[2021] VALORANT ranked is no longer about personal skill

Originally posted by EvrMoar

I read this before you changed it and I wanted to give my opinion, just because I'm the designer of it.

So I understand that you feel like it's not about personal skill, but we actually have two MMR's that make your singular MMR. A performance based MMR and a Win/Loss MMR.

In lower ranks performance has a bigger impact on your MMR. This is because it's very easy to see who is probably not Iron based on how well they are aiming, how often they win duals, how they use their skills, etc. Players are usually at low ranks because they aren't consistent, and part of that reason is because they don't know every map, every call out, how to play multiple agents etc. As you climb in ranks the difference in aim ability, reaction time, agent usage, etc. starts to shrink. At the highest levels, team play and game sense become the main factor in winning a match, and that's when you are solely being rated based on your wins/losses.

Just to be clear, your performance MMR exists part way into immortal. It's very small in immortal, but it does exist. Because we are able to use data to see the performance differences in those players we have it as a tiny factor up to that point. But anything past Plat is more heavily win/loss based, but like I said performance is still a factor.

Now, I can say this and you can be like "yea sure, but that isn't how it feels" - even as a game Dev there are plenty of other dev's that I don't believe or have had disagreements with. So now we have to tackle the idea that you may be hard stuck.

I think the first thing to bring up is that it's never you vs. the system. There isn't some imaginary number, or system, that says "You can't increase in rank, I'm holding you down". MMR is a giant ladder, that every player is on. Two players cannot take up the same spot in an MMR system, you are never tied. That means every match you play you are going up the ladder, or down, based on that matches outcome. You could even, technically, go up the ladder on a loss if you were to perform insanely better then your opponents. So even tho you may lose Ranked Rating for the loss, you may increase your MMR, if you are in a rank where performance is a bigger impact on your MMR then your win/loss MMR is.

The system is actually pretty in depth in how it rates you. It looks at things like your ability usage helping take a site, if you entry frag, if you clutch rounds, it also looks at every single duel you take. When you duel an opponent, it looks at both of your MMR's. If you are winning duels against higher MMR players you will go up faster. Alternatively if you are losing duels to lower MMR players you will go down faster.

At the end of the day, we've created lots of tools to empower you to climb. Every match you play you are the only consistent factor in your games. If you consistently outperform your enemies, you will climb. The system is actually built to fluctuate, and expand it's "Confidence" in you if you start to out perform where you belong. This is how we get smurfs out of low ranks fast. This is also the reason TenZ got an account to Radiant last act in less then 20 matches.

I think the hardest part is accepting that you may have hit the rank you belong in, then running into that wall where you are losing more RR then you are gaining. Because at that point you essentially need to improve, and it just feels bad. While we are trying to find a solution for this, we still have to hold you accountable for the rank you belong in. Our goal of rank is not to give you a fake grind, or give you a system where the more you play the more rewarded you get with higher ranks. The goal is to create a fair, competitive, match making queue that can find your true rank. Hopefully we can lessen that feeling of being hardstuck, but no ranked system has really alleviated it. Realistically you are just going to push the blame on to something else, because there is going to be some way the system is trying to hold you at the rank you belong.

I have some ideas to combat this, but it's early and a little crazy so I'm not sure if or when we can investigate working on them. Maybe we can make it better some day. Even if we can make you hitting your true rank feel better, my best advice is to just focus on yourself and trying to improve. Again, you are the only consistent thing in your games and you have the biggest impact on yourself. If you truly belong at a higher rank, you can climb above other players and get there.