EvrMoar

We actually talked about our smurf investigation in a previous Ask Val.

https://playvalorant.com/en-gb/news/dev/ask-valorant-may-6/

Unfortunately smurfing is extremely complex, and so is any type of solution we would come up with. Even if we did land on "Lets SMS verify ranked" it would take time to implement. There are plenty of websites, and easy ways, to get around SMS. I'm not saying it wouldn't help, but whatever solutions we come up with we have to make sure they are the best solutions to spend our time on.

That's only one potential solution to Smurfing, which doesn't solve the whole problem and we may have a method that we believe would reduce smurfs more than S...

^ We try to avoid duplicates when possible, but when you have 10 people going into a match together it can be difficult. This comes up in our internal talks every once and a while, especially when we see feedback about getting duplicates. It gets better as we add more maps, but we may need to look at how it's functioning in the future.

Your gains/losses are based on your actual ladder standing.

It's not about how many hours or games you play, it's about beating people higher on the ladder and taking their spot. The system feels grindy because we won't just let you out grind players on the leaderboard without actually earning it.

Winrate is a decent example to determine how well you're doing, but lets say you are only winning when paired against people below you on the ladder and lose when put against those above you. If 56% of the time you are getting in matches with players below you, you should be wining. But that 44% you lose because they are above you. So while winrate, again, is a good indicator of how well you are doing it doesn't show how well you are doing compared to those above you.

TenZ had an issue that he couldn't get #1 during Ep 2. Act 1. He was 4th and had 56% winrate or something. Unfortunately, the 3 people above him had over 60%. When you get to those top couple thousand...

My main point wasn't to say "there isn't problems". There are definitely things we want to change, improve, etc. But I do think there are things that people blame ranked for, that aren't true or don't exist.

So my question to you is how do we fix ranked for someone blaming "winners/losers queue" for why they are losing when it doesn't exist?

We also measure community sentiment, in surveys, data, etc. It's very difficult to measure social media. If an influencer complains about ranked, or an issue, then lots of people will agree with them(even people who don't play ranked or Valorant at all). The stuff that we can measure, surveys and data, we have seen increases in ranked satisfaction since the overhaul and each update we've made. Because of this, we believe that yes there are issues, and things that the community may be upset by, but Ranked is not in the worst state it's ever been(as some claim it to be).

I've worked at Riot for 7 months. My salary or any m...

On your first point, I agree that this feels bad. We are looking at making this "I'm above my MMR and getting pushed down" and trying to make it feel better. The hard part is that no matter what we do or what system we use, something like this will occur. This is because you will be held accountable to the rank you belong to at some point, and this is touching your second point a little bit, but there isn't secret math holding you back or holding ranks down. If a player groups with friends, and gets boosted, or if you are just win streaking, but that win streak is not enough to raise your MMR(but you end up ranking up from pure win/loss) there is a chance that you end up a rank above where you belong. Getting above your MMR is worse in our system because we eat your points when you hit 0 RR of a rank, which means we are deleting Ranked Rating from your rank without penalizing you for it, which leads to inflation of your ranked rating; but if we didn't have demotion protection, it m...

Thank you for the kind words.

Yes we do match off hidden MMR, not forward facing rank. This is one of the things on my list that I want to improve on. We fixed and changed a lot of the easier targets, which make ranked feel better. Next, we need time to build the fixes for some of the more complex issues(like it feeling bad when you see lots of different ranked players in your match).

Nah, it's a "might" because of how the change works and affects match-making.

It was actually two fixes; we wanted to make two tweaks, which affected low and high ranks differently. The diamond and below change probably won't see a match-making time change. immortal+ might, but it doesn't seem like it. We just wanted, to be honest, there is a chance.

When you tighten match-making, you are saying, "Grab from a smaller pool of players." so now, if there aren't enough players in the pool, you have to wait until there is. So that's why matchmaking time would increase.

My point is that we get feedback, like the above comment, where "Valorant is broken because of X" - when that X isn't true or doesn't exist. So then it becomes a "why does the player feel this way?".

