EvrMoar

LETS GOOOO HYPE AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So glad we can finally talk on little bit of what we've had cooking in the kitchen. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all the feedback, for ranked, competitive, and telling us your expectations for competitive play in VALORANT. The feedback we receive helps guide us in making decisions when making something like Premier!

I see some comparisons to Clash, and I want to call out that this system isn't as much as a show-up one time and play but more of a play as a team across a season.

From the article: "The team has designed a new in-game feature called Premier that will allow you to build a team and compete across a season of pre-scheduled matches.

In Premier, you will be able to create or join a team of five friends, acquaintances, neighbors and battle for glory against teams of a similar skill level. After building a roster, your team will be placed in a division where you’ll play across a persis...

I highly recommend using https://voltaic.gg/ aim training. It lets you actually track your progress, has been built by a ton of high skill players, and actually works on multiple mechanics required for aiming.

I've done various aim training, range training, and weird other game play remedies to try and improve my skill. Honestly if you think you need to improve your aim Voltaic was the one thing where I saw consistent improvement. One thing to point out, it is not a replacement for playing VALORANT. After aim training I would always try to make it a point to play a few DM's or a match after. Also if you have to decide between Aim training or Playing a match of...

I'll pass this on to the appropriate team, thanks for the heads up!

The match-maker tries to make matches for the top players/groups in queue, starting from the longest in queue. If you get a fast pop one match, but a long queue the next, that could be because another squad was waiting a long time and you happened to queue up and be a good match.

I think it just might be confirmation bias on fast queue = stomp, because you can't tell if it was fast because we had someone waiting a long time or another team queueing at the same time matching your skill. You will never be put in a match you can't win, and it's very rare we ever have to make a match outside of 50:50; I'm not going to say they don't happen, but we also have limits of how far we will let expected winrates change.

We monitor the 5 stack changes heavily, because queue time can be a problem in Immortal+, it's all very interesting and I know late nights can have longer queues.

We've extremely reduced smurfs, actually by a pretty crazy amount. If you think about all the changes over the past year:

1. Made it easier to play with friends by expanding who can play ranked together; the iron-silver change.
2. Made it easier to play with friends by adding the 5 stack feature.
3. Implemented complex detection systems to remove purchased/bot accounts.
4. Increased the amount of time it takes to get a new account into ranked, by over 500%.
5. Implemented smurf detection systems that help us move smurf accounts to their correct MMR fast.
6. Every ranked changed considering how it will impact smurfing, and always trying to include changes that would reduce smurfs in some way(either by tackling motivation or putting up road blocks).

Despite all of these changes the feedback around smurfs haven't changed. Even when we use data, that isn't fully accurate(because it's extremely hard to for sure detect a smurf), we ...

Copied from another thread that I responded to.

We have detections in place for players that do this, and deal with them appropriately. This player and the groups specifically we were already aware of; just know that these things aren't instant, we want to validate anyone caught manipulating ranked to reduce false positives.

Definitely frustrating, but it's easy to see when people are doing this and take action. We understand that this is a bi-product of 5 stacks rules(which we think are worth the cost), and we are only going to get better at preventing it and detecting it. Hope you are having a good first week of the Act otherwise!

We have detections in place for players that do this, and deal with them appropriately. This player and the groups specifically we were already aware of; just know that these things aren't instant, we want to validate anyone caught manipulating ranked to reduce false positives.

Definitely frustrating, but it's easy to see when people are doing this and take action. We understand that this is a bi-product of 5 stacks rules(which we think are worth the cost), and we are only going to get better at preventing it and detecting it. Hope you are having a good first week of the Act otherwise!

Aim portion is the whole Voltaic aim benchmark/fundamentals, mechanics are in game(even tho they are in game) I should just say Aimlab vs. shooting range.

My quick warmup is just doing the very first shooting range, just slow aim to bot heads, then going into DM for 1-2 matches.

Voltaic is listed at the bottom, but it is it's own thing entirely. Has a ranking system, and specific fundamental aim training routines. It's probably one of the few aim training routines where I would recommend doing it, because I always worry about unfocused aim training and how much it really helps.

Also I stole this routine from an immortal player, I don't remember who unfortunately, but it's helped me a ton. So in short Aim Training = Aimlab Voltaic, Shooting range = mechanics.

Saw the tag, and just wanted to hand this out. I threw together my routine, which is ment to target specific mechanics and effectively aim train(if you choose to aim train). If you're interested: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OyH8qZ-0eD7qMRrpk0A2qXrFrwRUSAlDTy41upVxxF8/edit?usp=sharing

I usually follow these rules: My primary goal is to play 2 games a night, if I only have an hour or two I play 2 games. If I ...

!pin

Hey Everyone!

I wrote up a response to this, and we've seen this issue pop up from time to time. In order to get more visibility, in all regions of VALORANT, we have decided to answer this question in one of our upcoming "Ask Val" posts and we've started the process of moving that answer over to that space. Expect to see more info on this!

I'm going to copy and paste a response I just wrote about smurfing and what we are doing against it.

