EvrMoar

I guess my question would be this then:

Would you prefer that you be stuck at that rank and you only gain little to no points? Like the arrow system, winning a match and getting 1 arrow.

In the prior system, it was tied much more to MMR then the current one. It would be very difficult to increase your rank if you didn't improve. In the current system if you are winning, quiet a bit more then losing, but not improving your MMR(or you out pace your MMR gains) we still let you climb a little. If you start to get a little too far ahead of your MMR, competitive will push you down harder. Ranked has the goal of finding your current skill level.

This can also be because of things like grouping up, really skewing your MMR/Matches slightly. If you group up with a lower MMR player you can potentially gain less MMR because you are being brought down by your group. This may even be a way people would try to exploit the system to get RR gains. That's the reason we have t...

Thanks for helping the community, it's nice to see information circulating to help inform people!

Ranked is always tricky. The better we get at determining player skill, or creating rules to try and create a more accurate system in getting players to their true MMR rating, it can complicate things. I definitely want to keep talking about the system, because it helps not only figure out what we need to make better, but also helps people learn why we do things the way we do it.

I don't like the perception that we "Have X design to increase grinding and to get people playing". At the end of the day we just want a fun, competitive game, because that will get people playing. By having a ranked system that can accurately find your true skill level we set up a very healthy competitive atmosphere. If we can maintain truly accurate ranks, and leaderboards, it will just help develop pro/amateur scenes and also create fun competitive match making for players.

We enjoy ...

I've seen people talk about this, being frustrated that wins are worth less then losses. This was the case in the arrow system as well, you just didn't see it(or people just complained about getting 3 arrows down and only 1 up).

Unfortunately, because we let people group up to 5 and because shooters are much easier to carry then say a moba - we have to be a little more aggressive with your Ranked Rating. It's very easy to have a group of friends boost you to a rank you may not belong in, by feeding you wins etc. The system can tell if your win MMR is high, but your performance MMR is low.

That means that the only way to truly climb is to actually get better and skill out of low ranks, increasing your performance MMR. Yes, technically you will get a small bump in win MMR by just chain winning games but there is still a performance factor.

The system does not want you to game it, or try to manipulate it, and will push against you if you start to get too far aw...

MMR is important because one match where you get 54 kills is awesome! But that's just one match. We don't know if players just fed you kills in their spawn, maybe someone was super tilted and having a bad game, maybe you were just having a good game etc.

Unfortunately, one game is just one game in you career. Just like you don't want to be punished for having a game where teammates may throw/tilt, we can't overly reward you for having an insane game either. But by having those insane games you are increasing your hidden MMR. Every game is changing your MMR, so by having good games that is how you will raise your MMR, which will increase your RR gains, which will help you climb.

Rank cares about finding your your true skill, the only way that is possible is by testing you at where it thinks you belong and pushing you exactly to that spot. If you improve, changing where you belong, you will get pushed upwards.

The other points about certain agents having highe...

Based on those numbers you are only like maybe a sub-rank ahead of your MMR.

So you converged, but there is always a chance you can pull away from your MMR by grouping up or if you are winning but not increasing your performance MMR.

Technically you have two MMR's, performance and Win MMR. Low ranks factor in more performance, high ranks use more win MMR - when you get to upper immortal it's only win MMR. So there is always a chance that you go on a win streak(or lose streak) and you deviate slightly from your MMR. We let you deviate because if you prove yourself and keep winning your MMR will adjust and converge to your new rank. Essentially keep winning and you will be fine and reverse your RR gains/losses :)

Yes! Altho you still have to at least win 9 games to fill your Rank Act Badge. So essentially, you still have to win 9 games but your highest win will be your Act Rank.

I do want to say there are lots of people, and we know this through feedback and surveys, that feel like there isn't anything wrong with queue.

So I think that's the hard part is figuring out why some players feel this way, while others don't. I would be lying if we didn't think some of it comes down to just frustrations with matches. I'm sure not having a good match, a toxic player, afk, a player that is lower rank then you not performing, etc. can all make you start to blame the match maker. We get feedback that's "Match Making is unfair" then when we investigate we see that they actually are having close matches, they just want to blame losses on another player or the match maker. So I think having open conversations about why players feel that way may help us find other solutions. I'm not saying our match maker is perfect, but I find it interesting that nothing has changed for this act and we are seeing an increase in complaints about it.

We don't show MMR not j...

