How To Check Your Trust Factor In CS2

Have you noticed that whenever you join a game lobby and proceed to play a map in CS:GO, you end up with people who are similarly skilled to yourself? For those playing for longer, it is also apparent that trolls and griefers seem less frequent than in the early days of CS.
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Introuction

This is all a result of an internal player rating system employed by Valve, known as a trust factor score. This score helps pair you up with players similar to your skill level and behavior, while segregation trolls and negative players are in matches of their own.

The moment the notion of this Valve system became known, people started wondering how to check CS:GO trust factor and what they could do to improve it. This can be tricky since Valve doesn’t disclose the factors determining it or the score itself, but that does not mean you can’t find your trust factor!

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What Is The Trust Factor in CS:GO

The trust factor in CS:GO refers to a reputation score you get from Valve based on various key stats of your gaming performance. Nobody has been able to pinpoint exactly how the score is determined, but there are clear factors that directly influence it. They involve everything, from in-game behavior to Steam community activity.

The simplest way to explain Valve’s CS:GO trust factor is like the person checking the dress code at the door of a CS:GO match. You won’t get in if you do not look and act the port. There are, of course, ways to improve your trust factor, but also ways to lower it.

One of the main reasons why the trust factor is such an important topic among players is that nobody really knows them or anyone else. Valve likes to keep the scores hidden, so the only thing you can get is an educated guess, depending on several factors that we will cover in detail today.As part of the statistics of playing CS:GO, your trust factor is an important part of your profile. It directly affects your matchmaking experience, as it is one of the main deciding variables for in-game matchmaking.

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How to Check Your CS:GO Trust Factor?

How the CS:GO Trust Factor is Determined

Valve has kept its precise criteria to determine your trust factor score as secret as they have the actual scores. That said, some clear factors help determine where you stand and, as mentioned, fluctuate depending on what you do while you’re connected to the Steam servers.

 

Some of the key things that help you build towards a green-level trust factor in CS:GO include the following:

 

  • In-game behavior: Receiving commendations, playing clean without cheating or cyberbullying, not abandoning games, no friendly fire, and staying away from matches featuring suspicious players.
  • Steam Community Relations: A clean Steam profile, active and positive role in the community, no account bans, and a high account level.
  • Prime Matchmaking: Linking your phone number with your Steam account through Prime. 
  • Report Rate: The fewer reports you end up with from other players, the better your trust factor score will be.
  • Playing Time: The time you spend playing CS:GO and other games on Steam.
  • Inventory: The total value of your inventory, along with all new purchases, influences your trust factor.

 

While the above factors will not raise your trust factor immediately, they help you build towards the more positive behavior Valve expects out of those with the highest trust scores. In time, combined with your gaming performance and experience, such behavior will certainly raise your trust factor.

 

Keep in mind that it is not as black and white as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behavior and that Valve’s trust scoring system is much more complex and intricate than that. It takes into account all kinds of factors that remain unknown to the public when determining and updating your trust factor rank.

A Sneak Peek into Your CS:GO Trust Factor

If you’re wondering how to see trust factor CS:GO, you are not alone. While there is no way to help you pinpoint the precise score Valve assigned to your profile, there is a little trick that can help you figure out where you stand without doing anything to jeopardize your score in the process.

You will first need a few close friends to play with you. You need to create a party and have your friends, whom you communicate with, join. As you all enter the lobby, the chat will automatically warn them if you have a lower score than them, using the color-coded system.

So, while you can’t see your own trust factor score, other players in a party can share it with you. It is important to have a few people to cross reference with since your rank won’t appear to a friend if you are on the same level, which may be red. You could also do the process with each friend individually to make sure you get a clearer idea of your trust factor score.

The main disadvantage of this method is that these color-coded warnings are only available to players who have activated Prime status. If none of your friends have it, you’re left with more guesswork to do if you want to figure out your CS:GO trust factor score.

Another indicator of your CS:GO trust factor score is the players you’re usually associated with during matchmaking. If you find yourself matched with players who have dubious behavior, cheat, abandon games, or act negatively in the community, you most likely have a very low trust factor.Of course, having a yellow or red score means you need to start looking at how to improve your CS:GO trust factor, which you can do if you leverage the factors that determine it. More on that in a bit.

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Why is Your Trust Factor in CS:GO Important?

