EvrMoar

I am just a faithful player who is genuinely interested in Riot's view on the current state of this issue.

I'm going to give you my thoughts on the subject. While I do work for Riot(almost a year now!) this is the opinion of someone who has worked in FPS's, played competitively, and now works on Valorant. While I may have insight in the game and what's going on, and of course I'm speaking as the competitive designer, this isn't an "OFFICIAL RIOT STANCE"; I don't think the statements you're making have a "This is the answer" because a lot of this is immeasurable and without data to support anything. I will just give you what I think is happening, or what I've seen over my time in the games space.

A great example of this is how do you measure the "Mechanical Skill" levels of a game? The answer is you don't, at least we don't know how right now. Plus you would have to be able to pull data from multiple games, and publishers that aren't willin...

I think hand waving my above points and just saying "Why does he bottom frag against randoms in Diamond/Immortal" is not very fair.

I tried to tackle both sides of the "Win a match" vs "Win against X players"(When I say Win against X player, it means winning a duel not the match, sorry I speak this way because Encounter MMR is winning the duel, which is winning against that player specifically)

The fact of the matter is you have bad games. It doesn't matter how good you are, there will be days a Diamond/Immortal player can get the best of you. I beat TenZ in a DM in last Episode, but I'm not even Immortal, that's how the cookie crumbles. Maybe he was off, maybe he was trying something new, maybe he was having a tough game. Even grandmasters in chess lose games against people way below them because there is always the chance someone did something you didn't account for or you played poorly.

Also I think that there is a misconception in how much better Aim som...

This is an interesting comment, but when we investigate pros(or high ranking players) they are on those spots in the leaderboard because they do win against low ranked players.

Ranked, while complex in math, is simply a ladder. If you beat those around/above you, you climb. You can look at the top players in Radiant and most have a 60+% winrate.(of course because how MMR works winrate isn't always the best indicator of high ranking player, a high ranking player is worth more then a low ranking player when you win)

I think it may be a mix of confirmation bias, and the fact that at the end of the day our time to kill on lots of weapons is instant along with skill variance. You'll remember the streams where TenZ gets killed by an immortal 1, but he's still winning most of his matches.

In terms of why they may lose against low skill players, it happens. When I was in pro play we went from beating the #1 team in the world, and the very next day losing to a 32 se...

I'm so impressed by our community, this is awesome good work!

Only everywhere that isn't creepy, like I'd never be outside your window(unless you want me there, then I'll show up with a boombox playing "I will always love you" by Whitney Houston. You would realize that we have a connection, one that is formed by the bonds of blood and bullets on the virtual battlefield. Maybe we would start to duo queue together, we'd laugh and have great times. But then we would climb a few ranks, and we'd start to doubt, the matches would get tough and the wins would slow down. Like maybe my smokes are not setting you up with good entry into site, and we don't know how to talk about our feelings so we get into fights. Then I catch you duo'ing with another Omen, and I act like it doesn't hurt but it does. Slowly we would realize you missed my smokes, and that we were always ment to climb to immortal together, so we would fix things and I would bake you a wonderful cake to celebrate us duo'ing together again. Then right before our immortal promo's I would thr...

No u

Yo!!!!!

"Yo we got Fracture like three games in a rowwwwwww, lets gooooooo!"

"Evr, this is the Fracture playlist... You know the one you talked about in meetings, that your team had setup, to make sure it went live at the start of the Act."

"LETS GOOOOOOOOOO TEAMMMMMMMMMMM"

I really like Fracture.

We will just update the distribution and people's RR will change based on the rank they belong in!

So it's a behind-the-scenes transition that will happen over time.

Think of the episode as the ranked season, and the Acts as checkpoints!

We reward you based on your highest rank, or best Act, at the end of the episode!

Your rank will stay the same and you will be required to play one placement match in the new Act.

If you haven't played ranked at all this episode you will be required to play 5 placement matches, but you don't have to worry about that!

This is amazing, nice ink!

LOL I'M DED - this was too good

Individual performance does matter.

