EvrMoar

why are people under diamond 3 not considered the same as those higher rated? why can't I get a solo/duo queue like them?

This is because grouping up in Valorant is EXTREMELY popular. Competitive in Valorant is a very popular queue, and so is grouping up. We are investigating other ways to create competitive experiences for players who like to team up, but that's going to be a ways off. We feel like splitting the queue would really hurt our ability to make fair matches, and reduce the enjoyment/engagement with ranked if we made it solo/duo only.

We put solo/duo on high ranks because of having a leaderboard and match queue time. At the highest level 5 stacks can be a huge problem, because they could manipulate the leaderboard and it's very hard to find a 5 stack that could play against Cloud9 or G2 for example. There just aren't enough players at that skill level queuing up.

Also, because we have more players at lower ranks, we can ...

You are making a lot of assumptions on how the system is working, when it's kind of working different. You have a lot of the right ideas, but I definitely want to talk about some of the things you are pointing out. This isn't meant to slam your thoughts, or to say "you're wrong" - I really want to explain how the system works. Your frustrated, the least I can do is explain why. I won't be able to solve your frustrations immediately, or maybe we won't be able to, but I think you deserve an explination.

rank is completely decorrelated from MMR. I've had to explain several times why I'm getting matched with plat players as a gold 1, since most people don't understand that visible rank has no link with your actual skill. always a fun moment, especially when you carry the match after this or when someone dodges based on that.

This is true, and not true. Mostly not true. After you play placements, we know the range where you might belong. If aft...

Your MMR and RR are definitely connected, and maybe a spring is a good way to think about it.

That being said, your MMR is your actual skill and performance at your rank. Due to the math, and the max cut-offs we have, there is actually a maximum amount your MMR can push your ranked rating gains. Technically you could out win your RR push downwards and climb. So technically if you were really hard stuck you could win enough to climb even if your MMR never changed. Realistically that's something like a 75% winrate and at that winrate you would be drastically increasing your MMR, because you would be winning so much.

The feeling of being hardstuck, I believe, is because players hit the rank they belong in. It's going to feel like your hardstuck because you can't consistently carry games. If you could you would be higher rank. Your MMR is purely based on your performance and win/loss; You aren't trying to perform to trick the system, your performance is being weighed ag...

Sorry, looking back at my response I don't know what I was trying to say. Lol, the problem with responding to lots of feedback all at once.

Yes, if you are truly top fragging your MMR is going up. But, top fragging isn't the only thing effecting your MMR. You have a performance and a win/loss MMR. As you get higher rank your Win/Loss MMR starts to matter more then performance. Also your performance MMR isn't only fragging; it tracks ability usage, entry fragging, if your smoke helped take a site, if your heal let your teammate clutch, etc.

So it's tricky. You could be top fragging, but not really helping your team win. Then if you aren't winning, you also won't be raising your Win/Loss MMR. Honestly, if you are winning matches and performing effectively you will be climbing the fastest possible. If you are top fragging, but not winning matches, potentially there are better ways you could help your team to win games.

On a side note, one of the things I see Ra...

!pin

ty :)

I'm not going to downplay your buddies accomplishment, it's awesome he had a good game in immortal MMR. I play against Immortal/Radiant players in our playtests everyday, but I'm only Plat. There are times I go 25+ kills, and games where I get 10. So I wouldn't write him off as an immortal god yet :)

That being said, I see a lot of talk circulating about being "Hard Stuck". I understand that lots of people want, or expect, their rank to be X. It gets frustrating if you aren't getting the rank you think you deserve, or you feel like you can blame the game for why you aren't ranking up. Unfortunately, without us investigating every upset player, there is some "Faith" we ask for in the system. Realistically we don't have the time or resources to analyze every account and break this down. I understand that in the game industry trusting the man behind the curtain has burned a ton of us in the past. But I try to be completely open about what the system is doing, and talk about as...

I don't have a ton of time to talk about this, but I did want to correct this statement.

When I started our distribution was more linear. In December we made changes to push us towards a bell curve, which we are now at. So now it's a bell curve, it was linear, you got it backwards.

While we adjusted the rank distribution, we haven't touched match making. So even tho we did change rank distribution, that doesn't change the quality/match making of your games compared to last episode. So trying to blame ranked distribution on your match making isn't necessarily correct. All ranked distribution does is move the cut-offs on where ranking up/down occurs.

Sorry if you're frustrated, but your match making is the exact same this Act as last.

This new system is built on the same match making/mmr as the arrow system. Last season your rank was your MMR, this season your MMR is used to dictate your RR gains/losses. The system is pushing you toward your MMR, which would have been very close to whatever your arrow rank was last season.

So essentially, if we were still using the arrow system you would currently be lower rank. We didn't change MMR or match making. Your current MMR is lower then your rank, so it's pushing you down. I promise if you improve, above the current rank you are playing at, you will climb.

We've investigated lots of accounts, with lots of claims like this, and have yet to find anyone who is hard stuck. We've even done things like copied accounts MMR/history, and have seen what skill improvements would do to their MMR/Rank. We have yet to find a true hard stuck account.

That being said, we are still investigating and still have plans to make the system better. Remember the system...

