EvrMoar

ACS is not used to calculate RR gains and losses and has no impact on your MMR either!

If you hover ACS is should show how it's calculated at the EOG scoreboard. It's more just a measure of how effective you were in combat that game, not how your RR or MMR is moving.

At Activision I never even talked to the people who filed patents, they were very far disconnected from the game making process. I didn't even know this existed, nor would I have a reason to implement.

I like the conspiracy idea around it tho :)

I don't see a reason to make something like this, in fact the goal of match making is to get the most fair matches possible. Lots of research, from tons of games I've worked on, has shown that the more fair a match is the more satisfied the player is. There is no reason to make players miss more, or be worse, plus you would have to balance that against the human element. It's already difficult to get fair match making, due to players countering each other based on playstyle alone(not even taking into account good/bad games); what benefit would you get from trying to have fair matches while also handicapping players for no reason?

I never took the stance of "Not wanting to piss off high ranked players" because they spend more money. If you work in games you will learn very quickly that your highest engaged players spend money on your game, this is true of every game I've ever worked on.

High rank players are often high rank because they are high engaged, which usually means they probably invest into your title as well. It also means statistically they are more likely to invest money into your game. This means that high rank players, who are the smurfs, are also more likely to buy accounts because:

1. They need to to get around our ranked restrictions.
2. Because they are that high engaged user, they are more likely to invest into Valorant, so it's not a far step to think they would buy an account.

I've said it in other comments, but we have done a smurf investigation(which we haven't done a good job of communicating the results of this but we are still finishing this ...

I understand what you're saying, my main point is that you assume your MMR is higher or lower or doing things without actually knowing what it's doing. Which I understand is a complaint we hear often, but I won't dive into the MMR/Rank debate about that(I have a ton of comments focusing on that).

MMR is a ladder, if you lose you go down if you win you go up. If you truly are losing games you will go down the ladder, there is no stopping it. In your hypothetical if a radiant lost that many games they would not be radiant. They MIGHT be able to combat that loss by doing really well and keeping their encounter MMR high, but 30 games and how important win/loss MMR is at that rank, they would definitely drop in MMR hard.

There is no imaginary number or system that holds people back, or holds people up. It's simply how you are performing compared to all the other players on the ladder. MMR is just you standing on a rung of the ladder, and your MMR pulls your rank to it. W...

We could do that, but honestly, you can get around those issues as long as your math to pull rank to MMR is strong enough. It doesn't matter if we eat 30 points, if you truly deserve to lose 30 points you will be pulled in that direction and your win/losses will make that up.

In general, we weren't looking to create gates for players to rank up. We just didn't like that direction for Valorant(I don't work on league so I can't comment on that space). Because our match maker is very complex we have faith in the matchmaker and MMR system to help us avoid those needs.

Great write-up!

I'd love to point out is you talking about the math behind how many matches it would take, and gaining 375 RR after 50 matches. One thing that isn't obvious is all of the RR we just eat/gift from promotion/demotion. A player could be at 1 RR, lose a match for -20RR, but we would put them at 0 instead of demote at 81RR. This adds up, a lot actually. We are constantly giving you free ranked rating by eating that RR you would normally have to earn back if you demoted from that match. This also happens on promotion, because we won't let you start lower then 10 RR on promote.

Overall we eat a lot of points, or give out points, which actually was an issue we had with ranked inflation and had to adjust the math slightly earlier in the year. Thanks for the write-up!

I'm super busy, I love the feedback and you bring up some awesome points. I just wanted you to know I saw your response and thinking about some of the things you brought up.

have a good one, and hopefully I'll see you around!

Glad you've been a fan for so long, I've only been at Riot for a year. I also have played league since beta, and have an original copy of league sitting behind me!(I actually met pendragon at a pub crawl in pax 2011!)

I think it's difficult to argue what a "good ranked" system is by opinion. What games have systems that aren't lame? I don't think I've seen a community not complain about ranked, not that it should be an excuse for the problems players in Valorant face. In terms of comparing us to league, I didn't even talk to league when we reworked the rank system. Our match making, MMR system, and point gains/losses are completely different than leagues. Of course we have a 1-100 rank up system, but we went that route because it's easy to understand(we can make the number be whatever we want).

