Do not confuse Threat with Rank. Threat is an indicator of how well you have done vs opposing players in a mission.There are 15 levels of threat, often refered to in forums as TL or Threat Level. These are not indicated by numbers in the game but rather a symbol. The graphic on the left (which i do NOT take credit for) shows the Enforcers threat symbols on the left and Criminals on the right. This was a great find for me as I had no idea where i was sitting with my threat vs others in the beginning.
The actual math is unknown to me right now but the simple explanation is the further below in threat a target is, the less your reward will be, and if they kill you, they will get a big bonus and your threat will go down. If you are killing high threat players, you will rise up in threat pretty fast. Its not too hard to hit TL15 if you are killing other TL15s easily. Remember though, if you are TL10 and are taking missions VS TL1, you aren't going to get much of a bonus even if you completely own them. And if you kill them 5 times and they kill you once, they will still get more than you probably. So its best to go after people either close to your threat or much higher.
Currently, the matchmaking system seems to be pretty random, i get put up against TL1s and TL15s no matter what my TL is, so it doesn't really seem to be all that fair at times. The biggest annoyance is being TL-12 or so and than getting 2 TL 7s thrown against you. Yeah they are probably worse players but 1v2 is always a pain if they stick together and it easily ruins your threat.
