HLTV launches Rating 3.0

Rating 3.0 has officially gone live on HLTV this Wednesday, August 20th. All the CS2 matches on HLTV now feature rating 3.0 rather than 2.1, its predecessor.

In HLTV's own words, rating 3.0 marks the "biggest overhaul" to the rating system since the launch of 2.0 in 2017. The biggest difference between rating 3.0 and 2.1 is the addition of a new metric called Round Swing, which joins the other five crucial sub-ratings: Kills, Damage, Survival, KAST, and Multi-Kills.

Here's the definition of Round Swing and how it works:

A metric that looks at a team's win probability before and after each kill with knowledge of the map, side, and economy of each round. Credit for the swing of each kill is divided based on the final point of damage, the damage share, flash assists, and whether it was a trade kill.

As a result of Round Swing's implementation, the Impact metric no longer exists and has been replaced by a combination of Round Swing and Multi-Kill rating.

These are some players who particularly excel on Round Swing:

On top of that, HLTV has also made a deep economic adjustment that will reduce the impact of eco grags on rating.

This is a very important change, as HLTV stated that only 44.7% of duels in CS take place between players in the same economic category.

From now on, HLTV will take into account the equipment each player had in rounds, separating them into six groups: Sniper, tier-one rifles, tier-two rifles, SMGs and shotguns, upgraded pistols, and starter pistols.

Here are the release notes for rating 3.0:

Changelog

• Round Swing added, a metric that looks at a team's win probability before and after each kill with knowledge of the map, side, and economy of each round.

• Credit for the swing of each kill is divided based on the final point of damage, the damage share, flash assists, and whether it was a trade kill.

• Impact replaced by a combination of Round Swing and Multi-Kill rating

• Kill, Damage, Survival, ratings are all eco-adjusted based on the win-rate of a duel based on the map, side, and equipment of the individuals involved.

• KAST and Multi-Kill ratings are eco-adjusted based on the probability of a given action taking place given the map, side, equipment of the individual, and average equipment value of the opposing team.

• Assists reset to CS:GO value of 40 damage for all purposes.

• We have added the concept of trade denials (two kills within 5 seconds), and failed trades (punishing the second player, and rewarding the first, if both die within 5 seconds) within the sub-ratings.

We encourage all our readers to read the complete article on HLTV, as Harry "NER0" Richards shows how all these changes will affect how rating is calculated, and the players who were affected the most.