Sorry you've been having a rough experience in match making. I definitely think us getting rid of AFK's, and battling toxicity more, will really help a ton in queues. Right now I think people feel like they can AFK freely, and just take a queue timer hit(which doesn't matter if you are logging off for the night).

Hopefully by improving those things you'll see a better queue!

I was just about to get some sleep, after staying up way to late playing games(man it's rough, I really need to go to bed earlier). But I saw this post and really wanted to comment.

I think there is a perception going around that matches aren't fair, which I totally understand. When you see a bronze on your team in gold, it feels unfair. At the same time, the match maker is pushing them there because that player has shown a drastic increase in skill to belong there. That being said, I think that creates more issues of how meaningful your forward facing rank is, match making quality, etc.

I definitely want to tackle match fairness first. We have not changed how match making works, from the previous episode. When you queue it's using the exact same rules/math that would have been used to put you in matches last season. If we were to flip the client back 2 months, and you were to queue, you would get the same players in your matches as you would now. The only thing we ...

do u mean to turn it off to get a consistent experience across windows and valorant for muscle memory?

I don't know if Valorant gets around it or not. I don't know how that works, I just turn it off so if you play any game at all it's turned off. There is a big debate in the aim community how much muscle memory really is a thing, because you have people like TenZ who change their sensitivity weekly or daily.

So yea, not sure tbh. I would just turn it off to be safe.

Don't forget to turn off mouse acceleration in windows by default!

Go to the search menu, type "Mouse" open mouse settings. Scroll down to Additional Mouse Options, open that. Then click on the "Pointer Options" tab and uncheck "Enhance Pointer Precision". Click Apply, and Ok!

Mouse acceleration makes it so the speed of your mouse movement will increase cursor distance. So with it on if you move 1inch to the right, your mouse will move further the faster you move. When you turn it off, when you move 1 inch to the right, your cursor will always travel the same distance regardless of speed. It's better to have it off, in my opinion, because it creates consistent mouse movement.

Also, as a Dev on the Valorant team, Welcome! I remember my first PC! I left COD eSports and my first few games were Unreal Tournament and Starcraft. I really didn't dive in deep until World of Warcraft, but once you start you can't stop! Hope you enjoy Valorant!

I think the first thing you have to accept, in any ranked, is that there will be smurfs, afk's, toxic teammates, tilted teammates, etc. The thing about that is you are the constant factor in all of your ranked matches. I understand people are frustrated, and like to assume that someone who is destroying in their match is a smurf, but realistically they aren't as common as I think the community believes. So no matter what, yes you will have games with smurfs or AFK's, but realistically you should play enough matches where those matches are a small factor in your overall ranked history.

Before I burn myself, we have AFK penalties incoming. We are definitely aware how awful having an AFK teammate is in ranked.

To answer your first question, all the players in your match are of the same skill(or atleast the match maker thinks so). So you really shouldn't be playing actual immortals in silver, unless that immortal player is being tested(has their MMR) at silver. This is ...

You actually have two MMR's. You have a win/loss MMR, and a skill MMR. In lower ranks your skill MMR is a bigger factor in climbing, in higher rank it's your Win/Loss MMR. In immortal+ it's only win/loss MMR.

The skill MMR is actually pretty impressive. It looks at ability usage, if a smoke helped take a site, if a flash got a teammate a kill, if you are an entry fragger, etc. It also knows if you should have won a 1v1(by comparing the skill MMR of your opponent, and skill advantages of the 1v1 when you try to take the duel). Because the system looks at so much, it's actually pretty difficult to game the system. Plus even if you were good enough to manipulate the system, at some point that would just be playing good enough to climb ranked. When a player is that skilled, it turns into winning/lossing as what determines their rank.

I guess maybe there is some way to manipulate it, we haven't been able to think of. That being said usually just winning and playing your ...

Unfortunately this looks like someone who manipulated their MMR very hard.

It looks like they are on an account that may be on the extreme low end of MMR. So either it isn't their account, or they purposely de ranked the account to the depths of the MMR abyss.

I'm probably setting myself up for failure, but our system is usually pretty good at trying to get smurfs out of low ranks quickly. Unfortunately the more games an account has, the more confident the system may be in their MMR. So there is a chance that this person is playing on an account that has 100's of low iron games, and the system is pretty sure the player belongs there. Now that the player has been doing insanely well, the system will start to re-evaluate their MMR and they will be moved accordingly.

