Valve introduced this “Trust Factor” thingy to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive back in 2017, and it still has a big veil of secrecy around it today. It works in mysterious ways and tailors everyone’s competitive matchmaking experience according to their behavior and performance. While most of the functionality of the system is hidden from the public, players around the world have deduced some very important factors to consider while attempting to raise your Trust Factor in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Here’s what you need to know.
How to Raise Your Trust Factor in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
If you wish to have a positive experience in CS:GO (as much as it is really possible nowadays, anyway), there are a few things that you can do from your side.
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How Do I Determine my Trust Factor in CS:GO?
There’s no exact way to determine your Trust Factor but there are some hints that can help. When you form a lobby with your friends, if someone from the team gets the following messages:
- 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.
…this then indicates that someone is in trouble, usually the person who didn’t get any messages.
The remainder of the players in your match will be selected from the matchmaking pool based on the lowest Trust Factor in your premade Lobby. Try your best to play with people who have a (perceived) higher Trust Factor than you. Also, be careful with this method because if all of you in the Lobby have low Trust Factor, no one will get the warning message.
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Practice Positive Behavior in Competitive Matchmaking
This goes without saying. Act positively. Do not grief or throw matches. Do not shoot your teammates in the head out of rage. Try not to use inflammatory language in voice or text chat. Getting reported a lot will make Valve’s AI look into your account. In the case where someone is causing issues, report and block them.
Do not get votekicked from matches – play with someone in the party who can vote NO for you because solo queue may be REALLY frustrating at times. If you get kicked from matches too often you will get a competitive cooldown.
Do not votekick people from matches too often as the system automatically gives you a competitive cooldown if you do that too much even though you really could have had the misfortune of actually having to kick people multiple matches in a row.
Getting commended instead of getting reported is certainly a better thing for your account.
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Cheating in CS:GO
This is fairly obvious but for procedure’s sake, we need to specify this right off the bat. Do not cheat. Do not play with cheaters in a premade party. Not only can it lead to your account being VAC banned altogether, but it could perhaps lead your Trust Factor into having you matched against other cheaters until VAC inevitably comes for you. It’s funny in a way, like some sort of Robot Combat that pops up on television from time to time.
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Overwatch in CS:GO
Try to invest some time every day to do one or two Overwatch cases and to help the community weed out cheaters and griefers. AI will treat this as a positive contribution to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community, for sure.
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Play Time Invested in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Competitive Matchmaking
If you’re playing on a daily basis for at least a few hours a day and your games are clean, you are bound to see increases in your Trust Factor rating and you being matched with players who share a similar rating because the system can calculate and implement your displayed virtues more effectively. Being a journeyman player that boots up a game for two competitive matches on weekends doesn’t let the system evaluate you properly.
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Steam Account Level
If you’re a long-time Steam Community member with a high Account Level, you will be perceived as a more trustworthy player. There are a few ways you can increase your Steam Account level:
- Just have it sit around for a long time. You will upgrade your “Years of Service” badge every year.
- Buy Steam games for you and your friends, especially during Summer and Winter sales.
- Buy/collect Trading Cards and craft badges. There are many free-to-play games that grant three trading cards for a short amount of playtime. You can then either buy the rest or sell them to gain funds to complete a different set. This is usually not that expensive and it’s worth pushing your Account Level for other cool profile perks.
Inventory Value in CS:GO
So, remember the penalty of not being able to trade stuff from your Steam Account when you get VAC Banned?
Machine learning tends to perceive you as more trustworthy if your inventory holds some value on the Steam Market.
This is put in place because cheaters and trolls usually use an empty Steam Account with absolutely no inventory and no other games on the account. Having an expensive account (from the AI’s standpoint, at least) should make you think twice before installing and running cheats because there is much money to lose over a video game. This has been mentioned by a Valve Employee and it kind of makes sense, to some degree.
Play More Games on Steam
As weird as it may sound – and very similar to the other things we’ve mentioned – this is a somewhat silly practice because it can force you to do stuff you perhaps do not want to do. The system might believe that you’re suspicious if you just play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive because the secondary market for high-ranked CS:GO accounts is still pretty much alive, despite it being against Valve’s ToS and can lead to the suspension of the entire account and you may appear like a booster/seller.
Take a few free-to-play games for a spin at least, alone or with your friends.
Link Your Phone Number to Your Steam Account
Even though pre-paid “burner” SIM cards are widely available in most countries (in some, you need a personal ID to obtain one and there are limits on how many you can buy), this is an important factor. If you are willing to put your phone number on Steam, you most probably will not take risky actions to get it banned.
My Trust Factor is Lower Than I Feel It’s Supposed To Be
Machines aren’t perfect and mistakes can happen. Valve is open to feedback (on paper, at least) for these matters and they have an email that you can use to reach out to them: [email protected]. You would need to send them your detailed description of why you feel you have been wronged, along with your Steam ID.
We hope that this guide was useful and we wish you all the best in your attempts to increase your Trust Factor and have an enjoyable experience in CS:GO Competitive Matchmaking.
