With the release of Counter-Strike 2, Valve also decided to overhaul the well known matchmaking system in Counter-Strike. While we already had a “Premier Mode” in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, for CS2 Valve has introduced a new elo rating.
Matchmaking versus Premier Mode
In Counter-Strike 2, a player can choose if he wants to compete within the “premier mode” system or play just a simple competitive match. In Premier you have things like the aforementioned elo rating, a veto system to choose the map and many more features. The competitive mode on the other hand is the more traditional, bare bone matchmaking system we have known for years. You select the map you want in the menu, start the queue and play. The only thing that has changed is, that you no longer have one overall rank. Instead you habe map specific ranks, which means that you might be Global Elite on Vertigo, but only Silver 2 on Office.
Map specific skill group
To obtain your map specific rank in the competitive mode, you have to win ten times on each map, just like we were used to in CS:GO or in CS2s Premier Mode. After you won your first ten matches you will get a skill group, just like we are used to from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Veto system in Premier mode
Instead of selecting the maps you want to play before hopping in the matchmaking queue you can’t decide which maps you want to play in Premier Mode on your own. Instead you have to vote together with your teammates which maps you want to ban during the veto phase just like pro players would in a tournament. You can also ban maps based on your enemies preferences, since you can see the maps the enemy already won in the infographic in middle during the veto phase. You can also only the play the seven maps that are currently in the active map pool, while Dust2 and Office are available in the competitive mode.
Which team is allowed to start in the veto is randomly determined by the game. The team that starts first can ban two maps, followed by three bans by the second team. The final map is than selected by the first team, while the second team can choose to start either on the terrorist or anti-terrorist side.
The elo rating in Premier mode
While the veto system got a slight rework with Counter-Strike 2 we already saw it in CS:GOs version of Premier. The hot new thing with CS2 is the new elo rating system. Instead of the classic ranks like Global Elite or Master Guardian your skill is now represented by a number. Just like before you initially have to win ten matches and will then receive a rating based on your performance. The higher the number is, the better the game thinks you are as a player. At the moment, the best players in the world already have more than 30.000 rating points. On the other hand you can also drop all the way down to just one rating point theoretically.
The seven different rating colors
With the new rating system you can still have promotion and demotion games. In correllation to the different skin tier colors the rating is also devided in the same seven colors. The first level for example is grey and represents all rating from 0 to 4999. Once you have reached 4999 your next game will be a promotion match, which will grant you the chance to rank up to the next level, which is light blue
