 and can tell a cheater from a skilled player easily. Half of the time people call cheats on players that are perfectly legit. This has been an issue with CS for over a decade. We will just have to agree to disagree.
I disagree with you there slightly, although smurfing is sometimes used to boost other players (or simply play with new friends), other cases suggest that those who smurf do it to feel pleasure in dominating weak players (I.E, greifing players in competitive as a smurf.).
Smurfing does detour new players from the CS GO community, as it creates dishonesty, distrust, disdain among higher ranked CS GO members.
Personally, i see smurfing as a form of cheating: You are working around the ELO system, which would have placed you against players of your same skill level, in order to win games against unskilled players. A good example of this is if you were a heavyweight boxer: if you forged documents that said you were a lightweight boxer in order to fight lightweight boxers as a heavyweight, that would be considered cheating and immoral (cause your being dishonest about your skill level).
Can you show me where cases suggest this is true? I am sure a handful of people do that, but In most cases people have an ego that relates similarly to how it does in ranked play in League of Legends. Players do happen to smurf in order to grief, but a much larger portion are smurfing in order to try to get ranked higher with multiple accounts. Such as, a person who gets ranked as TGE on their main account will then smurf on a new account to try to get TGE on that account as well. I have multiple friends who have done this themselves. In most cases it seems as though the complaints are similar to that of in games such as League of Legends where they complain that they are better than their rank. Simple fact is 40% of players in LoL ranked play are Silver. Just like in CSGO where the vast majority of players are ranked in nova ranks. The system works, and players need to not complain about it. If they want a real reason to complain they need to complain that valve still uses 64tick servers on competitive.