Consistency is the mark of a good player, and an indicator that you are at the rank you belong. Technically, in a perfect world, if the match maker had enough games from every single player playing you would get into matches where they were almost all draws and everyone was even in performance.

The more you swing up and down, with performance or winning/losing, the harder it is for the system to raise your MMR and believe you should be climbing. If you become more consistent, and start to perform better, you will climb. Remember you are in the same system as everyone else, you are the only constant factor in your matches.

It may feel like you're hard stuck, but I promise if you improve above the rank you are in you will climb. Good luck!

Thanks for playing the game :)

This clip was recorded in patch 2.01(you can see it in the bottom right). We rolled out a fix to run and gun in patch 2.02.

Hopefully this isn't occurring as much, good luck out there :)

Congrats!

Remember that you are also improving along with the community! A silver now is way better in skill then a silver player 6 months ago. Hopefully you've been enjoying ranked. Good luck out there!

You also have to think about how many people are coming back to the game, because of a new episode or new content. While the community as a whole is increasing in skill. If you were to take a silver player in this act, and make them play a silver in Episode 1 Act 1 they would be miles ahead of them in skill.

Depending on how much you play, if you play less then the average player, you will see yourself getting worse and the community as a whole getting better. Not that it's a bad thing, it's just something that happens to games overtime. This is especially true to younger games, where 1 month of playing the game is 10% of the total time that game has been out. Where in 5 years, a month of game time will be 2% of the total time the game has been out. Technically, early on, the more time invested in a game to stay on top/improve is extremely important imo.

I understand that how the game feels is more important then what any dev will tell you; I've played enough games ...

There isn't, it's an interesting idea tho. Technically it will effect your MMR differently, where the high ranking players in your group may not be gaining as much MMR as they would be solo(because the lower rank players will bring down the average match MMR and thus reduce the amount of MMR increase per win). But that also depends on the ranked/mmr differences in your group, as well as the opponents you are getting in your matches. So realistically it would probably even out over time.

We are investigating grouping in Valorant, and ideas we have around that space. Valorant is definitely a blast to play in a group and we want to support that(even in a competitive environment).

Because, in almost all Elo/MMR type systems, it takes realistically thousands of games to find your "True Rank". MMR/Elo is just one way certain games have done rank, and just because it was one of the first doesn't make it the best. It works really well for games like Chess where the rules are static, they don't change, and due to that player skill doesn't shift very much.

Alternatively you have video games. We release new agents, maps, balance patches, etc. There is no way you can get 1000+ games in a single patch, without the game changing slightly. Every time something changes in the game, the entire community has it hit their skill differently. Maybe a new agent comes out that you struggle to play against, maybe you can't learn a new map, etc. Because of this our MMR system has to try and be as accurate as possible, with minimal amount of games, as be willing to be flexible if you prove it to be wrong.

So lets say we place you in gold, because of your 5 placeme...

That isn't true at all, performance isn't just kills. It looks at ability usage, if you entry fragged, if your smoke helped take a site, if you flashed for a teammate, if you used abilities which resulted in a clutched round, etc. It looks at a lot more then just kills.

I think it's easy to blame dualists, and getting frags, because visibly those players may end up at the top of the scoreboard. But realistically, on the MMR side of things, those players aren't always getting the most MMR from a match. Remember the system is both performance and win/loss based. Whatever you feel most effective doing, to enable your team to win, will help you climb.

Another thing I think that helps dualists climb is that it's very straight forward for people to understand how to use them effectively. You run forward, flash someone, then kill them(or a teammate does). It's very easy to be effective with abilities when it's so straight forward. That also enables players to use abilities...

The system hasn't changed, we still rank you based on the same factors. Also match making hasn't changed, you are getting the same matches this Episode as you would have in the last.

The only difference is we made your gains/losses visible and put your Ranked Rating on top of your MMR(rather then 1:1 tied to it like the previous system). But the matches you play in, as well as your MMR that determines your rank, is the exact same(so much so we didn't even reset it at the start of the act).

I understand you are frustrated, but I think a lot of frustrations come from people seeing changes, losing some matches or having their rank shift, and trying to blame the new system as to why they may have gone down in rank(or believe matches are unfair).

That's not to say you aren't having bad matches, or a poor ranked experience. But if you are it's either perceived, or related to something else. I know toxicity and AFK has been a topic that has brought a lot of frustra...

Thanks for the feedback! It's definitely tricky. Valorant is fun when player in groups, and competitive play is definitely where a lot of people want to play. We will be constantly fixing and making it better, thank you for playing!

Because you have two MMR's, one based on win/loss the other performance. Technically a player could be winning, but not really doing so well in performance.

There definitely could be an edge case where a solo player gets on a 5-10 game lucky win streak, or is winning without increasing their skill. Unfortunately, even if your friend only groups up for a few games if he gets bumped even 1-sub rank above where his MMR is sitting he will be pushed down. The further he gets from that rank he belongs, the harder the push down.

It will always be a tricky situation, because we can't do a pure win/loss MMR system. Because our game has different maps, agents, the ability to 1v5 a round, etc. performance is a very good metric to understand a players rank. The reality is that in an FPS a good player can really carry a game especially in lower ranks. Unfortunately that means there is a chance you can deviate from your MMR.

I think allowing you to pull ahead of your MMR,...