[2021] The "easy rank ups" boosted way too many people

Ranked distribution changes didn't change the players you get in your match. We didn't change anyone's skill rating, how their MMR changes, or changed any back end calculations for players directly. We only moved the cut offs for lower ranks.

Think of it this way. I'm using made up numbers for this. So lets say you have a match making rating(MMR) of 450. Before the change we said "You are Iron 2 if you are between 400-500 MMR." Turns out, iron 2 had too many players in it, we overestimated how many players would end up at that 400-500 MMR. So to fix it we now say "You are in Iron 2 if you are between 400-420 MMR, and Iron 3 421-480 MMR, etc." The player that is 450 MMR would go from Iron 2, to Iron 3, without actually changing their skill/MMR. Because MMR is a reflection of the players skill, that number didn't change.

When you match make we use your MMR to match you with similar MMR players. So it doesn't matter what Ranks you run into in your lobby, your MMR is around theirs and you are put into the match because of it. Also all ranks up to Plat were changed, and rolled out over the past month as players played(we can't have everyone just change ranks at the flip of a switch, it gets messy). So as long as you were below Plat you also benefited from these ranked distribution changes just as much as every other player.

Good luck climbing ranked before end of season! Hopefully you get some good games going, try to keep your head up. Remember your perception and positivity can play a big role in how you perform so try to stay positive!(As cliché as that sounds, it really does work)

TLDR; Your forward facing rank doesn't determine the players you match with, your hidden MMR does.

When we changed the rank distribution it tries to roll it out slowly. We believe their may have been a bug and sometimes when it tries to roll the distribution out it may have been giving you a large % of the change for 1 match. It happened a couple times now.

We didn't want to just change everyone's rank, without knowing why, so you do have to play ranked in order for the redistribution to effect you. That's why over the past month(I believe we started in mid/early december), people have seen a couple of bumps in rank when playing.

With the distribution changes it may be possible to promote on a loss? I think we may have protections in not allowing you to be promoted until you win and after the win your MMR is in the correct place for the promotion. I'm not entirely sure tho, I'll try to ask around.

I think there may be some confusion over how the system works. I highly recommend checking out some of my other explanations, to other threads, that I've written in the past.

Your MMR/Elo are the same thing. You technically have 1 MMR/Elo that is used for rank/match making.

Then there is your forward facing rank, which in our system currently is tied to your MMR/ELO. Similar to the example above that would be "This ELO = This Rank".

Maybe I'm confused, but you shouldn't be getting punished for a your Elo/MMR, it's simply used to match you appropriately and ties you to your rank.

No lying, I'm a little confused what you think I'm lying about.

Your MMR stands for Match Making Rating, it's used not only to match you against similar skilled opponents but like you pointed out what your rank is. I'm down to explain whatever you think I'm lying about, it may help if you look at some of my other comments on older posts where I explain the system more in depth.

I unfortunately don't know anything about third party tools, or anything about them. Sorry :( I'm pretty new at Riot and haven't learned about them yet(or who to ask).

I use Elo and MMR, purely because people sometimes think MMR is their "Elo Rating". Sometimes you hear people say "what is your Elo Rating". It's good to point out, I honestly should just switch to using MMR because technically that is the correct usage. I've only been on the Valorant team for 3ish months. The system, to my knowledge, was written by a group of extremely talented people at Riot and is unique. I don't know how much the Elo system inspired them, but it is a unique system written by Riot(again to my knowledge).

Valorant rank is heavily tied to your MMR currently. There are some cases where if the system believes it's unconfident in your rank it can loosen where it thinks you belong, and that leads to faster rank up/down. But, that is just the MMR system at work. So technically you do have a variance in your MMR, there are also some rules which may keep you at certain ranks until you confidently pass various rank threshholds. A good example is this ranked redistribution; yes we moved the ranked distrubtion goal posts, but you still need to win a game(even if your MMR technically is now in a new rank) in order to promote to that rank. So right now Valorant doesn't have a point system sitting on an Elo type system.

There shouldn't be :( I'm sorry you've been running into some rough matches recently. Toxicity is something we've been talking about and I'm sure you will hear about solutions for issues like these in the future.

First off, grats on Immortal! I wish I was that good :( I'm sitting at like Plat, I need to grind more.

I can't speak for your individual games or expreience, I just don't know how the numbers are working out. I will say that if you are being placed in games above your rank it's technically good for you. If your rank is below Immortal 3, but you are matching against those opponents, you technically should get more for a win and less for a loss(because your playing opponents above you). This should help you climb easier in the long run, based on how the match would work out.

Again, I just can't speak for your exact experience. The system has some confidence/variance built into it. If you are getting placed against people above you, that's probably a good sign and I would just keep it up. Hopefully some of the changes in the new season can help your ranked experience!