In terms of pushing pro play, ranked also has no say or impact on that. We didn't design anything for pro play, or to push sales. How we design in the competitive space is to...

congrats!!!!!!!

The lower ranks have heavier "Encounter" MMR and the higher ranks have heavier "Win/Loss" MMR.

Encounter = Performance based MMR

Win/Loss = Win/Loss based MMR

Honestly playing 200 games probably helped push you to just be better, I would not be surprised if you went back on your main and put in that much effort if you didn't climb. That being said, if you get hard stuck in immortal+ it's a combo of you not winning more than those above you, as well as your performance not being as high as theirs. The leaderboard is built to try and force your point values to match your MMR, so you can't out grind the leaderboard and earn a position you don't deserve.

This is an interesting theory! I'm not going to say it isn't possible, but it's very unlikely and that's because of what other people pointed out "Convergence". We multiply your gains/losses by your MMR/Rank difference and it pushes you to your MMR.

The system is technically putting their MMR at the level they are playing at. If the chill player is truly "playing relaxed" the system will put his MMR where he belongs when he's playing relaxed. That means he may be a high plat player, but the system puts him in low plat MMR. He isn't winning more often because he's a high plat player in low mmr, he's winning the same amount as the high plat player because of how MMR works. Yes he may be able to "Turn On" and may be able to climb after essentially tanking his MMR, but it just moves his MMR to high plat and he would be in the same spot as the try hard player.

No matter what convergence will make it so your rank matches your MMR. Some players take 10 games to get their r...

I see the comment "Reroll/Make an Alt and you will rank up" - fun fact we actually researched this!

In a sense, you have to end up somewhere when you make an account. You will either end up below, at the same, or above the rank you were on your main. That being said you have less than a 40% chance to end up above the rank of your main if you roll a new account. Even when we tried to validate if this was a real issue the math just didn't add up. We even went as far as removing anything in the MMR system that would give the perception or feeling of being hardstuck, at the beginning of episode 3.

So yes, if you make an alt account there is a chance you will end up above your main in rank; this is because you rank will fall somewhere. BUT you have much higher chance ending up below your current rank then you do above your current rank.

The only stat that I've seen in terms of "Do this to rank up!" is play more Valorant. In every game I've ever worked on the peop...

Performance bonuses are applied to draws, that 1 point is your performance bonus. Performance bonus is given out based on how well you perform compared to how your MMR expected you to perform in that match. If you were the highest rank, or the highest skilled player, maybe you were expected to do very well and only performed slightly better then expected.

This would be even more true if you were silver queueing with a friend/players that are lower rank. The more likely you are to be the highest MMR/Ranked player the higher you are going to have to perform(because the average MMR of the teams are probably going to be lower then your MMR since you are the highest skill player).

after you play your first placement you start at 10% of the RR value you had at the end of the last act. For example; If you had 800 RR you would start the new Act with 80rr.

People are demons and have already grinded that many games.

I have no idea unfortunately! I don't handle that side of things, I'd look around twitter maybe?

Our system always tries to put 5 stacks against 5 stacks. We believe in our match maker to make fair matches. While I get the perception and feeling of going against a 5 stack can suck, especially when not in a 5 stack, we know our match making does a good job in making these matches fair. That being said it doesn't happen often where we have to put a 5 stack against a non five stack.

So no, not all ranks, and we try to avoid it because it can feel bad, but the benefits of fair match making and the data we have on it shows it can make fair matches quickly.

3 stacking is still okay! You just won't be able to 3 stack if you are diamond 3+

The rules are more complicated and we aren't talking about how being in a 5 stack effects your RR gains/losses yet. It's not as bad as you think. I'd say wait until we are willing to reveal more before passing judgement! Also if it's not working out we are always willing to change it!

No, it leads to more fair matches. The system just isn't confident in where you belong. You are never hardstuck, because ranked is a ladder. If you were to win, and show you don't belong, your MMR will go up and the system will be more unsure of where you belong. The problem when talking about ranked stagnation is that at some point you will hit your skill level. Unfortunately, when that happens you won't see ranked movement unless you actually improve, that's the feeling of being hard stuck etc.

All ranks!