Danger Zone first released in 2018, and it has been a welcome change of pace for CSGO. It is inspired by Battle Royale type games, featuring 18 players competing to be the last man standing. Danger zone is definitely unique compared to normal CSGO, so it makes sense that Danger zone ranks work completely differently to the regular game too. Danger Zone CSGO ranks aren’t the same as the CS2 ranking system or Counter-Strike Wingman ranks. They can be pretty confusing in actual practise.
Compared to the simpler general CSGO ranks, these rankings don’t always work like you’d assume. Most players have anecdotal evidence of the ranks seemingly moving for no reason. Big wins seem to do nothing while mediocre games result in big movements.
So how do Danger Zone ranks work, and do they actually matter?
Danger Zone Ranks
The Danger Zone game mode for CSGO started off as just something fun on the side. It didn’t originally feature ranks. While Danger Zone has very much stayed separate, it does now have a ranking system. However, the Danger Zone ranks in CSGO are separate to the main game. The rankings weren’t even introduced until 7 months after the release. These are the obtainable ranks in the game: (*also seen in the image above)
That’s all of the ranks that are in Danger Zone right now. Each signals your proficiency within the game. However, it doesn’t exactly affect your matchmaking for the title!
Things get a bit more complicated there.
Danger Zone ranks are a great way of showing off how skilled you are at the game or just securing bragging rights to your friends. However, in terms of actual matchmaking, they might not actually be all that important. Valve keeps details on how ranks and matchmaking work quite close to their chest.
They refuse to clarify how their algorithms impact matchmaking. Going off of anecdotal evidence of the calibre of players in each match, it seems that speedy matchmaking is more important than rank here. Players can join up with teammates in any other rank without causing matchmaking problems, so it is unlikely that Danger Zone ranks actually make a difference for your gameplay experience beyond the bragging rights. So how Danger Zones work doesn’t have a huge impact on gameplay.
While the Danger Zone ranks don’t seem to matter too much for your matchmaking, it is still good to have a sense of progress and achievement when you’re playing. Which can make it a little frustrating when the reason for why the ranks changes isn’t exactly clear.
When you’re looking at your Danger Zone rank, CSGO’s system for picking how good you are feels like something you should know about. Unfortunately, there is no official explanation on how your Danger Zone rank is determined and what makes it go up and down. Valve are yet to really explain the ranking system. This is partially to stop people gaming the system, but also to give them the freedom to change the criteria whenever they like.
This isn’t a popular approach to ranking systems in games. In fact, basically wherever it shows up this system proves to be one of the most frustrating way to do things. However, it is unlikely to change given how long this has already been the case. Danger Zones ranks will probably never been explained in full.
This can be annoying for players not knowing exactly what decides where they stand. However, there are some factors which we can very clearly identify as behind rank movements.
While we aren’t fully clear on what specifically effects your rank, there are some factors in Danger Zone that are probably going to be behind your movement.
These factors are likely going to be the bigger parts of how your Danger Zone ranks changes. However, how much they change your rank invidiously is a mystery. The weighting of these factors and the existence of other factors means it is difficult to put too much on this. Some players get no movement from winning games with lots of kills, and others have no impact.
Without clear guidance on how exactly the Danger Zone ranks work, how can you go about improving them? There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of frustration with how Danger Zone ranks work not reflecting reality. However, playing well should eventually have an impact on your rank. Although there’s always a danger of a bad game having a bigger impact. Sometimes it can specifically feel like the rank system cares more about your bad games than your good. Weather this is the case or not is hard to say, it might just be selection bias in which rank movements are noted as unusual.
The best course of action for your Danger Zone rank might be to not pay all too much attention to it. This is obviously easier said than done, but the rank really doesn’t have much of an effect on gameplay. Sine it isn’t the major factor in how matchmaking works, it isn’t really having an effect on how your game actually plays.
The experience in each rank is roughly the same. The title is just for bragging rights. So if end up high in the ranks, you can obviously brag about your accomplishment. However, if its low, you can probably just blame Valve’s weird ranking system for your problems and ignore the grade!
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