The main reason Valve introduced the trust factor in CS:GO is to improve player matchmaking and the overall gaming experience. The main driving force behind it is the never-ending effort to ensure fairness for all players involved in the game.

By pairing players with compatible trust factor scores, Valve helps maintain an enjoyable playing environment while still keeping the experience challenging enough for those involved. If you’ve ever played with people who troll, constantly grieve about other players, or abandon games, you know exactly why this is important. 

Valve launched the trust factor system in an attempt to improve the existing Prime Matchmaking system. The Prime system was more rigid, placing players on either side of a rank 21, which caused a big divide and affected the match-making experience. The trust factor system takes a lot more factors into account, greatly improving who you match up with in a lobby.

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How to Boost Your CS:GO Trust Factor

In-Game Conduct

The way you act while you are in a match is constantly monitored by Valve and has a vital impact on your overall trust factor:

 

    • Match Behavior: Avoid negative actions such as griefing, throwing games, dropping out suddenly, and any form of cheating during gameplay.
    • Fair Play: In addition to avoiding cheating, make sure you avoid tam kills, as harming teammates is a great way to lower your trust factor. 
    • Reports: The fewer substantiated reports for cheating or unwanted behavior other players submit, the higher your trust factor in CS:GO is.
  • Skill level: Your trust factor matches you with a player of similar skill, so the better you become at the game, the more your trust factor is going to rise. 
  • Playing Time: The more time you spend playing CS:GO, the more information about your behavior Valve can collect, which reflects in your trust factor score.
  • Team Communication: Keep your communication professional and clean, avoiding any type of toxicity during gameplay.
  • Other Stream Game Activities: Steam powers your trust factor, so how you act in other games will impact how trustworthy you are deemed to be in CS:GO.
  • Inventory: An inventory filled with expensive items demonstrates you are a fair player and dedicated collector, which directly affects your trust factor.
  • Skins: While it is not clear if they affect your trust factor, opting for unofficial skins or skin changer software might negatively affect your ranking.

Out-of-Game Behavior

What do you do when you’re not brandishing your favorite combination of knives, firearms, and grades is just as important in determining your CS:GO trust factor as your in-game activities are:

 

  • Steam Account Strength: Maintain a clean and strong account and link it with your phone number to demonstrate trustworthiness.
    • Steam Community Activity: Chat rooms, game lobbies, comments, and all kinds of other community activity on Steam are carefully monitored and affect your trust score.
  • Prime Status: While not mandatory, having Prime status shows Valve you are serious about playing, which affects your matchmaking experiences through your trust factor rank.
  • Public Profile: Setting your Steam profile public may boost your trust score. This allows people to learn more about you, which leads to fewer reports.

Get Commendations: Other players can commend you through your account, which can greatly increase your overall trust factor score.

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Factors that Lower Your Trust Factor

  • Reports: All types of reports against you, from chatting complaints to trolling and griefing, directly affect your trust factor score.
  • Bans: All types of bans, from trading to game bans, display a tendency towards unwanted behavior. Accumulating temporary bans is a surefire way of ending up at the bottom of the trust rankings in CS:GO.
  • Kick Votes: Having several teammates vote to kick you out of games is a major red flag to Valve regarding your trustworthiness.
  • Friendly Fire: Even when unintentional, team damage is not tolerated, and it can crash your trust factor score if it happens repeatedly.
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Closing Thoughts

The question of how to check CS:GO trust factor will undoubtedly linger on even after our in-depth analysis of everything related to this mysterious reputation score that Valve uses for matchmaking. But is it worth it getting excited over something you’ll never know for sure?

Valve’s secrecy surrounding the trust factor score in CS:GO is a smart move, helping keep track of everyone’s behavior while not allowing people to gauge where they are at, and in doing so, making it difficult to manipulate the system.

At the end of the day, behaving positively, both in-game as well as when you’re engaging with the Steam community, is more than enough to get you access to good quality matches and a trust score to keep getting them. Do you truly need to know the exact score number awarded to you?

While there are factors you can work on, both in terms of improving your trust factor score in CS:GO and avoiding lowering it, as long as you are satisfied with the matches and gameplay experience you are getting, there is no real gain from managing your trust factor rank. So, stick to fair play rules and enjoy your upcoming battles!