CS2 Trust Factor: What You Need To Know

Although skill plays the most important role in Counter Strike, there are other factors, which affect your ranked matches. One of the features that measure your behavior in online matches is the CS2 trust factor. The matchmaking system of the game uses the trust factor feature to pair together players with similar behavior scores in competitive matchmaking.

Want to learn more about CS2 trust factor? How to check trust factor in-game? You are in luck, here at Skincshier we present our guide to everything you need to know about the CS2 trust factor system.

What Is The CS2 Trust Factor Matchmaking System?

In short, trust factor is a new feature introduced in CS 2 matchmaking, which assigns you a rank based on your in-game behavior. If you’re a positive member of the CS2 community, who’s actively striving to create an enjoyable gaming environment for all, the trust factor algorithm will match you with other members of the Steam community who share similar values. This should improve your matchmaking experience and help you enjoy Counter Strike 2 in a positive gaming environment.

Likewise, if you’re a menace in a competitive match, flaming your teammates (or even enemies) and trolling in the game, your trust factor will be significantly affected, and you will most likely match with other players with a low trust factor score, who exhibit similar behavior. This means that the worse you behave in-game, the worse your matchmaking experience will be, while you maintain a positive attitude in a game, you’ll most likely be rewarded with better, more enjoyable matches.

While it might seem strange to herd fellow players together based on their behavior, mainly, because it will most often negatively impact toxic players, who wish to redeem themselves and increase the trust factor of their account. On the other hand, with the trust factor in CS2, Steam community members who present toxic behavior in matches ill be forced to taste their medicine, if they want to get back on their positive behavior.

What Affects My CS2 Trust Factor?

One thing has to be made clear before we dive into further discussions of the trust factor system – we don’t know yet what the criteria Valve uses for assigning particular trust factor values. So far the most obvious way to improve your trust factor is to exhibit more positive interactions in-game to try and foster a more friendly and welcoming environment in-game.

The best way to improve your trust factor is to create a positive gaming experience for other players. This means that you should:

• Always finish your matches (never leave before the match is over!)
• Don’t flame or roast other players, teammates or enemies
• Absolutely no team killing
• Avoid swearing in all-chat
• No griefing or abusing exploits

Likewise, if you fail to do any of these, you can expect your trust factor to drop.

Are There Other Ways To Affect Your Trust Factor?

The trust factor system runs on a hidden score, and players don’t receive trust factor feedback based on their behavior, however, it’s very likely that your behavior outside of CS2 will also affect your trust factor in-game. Here are some things, that will further change how the trust factor algorithm views you:

Participating In Steam Discussions

One of the things that the trust factor algorithm takes in consideration, is your overall behavior in the Steam community engagement. If you regularly add vulgar posts, argue with other players in Steam discussions, and disrupt game forums, you can expect your trust factor in CS2 to drop.

Behavior In Other Steam Games

This one is still unconfirmed, but many CS2 community members believe that your behavior in other online games on Steam, like Team Fortress 2 or Dota 2, can also affect your trust factor in CS2. This means that if, for example, in Dota 2 your behavior score is regularly in the lower echelons, you can expect to see this reflected in your CS2 ranked experience.

Steam Account Level

Your Steam account level most likely also affects your trust factor in CS2. Generally, the higher your level is in your Steam account, and the more badges you own, the higher the trust factor you can expect.

Does Prime Status Improve Trust Factor In CS2?

Although the full information about interaction between the CS2 prime status and trust factor in CS2 isn’t openly available, it’s generally pretty clear, that prime status enabled will improve your matchmaking experience. Although not all prime status members have high trust factor scores, it certainly won’t negatively affect your behavior, and a prime status together with a high trust factor ensures that you will get the best competitive environment possible.

Does Trust Factor Affect CS2 Trading?

So far from what we’ve learned, your trust factor status doesn’t affect your CS2 trading capabilities. While there are many different components that play into your overall trust factor value, trading doesn’t seem to affect it, meaning that it won’t change anything if you want to sell CS2 skins.

How To Check Trust Factor In CS2?

As we have mentioned previously, the trust factor is a hidden score, and although it affects your competitive integrity, your trust factor score is nowhere to be found on your profile. However, there’s one bootleg method that will let you see whether your trust factor is in the higher or lower values. To do this, you will need a couple of friends, preferably 4, and a custom CS2 match.

1. Create a private game
2. Invite your friends (make sure they all have Prime status enabled!)
3. Have your friends join one by one

The last step is very important, since it will let you tell whether the player who joins has a lower trust factor than others already in the match. If a player, who has a low trust factor, joins your game, everyone else in the match should receive one of the following messages in their game client:

• Your matchmaking experience may be slightly impacted because Trust Factor of (player) is lower than yours.
• Your matchmaking experience will be significantly affected because Trust Factor of (player) is substantially lower than yours. 

With this method you and your friends can check the rough status of your trust factors. The first message appears if one of the players has a slightly lower trust factor, while the other one is sent to everyone in the match if a player joins with a significantly worse trust factor.

In Conclusion

Valve regularly looks for new tools to improve their game and matchmaking system in CS2. Trust factor is definitely a step in the right direction, particularly, since the CS2 community has an unfortunate tendency towards some significantly toxic behaviors. Only time will tell whether the introduction of trust factor in CS2 has improved things,