Two factor is a double-edged sword. When talking about smurfs, usually smurfs are higher engaged players that are familiar with VALORANT(which makes sense, they are good enough to smurf and make an impact). While two-factor can reduce smurfs, it's not a silver bullet, this is especially true for smurfs that are willing to spend money to smurf; which usually higher engaged players are willing to spend money so they fall into a group more likely to. It becomes a numbers game of what is acceptable and how much of an impact are players facing when encountering a smurf.

These numbers are made up, but lets say 1 in 10 games a player encounters a smurf between Iron to Silver and decreases as you climb ranks. Lets say with, after researching, we find out that two-factor authentication would probably reduce that to 1 in 15 games for these players, reducing smurfs by 50%. We w...

I think the issue is that we are doing things, but not the things that you think are valuable to reduce smurfs. Like I said, we've non-stop as a team tackled smurfs over and over again. In terms of specific types of solutions, I can also dive into those.

Two factor is a double-edged sword. When talking about smurfs, usually smurfs are higher engaged players that are familiar with VALORANT(which makes sense, they are good enough to smurf and make an impact). While two-factor can reduce smurfs, it's not a silver bullet, this is especially true for smurfs that are willing to spend money to smurf; which usually higher engaged players are willing to spend money so they fall into a group more likely to. It becomes a numbers game of what is acceptable and how much of an impact are players facing when encountering a smurf.

These numbers are made up, but lets say 1 in 10 games a player encounters a smurf between Iron to Silver and decreases as you climb ranks. Lets say with,...

We have a survey we send out regularly to players about ranked, you may have to opt-into Riot emails to get it. We don't publicize results, but if there were concerns we had you would see us ask about opinions on change, new features, etc. in that space.

Hard switch on topics. I know that a lot of players view smurfing as a problem, and some view it as a bigger problem then others. Some people believe smurfing is more prevalent than we say it is, and others don't. Every decision we've made for ranked has always had the question "will this reduce smurfing" or "how can we change this to reduce smurfing" during the design phase. We've done things to make it easier for friends to group up together by reducing grouping restrictions or creating the 5 stack rule. We've improved our detection and MMR system to quickly move smurf accounts to their correct MMR, and are testing a new method right now in NA. We've made it harder to get into ranked, helping new players learn more about VALORANT and the maps before diving into the deep end, while also making it harder to make an alt-account just to smurf. We've done an investigation into smurf motivations, as well as how often it occurs. We aren't done, we have bigger ideas in the works but we h...

First, I really want to call out something that I think "humanizes" the shadowy people(me and other Rioters) that these posts seem to call out; often viewing dev's or employees as evil shadowy figures trying to manipulate their community. Most Rioters love games and play games all the time. Even if a Rioter doesn't play games, they are passionate about what they are working on and want to work on awesome things that make people happy. For example; I use to play in esports, I'm on discord every single night looking for that new exciting game for our group, I'm grinding aimlabs, raiding every Monday and Tuesday on FFXIV and this is just me - I have way too many discords full of Rioters playing games every night and hanging out. It's very rare to find someone who wants to work in a place to make a bad game, or something that is just not fun to play/manipulative because it's mentally draining to do so. We all have our opinions, but generally we know what feels bad in a game and we are ...

This is super interesting data, and a lot of what you found "makes sense to me" in terms of doing better on days you don't work etc. I know this is just your experience and matches, which can really effect your results/info but it's still interesting and a fun experiment non the less.

I definitely can see attitude can go a long way. I mean, "flow state" is a thing and outside forces can pull you out of it or essentially make you overthink and play incorrectly. It's a meme, but really the moment you are toxic you are turning the game into a 4v6.

Thank you for all the conversations we've had about ranked and matchmaking, and I look forward to whatever you work on next!

This is awesome!

So as someone who use to work on COD weapons, I'm not an animator but the weapon designers help the animations with a lot of the screen tilts, shakes, and usually handle most of the recoil.

I highly recommend referencing the newest Modern Warfare, they had a decent amount of time and put a ton of work into their Animations.

It looks like your shake may be a little strong, but you pointed that out in one of the other comments. In my opinion, and again I was a weapons designer not an animator, I would only apply that shake when there is a force that gets noticeably distributed through the body. I think there is a shake occurring when the weapon is taken off of the shoulder to start the reload/inspect, it's awkward because it's hard to visualize that action in first-person and how it impacts the player.(You can tell the weapon comes to a stop against the shoulder when you push it back in after the reload, you can't tell when the weapon leaves c...

(:<

You and your friend are on different journeys in ranked. Remember that your points are based on your individual MMR, which is where you sit on the ladder of ALL ranked players in Valorant.

Points are determined by 4 things:

1. winning/losing.

2. How many rounds you win/lose compared to your opponent(round differential).

3. If you performed above what your MMR thought you should perform(performance bonus star).

4. All the above point values multiplied by your convergence, which is your current rank being pulled to your MMR.

So, lets say you are Silver 1 and your friend is also Silver 1. If your MMR thinks you are Silver 3, but your friends MMR thinks he is Silver 2, then your convergence will multiply your RR gains higher then your friends. Alternatively, you could have gotten a bigger performance bonus because your performed better then expected but your friend performed as expected.

At the end ...