We can't solve problems that don't exist. A great example is winners/losers queue. There is no such thing in Valorant matchmaking that does this, or even a reason matchmaking would make you think this occurs. So we wanted to figure out why people thought it did. After we investigated this issue, it seems to be confirmation bias that this happens. It doesn't matter how much it doesn't exist; if someone is adamantit does, they blame something that doesn't exist for why ranked is terrible.

Such issues like that, along with people that may not be climbing ranked because they reached their peak, perpetuate problems that aren't true and makes the space harder for navigating. Also, these ideas that don't exist or aren't true spread. A new ranked player gets upset about a losin...

Link your tracker.gg if you are comfortable talking about your games openly, we can talk about why you are getting those point values.

I see this feedback a lot that "Season X was better, why did they change it" or "Match making was so much better in a previous season"

We actually have not changed how the game determines MMR, or match-making, since launch. We did make one tweak, to help high MMR players(top 50 players in the world at the time) find matches faster. BUT that being said, the system isn't making different matches than it was in Episode 1.

You are getting the same matches you would have gotten 6+ months ago. The most significant difference now is that the community has been getting better since the launch of Valorant, and of course, we've added a bunch of content.

We also measure all of this, to see how often games really are a "stomp", skill gaps between players on teams, the skill fluctuation of players(if you have a good/bad day), and tons of other ways to try and measure "Ranked Health". Lastly, we also survey you, the players, and ask questions about ranked and gather data ...

Low ranks actually care more about individual performance. That's how smurfs have a hard time keeping accounts in low ranks.

Every duel you take, every assist, ability use, site take, entry frag, bomb plant, defuse, etc. is all tracked to see how you are effecting the match and if you are enabling your team to win. Did you win a duel against a player that has a higher skill then you? Awesome, you gain MMR for winning that duel and climb up.

This system is heavily weighted in lower ranks, where skill differences are usually much bigger and it's easier to tell when a player is very good. In higher ranks, where aim and reaction speed start to normalize, it becomes less and in immortal+ it's pure win/loss.

That's how people climb out of bronze/silver so fast, is because they are outperforming those ranks by quite a bit and the system throws them upwards. Remember ranked is a ladder, if you beat people above you in the ladder you climb.

Hiko has been complaining about ranked for a while, and this change was targeted at all ranks not just Radiant :)

Our competitive data analyst just had a great response to a Hiko feedback video; I highly suggest checking it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/nbqpep/hikos_thoughts_on_current_state_of_ranked/gy1vobs/

Congrats!!!!

Having little goals for yourself helps a ton in your early skill development in shooters! Keep it up, maybe we'll bump into each other in ranked someday >:)

Sorry, I'm out and preppin my move to LA(I guess I actually have to move there to work AT Riot :P ).

There was a bug where players ranks were set incorrectly, but it didn't touch their MMR. We saw some games like this during the first week of the Act. Also it could have been a player that tanked placements but was corrected when caught smurfing. I actually don't know how possible it is to get an iron account into plat MMR, before actually getting it hits bronze, so I think this was probably the bug!

I'd hit up that Breeze 24/7 playlist, learn it for when it hits ranked!

In all seriousness tho we are trying to make it so you start at the spot you would have after your placement.

There is definitely a bug. We fixed it for players who have not played their placements yet(so you are fine to play your placements!)

Unfortunately it's going to take a little more time for people that did get placed incorrectly.

Congrats!!!!

I just want to say, I know that ranked is a contentious thing with lots of different expectations in how it should function. I'm also not saying the system is perfect, we obviously are still working on improvements and always will be.

That aside, I love the community responding to this and having thoughtful discussion. All of you are amazing, and thank you so much for taking time to inform people on topics like these. Not only does it help people learn, it helps me see if maybe there is a misunderstanding with how things are working. I can explain all I want, but if people are confused or can't tell someone else how it's working, we need to probably investigate why.

Just wanted to say thanks, and if you are frustrated with ranked I'm sorry! We will always be trying to improve it!

We get a little bit of VP to give away, but most devs already gave it out. I have a very little bit left, so I thought I'd do what I could :)

I think I may have a very little bit of VP left I could give you. It may not be enough, but it should make it so you can buy a few levels and hopefully be able to complete the pass. Shoot me a message.