HLTV's Rankings: Blessing Or Curse?
Every year, HLTV ranks players and teams on arbitrary metrics, and every year, it causes some disagreements. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?
Preamble
For over a decade, HLTV has continued a tradition of ranking CS players based on the prowess they displayed in the calendar year. The general concept of HLTV as a website providing rankings for teams was on and off in the late years of CS1.6 and early years of CS:GO, eventually culminating in a consistent ranking of teams in late 2015 which has kept going till date.
This year also brings another iteration of the HLTV Awards, which has steadily added more awards, more panelists, and is clearly attempting to become the place where the best CS players across the years have their achievements chronicled. In five years, when someone wants to know who the best aggressive riflers of 2023 were, HLTV wants you to look at their nominated positions for the award and think about it accordingly. When someone wants to know how good NiKo was in each year of his career - for better and for worse, they will go to HLTV’s player rankings and see the number plates.
I believe that this is both a blessing and a curse, and much like a lot of what HLTV provides statistically, the most important part of it all is how you use it. I’ll talk about what’s good and bad subsequently - for more thoughts, follow me on Twitter!
The Good - A Catalogue Of Tales Told
There are many important resources of Counter-Strike history - from historians and long-time experts like Thorin and Richard Lewis, to archived results and tournament placements on places like Liquipedia. For the era before CS:GO, many discussions are limited. Much of the content from that time no longer exists - articles taken down, videos stuck on offline servers, demo files unavailable. From CS:GO onwards, however, coverage is much more reliable - and HLTV, despite many disagreements and changes over the years, has continued to release news articles, store demo files, and rank teams and players throughout the years.
The end result of this is that while the specific story being told may not be to your liking, there is still a story. Some of you will hate hearing this, but people who weren’t there to watch the earlier years of CS:GO, or in fact, ANY years of CS:GO (now that we are putting it behind us), are unlikely to watch every big game that defined how people talk about players now. Even dedicated fans like myself will only get part of the picture from watching those games - how would I know who the best group stage farmers in 2014 were? I wasn’t there to watch the groups back then, and I sure as hell won’t be going to watch them now in my spare time.
What I can do (apart from watching YouTube videos from that era, which I sometimes do) is check the top 20 from that time - for example, device’s article, which mentions the tournaments in which he performed well in group stages (such as ESWC). It may not be an accurate picture and device may well be a top 10 player of that year in skill despite placing 20th, much like EliGE’s ranking this year is far from a reflection of how good he looked. The important part is that HLTV, ostensibly the home of modern CS esports in many ways, has recorded this for people to better understand historical storylines.
Their inclusion of justifications and a run-down of what the players on the list did that year allows better-intentioned readers to actually make their own judgments after the fact. Even better in the modern era is the inclusion of a fringe 21-30 rough ranking, to ensure as many strong players as possible are discussed (although I believe these honourable mentions should be listed on HLTV as well).
Aside from the specific rankings HLTV produces, the very fact some semblance of a central CS hub is producing these rankings allows for the discourse to be made in the first place. If you disagree with the placements, you have the opportunity to voice it and piggyback on the conversational train the lists end up creating. This now extends to the HLTV Awards as well, where specific roles like site anchors get the spotlight as well - letting people argue over whether Jimpphat or zont1x are better at their specific job.
Some would prefer that this level of discourse stays restricted to the niche CS nerds like you and I, and that the rabble of CS fans don’t get fed opinions they couldn’t formulate. I’ll talk about that downside later, but for now, I think it’s worth talking about the merits of putting it out there in the first place.
The Bad - One Authority Above All
The hard truth that people don’t want to hear is that the majority of CS2 fans are not interested in doing the hard yards and forming their own opinions on many things in CS2. The quality of conversations goes up when you’re forced to actually think a little for yourself and wonder “how good are these players and teams actually?”.
A major downside of what HLTV does is that it is a primary source with very little competition. Alternative rankings such as launders’ top 20, or MVP awards given by personalities in lieu of HLTV’s MVPs, do exist - but they will receive a fraction of the views and will not be remembered in the same way. You can’t blame HLTV for putting their MVPs and top 20 trophies in their player profiles, but the side effect of doing so is that people who didn’t see anything else and don’t care to look a little deeper will have a false sense of confidence in their position when they agree with HLTV’s stance.
