Valve ditches instant CS2 queue times in favor of more equal matchups

Don’t you just love queuing up for a Counter-Strike 2 Premier ranked match and seeing opponents with triple your Rating on the other team? Those days may be over, after a CS2 update today sees the matchmaking system trade shorter queue times for a much more competitive experience.

Valve’s Oct. 10 update to CS2 has seen the plug pulled on a Premier setting that shortened waiting time artificially by matching players with limited regard for their Ratings. With all players essentially starting fresh in CS2, queue times were made incredibly short as everyone was thrown together and there was no hidden MMR or Rating on launch.

However, as time went on, the need for a more curated queue became a top priority. The community became sick and tired of earning their Rating, only to begin losing it immediately as they were matched up against players way above them on the leaderboard.

This was likely always Valve’s intention, with the dev team probably needing to gather plenty of matchmaking data as the game went live.

A similar issue occurred in the final few months with CS:GO. Queue times per region were relatively short at the very end of CS:GO’s lifespan but oftentimes players from high ranks would match against stacks of Silver or Gold players, making for a frustrating experience.

Now in CS2, and with today’s update, queue times will be lengthened but players should (hopefully) be guaranteed matches with players in or around their own skill bracket.

Valve also made changes to Premier’s promotion and relegation matches, which previously occurred at every 1,000 Rating. These all-important rank-up matches will now be limited to when players reach each “color” threshold—every 5,000 Rating.

Players will also see changes to Rating gained or lost in each match to faster and better calibrate new Premier players to their actual rank. In all, it’s a major improvement to Premier and Ranked in CS2 that should hopefully recapture the interest of those sick and tired of the broken matchmaking of the game mode.

CS2 Oct. 10 Patch Notes

Matchmaking

• Matches will now be made with smaller rating differences between the teams at the expense of longer queue times.

Premier

• Relegation and Promotion matches will only occur at color boundaries, i.e. every 5,000 Rating points.
• Increased possible CS Rating win or loss amounts to move players faster after calibration.