In its current state it's very hard for new players to get into this game. The gameplay is honestly very fun. I used to write off CS as not for me but playing in an environment where the game is not constantly shoving microtransactions & competitive down my throat made me realize that I actually really enjoy CS! However, this game is currently being infested with fake Russian servers full of bad mods, cheaters, and what is essentially malware. You're basically forced to use websites like gametracker to find decent servers. There's some good servers out there, sure, and I enjoy playing on them, but if you're looking for like vanilla or vanilla adjacent server, you're going to be struggling to find a server. The closest you'll find are servers that either run Dust2 24/7 or the occasional night session on a couple of servers filled with lots of vets who will probably kick your ass, most of which restrict the AWP/Auto to people who pay a server premium. I enjoy this game a lot and I love how it looks and sounds, even if the gunplay is worse than 1.6, but unless you're willing to go through some hoops to find actually playable servers, even if most of them are not vanilla, I would suggest just playing 1.6 instead, which is also dealing with a fake server problem as well. Valve really needs to get off their ass and fix their older games that they're selling and making money off of, but given how they're terrible at managing their current live service games (see CS2's cheating problem and TF2's terrible matchmaking), I can't imagine CSS will be fixed anytime soon.
