[2023] Why does the game reward duelists the most

Hello, I hope you're having a good week!

There are kind of multiple answers to paint the ranked picture and how it functions entirely. Let's start at the beginning. As /u/TimeJustHappens said, we have two MMRs; win/loss + encounter. We weight them differently based on your MMR and lower ranks have more encounter weight, and high ranks more win/loss. This is because raw skill can carry you far in lower ranks, and we've proved this by gathering data. But at some point, reaction time and raw skill start to normalize, then teamwork and game sense becomes king, and that's why win/loss starts to matter more. This is why Immortal+ does not have a performance bonus, for example.

So it makes sense to say, "Duelists are supposed to win duels; in a system that rates duels, they have it easier." That being said, if you use your data correctly, you can weigh all the actions players perform and give them proper credit. There is a % that each ability helps you win a duel and why you get an assist in the first place for using that ability. Players that like to kill are drawn more to duelists, which helps paint the picture that they get more kills and benefit from the system more. But there are also plenty of players that frag out and get assists in other roles and benefit from it more than a duelist. The other problem is dying and winning as a duelist.

You have to win the match to get RR, and also increase your win/loss MMR. It's kind of a net neutral or even a loss if you drop a 30-bomb and then lose the match(especially if you are above silver). You can be as good as you want, but winning is the only way to turn that encounter MMR into an actual Rank. This is all on top of the fact that Encounter MMR is traded on death to the people involved with the encounter. So duelists that get 30 kills, but have 20 deaths, have lost MMR 20 times. This is where assists can help put your encounter MMR over duelists because you can get so much more net positive encounter MMR by being involved in more fights; also, duelists are the entry frag, so they are often higher in deaths than other roles.

Lastly, it is about the quality of kills and encounters in this system. Yes, a phoenix has a bigger chance of killing TenZ as an individual, but that sage could have helped the phoenix kill TenZ. Also, how many times does that phoenix still lose to TenZ, or maybe gets the kill but dies to someone else due to positioning? If we are doing our jobs right, the MMR system will say "TenZ wins 85% of the duels based on his MMR against this phoenix," and that would be the case when they encounter each other in a match. If that isn't the case, then that player deserves to go up, just like any player that assists in killing TenZ and showing that their impact is higher then the MMR calculation shows it should be. I really like talking about how the system works, I think it's super healthy for people to know how we are matching players and they are getting their rank. I think it can sometimes, even to my fault for presenting it this way, lead to a belief that you can manipulate the system by performing X or Y actions (like killing TenZ). Even tho you would get more MMR for killing TenZ, if we are doing our job right, you would just be getting ranked properly at your skill compared to everyone else, regardless of a hyper-specific encounter in one match.

To answer your performance bonus question, it's entirely based on your encounter MMR update and not anything else. It's you vs. yourself. When the match is made, based on your MMR and Variance(the skill range you have been performing at in your MMR), we can say, "based on the opponent's MMR, your encounter MMR should only go up X amount this match." You get a performance bonus if that update is higher than what our data shows you should be performing at. This is because our goal is to get you to the correct MMR and Rank, so if you perform outside our systems expectations, you get a bonus. The star on specific players at the end of the match screen shows how you performed against that player; it does not tie to the performance bonus. We do not do the messaging well, and I hope someday we can fix it; all of the data you see at the end of the game screen is separate data not tied to our MMR system(well, except for RR gains). You could get a gold star against a player for getting the kills, but it doesn't show that you only got 40% kill credit because you happened to finish the player off in most of your duels, and someone else did the work or helped with assisting abilities. Unfortunately, this isn't very clear because we use stars for that system when we also use stars for performance bonuses.

So I don't think I'll ever be able to fight your personal feelings that getting more kills or duelists is more likely to get performance bonuses. I do believe players that feel like they can carry or can get more kills pick those classes, so it does cause some confirmation bias. If we do our job right, we use machine learning to set up your contributions correctly and how they impact your MMR regardless of kills. Our job is to make sure you get to your rank and have fair matches because our data shows fair matches are what keep people happy and enjoying VALORANT. So I would focus less on specifics and think about "Do I feel like my performances, matches, and experience feel correct for my rank." When you get focused on the specifics, you kind of lose sight that ranked is a simple ladder with complicated math at the end of the day. If you win and do well against others, you climb up the ladder to play with more challenging opponents. We are more or less creating math to help you climb faster because old math systems had very slow movement. If we do this correctly, the whole community ends up where they should be on the ladder faster, and matches are more fair and accurate in the long run. I hope this helps, and have fun in the new episode!

It's alot to be honest, and what it comes down to is our teams goal of "To create as fair matches as possible" and ranks goal of "Finding your true skill". If we are doing a decent job both of those things are possible. I understand everyone has their own opinions on match making, quality of ranked, game health etc. We can always improve, but I do believe we are doing okay. What's nice is we have such a strong foundation, and the problems we have are kind of universal problems you see in any ranked queue; so now we just gotta put our heads down and find some solutions. Thanks again!