So what's happening. Their MMR is probably the lowest of low in Iron 1, so because they are Iron 2 they are now above their MMR. When they won games, the game is like "Yo you should be Iron 1, in f...

Thanks for engaging! I don't want to dismiss your concerns at all. Just because we think we are doing the right thing doesn't mean you aren't frustrated. Even tho we may be happy with where we are at now, we need to keep improving the system.

This is just the beginning, we all just want the game to keep getting better!

The system actually is better for low MMR players just as much as getting smurfs out of your matches. I understand it sucks getting above where you belong and not being rewarded as much for a win.

The reason you don't belong at a higher rank is because you aren't playing at that skill level, or winning enough to get there. There probably is a small number of players, and we are checking to see if we need to fix this, that some how got above their MMR and their MMR may not be increasing fast enough. But there are also players who group up with friends, and get wins they may not deserve, pushing them in ranks higher then they should be.

In lower ranks your skill MMR means more then it does in higher ranks. You could be winning matches, but your skill is below players of the ranks you are getting pushed into. Ranked isn't ment to be a system you grind and just climb, you have to actually have the skill to belong at that rank.

Again, I'm concerned there may be i...

If you stomp on silvers, we don't know your rank is my point. We just know you are better then silvers. Stomping silvers doesn't say you're gold, plat, diamond, or immortal. It only means you are better then a silver. Why would we let you ruin a players game, when we already have an idea where you belong?

Even tho we may have an idea, we are often wrong in your early matches. Almost all Elo systems need 1000+ games to know your actual "Rank" or Elo, in those systems. Arguably that's the same, and even worse, in our system. Because we have way more things changing, like maps, agents, etc. I think it's fair to say we put you where we think you belong quickly and test you to see if you belong there.

On the point of getting better, it's just one of many reasons we do this. We also aren't slowing your process to your true rank, we are actually finding your true rank faster. Making you play low rank players would just be a barrier, not an assist, in finding your rank. Rem...

You got it right in your edit, that your hidden MMR is higher then silver.

To pull back the curtain a little, almost all(I say almost because I can't confirm) ranked systems use some form of skill/win based match making. If we just let you stomp on silvers, then stomp on golds, then stomp on plats, then stomp on diamonds, in order to figure out your immortal(or whatever rank) it would cause ranked chaos. Stomping on a silver doesn't prove you are plat, going toe to toe with plats and maintain an even win/loss ratio in doing so does. If our match maker thinks you are plat, it can start testing you there to confirm it.

It's also a slightly unique problem to Valorant, compared to lots of other popular games that have big ranked queue populations. Because it's easier for a player to carry in a tac-shooter, compared to a Moba, it makes us have to be more sensitive about match fairness and quality.

That being said, how other people do it aside, right now we believ...

Ranked rating can be tied to MMR if you knew the math.

I'm going to make up numbers, but lets say a players MMR in immortal+ is 1500. Lets say their actual ranked rating is like 50 on the leaderboard.

Maybe 50 ranked rating is actually 1200 MMR, so they will earn increased ranked rating per win(and less for a loss) until they get to 1500. Then when they converge, if they don't improve or get worse, and their MMR sits steady they will gain an even per win/loss off matches.

Essentially we are always pulling you to your MMR with convergence, and the system knows how much rank rating you should have based on your MMR and will get you there no matter what(you just need to put in enough games).

Also you have two MMR's, a skill MMR and a win/loss MMR. Immortal+ is win/loss MMR only. So it's much easier for them to converge and stay with their MMR since skill is not a factor. Where as lets say someone places in bronze, converges at silver, then suddenly they...

Unfortunately most Elo-like systems require 1000+ games to actually know your true rank. That's also in an environment where the rules may stay static, no new content(like maps), very static rules - essentially chess.

Because we have to take a more proactive approach, your MMR is still pretty in flux until you hit the 50-100 game mark. We saw lots of feedback that "Two bad games demoted me twice!" alternatively if someone popped-off they may have promoted into a rank they may not deserve if it was early in their confidence/mmr testing.

So this new system lets us test your MMR, get more confident in it, and converge you to the rank you belong in over time. The system also allows to create a very strict set of rules, for gains and losses, using ranked rating. In an MMR system, even if we made your MMR visible, every match would be vastly different in gains/losses. One match you may gain next to nothing, where the next you may gain a ton of MMR. Switching to ranked rat...