Part of the problem is the scale and ubiquitous nature of HLTV’s various awards. If someone develops an opinion such as “I think ZywOo is better than s1mple across CS:GO” on their own, you can show them the results and context and probably convince them otherwise. Unfortunately, we live in a world where HLTV has ranked ZywOo the best player in the world multiple times (some deserved, some not), and so every ZywOo supporter feels like they have the weight of an entire website behind their words, and will not be as easily convinced. The flip side of my positive “there’s a story being told!” angle is that it allows HLTV to rewrite history, whether intentionally or not.
This extends to the statistics and other features, not just the rankings. I might do an entire piece on HLTV’s rating (although it has been updated recently and a 3.0 version is seemingly in the works), but suffice to say that while I think HLTV rating is reasonably accurate, it is essentially a number that acts as a substitute for watching the game and judging the performance of the players. I recognise it in myself as well, so this isn’t just an outward facing criticism - I’ll often reference the rating and use it! It’s been accurate enough to earn that right.
I find that it’s most useful, like everything else, as an accompaniment to actually watching and critically engaging with the CS games. At this point, I have my own personal barometer with respect to HLTV ratings for each player - so I don’t judge low ratings from supportive elements and don’t overrate high ratings by stars, especially against weak opposition. This is not something that I expect the wider CS community to replicate, and is partly why I think having HLTV be the sole source of one’s CS analysis is ineffective.
The Neutral Conclusion - It Is What You Make Of It
At the end of the day, HLTV is a valuable source of data and resources (even if their private data stash is certainly much more valuable than what they allow access to on the website). Short of downloading every demo yourself and parsing it, HLTV’s statistical database allows you to draw comparisons and conclusions from raw numbers and output alone. No matter how many times a ranking or award is “wrong”, the base numbers will never lie, and anyone who wants to start thinking a little deeper can get started immediately. That’s one thing I will always hold true.
Even their “biased” MVPs and various rankings and awards can be looked at in the context of their creation. For those of us with the time and dedication, this is a much better alternative than not having any standard to compare against. Aside from the fun you can derive from going against the grain, you get to really think about why you disagree, which keeps you on your toes. I often find myself going back and forth only to arrive at the titular conclusion that it really just is what you make of it.
My personal conclusion is something like this - you won’t be able to convince the wider crowd of tangential CS2 fans about much, regardless of HLTV’s existence. HLTV, while at times inaccurate to my personal angles, is a good enough approximation of the truth to be the “default” option.
It also, conveniently enough, acts as a marker for people who haven’t got anything else to say. A good analogy is that it’s like citing Wikipedia - while it’s certainly true that the page you’re reading is composed from primary sources and multiple editors, you’re always better served by reading and citing the original material. When someone’s argument for why a player is great starts with “They were #16 on HLTV”, instead of a more granular “they performed well in these tournaments/matches” (specifically, in longer discussions - as shorthand, it works well!), and there’s no further elaboration beyond that, there’s a good chance they weren’t there to figure out what’s behind the thing they are citing. There’s not even an inherent problem in that - it can be a moment of elucidation and learning for the curious.
At the end of the day, I think more and more people realise every day that there are imperfections and flaws in HLTV’s process for rankings and MVPs. My wish is that people take that as a sign to develop a stronger internal compass for the esport and video game they are passionate about, and not just blindly shout criticisms into the void. It may be too late to create a better type of esports fan, but I’m still naive enough to dream about it.
Afterword
Thanks for reading my article, and happy new year! I felt like it was only apt to do a little rambling regarding HLTV’s rankings considering we are in the midst of their top 20 as I type this.
I’d also like to extend a thanks to everyone who supported me, whether it’s a free subscription to my Substack, follows on my Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, and so on. This has definitely been my most successful year and while I don’t know what’s ahead, I’ve stuck to one article per month as a minimum standard and kept it going for quite some time now. I hope to see you all in 2025, as CS2 esports enters a new era.
If you want to keep track of my personal thoughts or ask me questions, follow me on Twitter! Alternatively, if you want more back and forth discussions, I’ll link an invite to my Discord server. (Warning, I’m playing a lot of The Bazaar at the moment…)