Encounter MMR is your individual performance for every fight you were involved with in a match. If some how a gold player got put into a match against TenZ, if TenZ killed that gold player he would get very little MMR for the kill. If that gold player killed TenZ he would get a ton of MMR because TenZ has a high encounter MMR.

It's not just killing either, your encounter MMR is influenced by damage for an assist, smokes, flashes, etc. Every duel that happens, if you were involved, it will affect your encounter MMR.

Lastly, it isn't about getting lots of kills it's about who you kill. If you drop 30 kills, but only on players below your skill, it may not be worth as much as dropping 10 kills against players above your skill.

In the end, because you have both a performance and win/loss MMR, doing what is best to help your team win and making sure you use your abilities and play effectively will enable you to climb. E...

Definitely have thought about this.

The amount of players that four stack is very small, and so is your chance as an individual to get paired on their team. BUT it still happens, so that really shouldn't be an excuse to not do anything.

Encounter MMR would help you here. Yes you may have to take a loss, and it feels bad because 4 players are forcing you into it, but all the kills and duels you had in the match still can make you gain MMR. If you are winning duels, but still lose, your encounter MMR can actually go up. Depending on the rank, especially if you are lower rank, you can actually have your MMR overall go up because encounter means more than your win/loss.

I have other concerns about 4v1 toxicity etc. In the end, you should have very few 4+1 matches, and that should reduce how often you get into these situations. Also because you do have encounter MMR you still have something that is taking into account your skill in that match.

I'm sorry you didn't see increases in your ranked after placements! It's an interesting pain point, I'll add it to my list of feedback and think on it more. I try to maintain a document of player feedback each act and see if there are things we can act on.

Every episode we do "Squish" ranks. This just pushes all ranks downwards. It helps us fight boosted accounts, accounts that are inactive, and also prevents ranked inflation. This is just to make sure people don't get to a rank, and then sit at that rank and don't really play the game anymore(or if the community improves past that player, they don't get to sit in a rank they no longer they belong).

Remember the whole community is getting better at Valorant. You are definitely getting better, but so is the whole community. To climb you need to get better faster then those around you.

I believe!!! You can get out of Iron and hopefully you see some positive improvements :)

We removed a system that could potentially lead to your MMR feeling hardstuck in Episode 3. By removing this system we had to make changes to match making slightly. We used data to compare against the old system, and found out match making would get more accurate/fair by doing this.

You have two MMR's in Valorant, Encounter and Win/loss. Your one MMR is made up of those two. In low ranked Encounter is valued more, this helps us combat smurfing because high ranking players are more consistant in their performance. In higher ranks Win/Loss becomes a bigger factor.

Because of us pulling out that system that may have had players feeling like they were "hard stuck", on top of the weighting changes of the two MMR's that make up your real MMR, it's causing big movement for some players. There are players that may have been held down in the old system climbing easier, there also is a chance that players who were being held up above their actual MMR are going to drop down.

Welcome! And thank you for the kind words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99j0zLuNhi8

Silver has always been the middle of the pack for the most part. You've definitely gotten better! The more you play, the better you get. It's just a question of are you getting better, faster, than those around you(that's how you rank up).

It's not just about the rank, it's about the plays and friends you've made along the way!

Your ranked gains are directly related to your MMR. And after around 30-50 games you will converge at your MMR.

That's why if you maintain a 50% winrate(sometimes even less) as a silver player playing against golds, you will climb to gold. Your gains/losses are multiplied a specific way when your rank does not equal your MMR.

I've talked about this a lot in comments, on why we choose a system that isn't 1:1. But in the end, if we did a straight-up MMR system it would still take 30-50(sometimes more) to get to your actual rank. Getting better at the game, and raising your MMR, is the only way to climb.

I'm willing to bet that Silver 3 was in the middle of climbing, and climbing would look like that in any skill system. If he's winning and match mvp'ing the system will keep pushing him up and up, because rank is a ladder and you beat people above you to climb.

If we put you in Plat after placements, because that's the exact middle(or top) of your MMR r...

I LOVE the XM1 Endgame Mouse.

I didn't know they made mousepads, might have to try it out. I would be using the XM1 right now if I didn't have a starlight-12, also I prefer wireless.