Matchmaking: Trust Factor Matchmaking VS Prime Account
Trust Factor Matchmaking
As of the 11th of November 2017 Prime accounts use Trust Factor Matchmaking by default but you can still manually change it to prime only. It provides you the ability to play with a larger pool of the CS2 population instead of limiting it to just people with phone numbers added to their account. The CS2 developers have stated that the Trust Factor Matchmaking has most players “generating fewer reports regardless if their prime status”.
Variables used in Trust Factor Matchmaking
Valve does not provide a list of official variables used in the Trust Factor Matchmaking but they can be pretty easily guessed, I would not limit them to the following which includes things both inside CS2 and on your steam account:
- Time played in matchmaking
- Average amount kicked from a match
- The average amount of vote kicking a player from a match
- Commendations (Friendly, Good Teacher, Good Leader)
- Grief Reports
- Steam VAC bans
- Age of Steam Account
- Hours played on all steam games
- Prime Account Enabled
With these stats, it gives your account a hidden score in which it tries to find other accounts with a similar score, rank and skill group when looking for comptitive matches.
Improving your Trust Factor
Sometimes when someone joins your lobby a message will appear saying that someone has a low Trust Factor and that games may take longer to find. There is no easy way to increase the trust factor as this message usually appears for people with new accounts of those that the community, in general, has had a lot of issues with matchmaking such as being kicked or banned for leaving games.
Prime Accounts
Prime accounts made their release on 21st of April 2016 and has been a big deterrent to cheaters all around CS2. Prime accounts have an option when searching ranked matchmaking to search for games with only prime accounts cutting out cheats and hackers who cannot get prime or have had their phone numbers blacklisted by being banned on another account with prime.
How do you get a Prime Account
Not every account is eligible to be prime. You’ll need to rank up your account to Lieutenant (Rank 21) through playing different game modes in CS2. It takes an average player 8 – 10 weeks to reach Lieutenant if they play around 7 hours a week. Once you’ve reached the rank of Lieutenant you’ll see a box appear under your player profile saying “Prime Account Matchmaking”. You’ll be guided through setting up prime and will need to connect a valid phone number to your CS2 account.
You can only connect 1 phone number per account and not all numbers are valid such as VOIP numbers and certain numbers from specific carriers. If you accidentally use a wrong number you are able to change it within 72 hours however the first number you used will be blacklisted for 6 months and can’t be used again within that time. You also do not need to have a mobile authentication enabled on steam to have a prime account.
Can I remove Prime
Once your account is prime you will be able to remove the phone number from your steam account, however, it’ll also remove your CS2 prime account and blacklist the number for 6 months. So make sure that you actually don’t want a Prime account before removing it or at least have a back-up phone number ready to use. There shouldn’t be a reason to remove Prime unless you’re changing phone numbers or concerned about your privacy.
Should I upgrade to a Prime Account
You should absolutely upgrade if you’re looking for matches with fewer hackers and more serious players in your competitive games. Trust Factor is not perfect yet so you’ll see your best results in Prime Matchmaking.
