[2022] Bro, how is this possible? Immortal 2 in a party with Iron 2

We have detections in place for players that do this, and deal with them appropriately. This player and the groups specifically we were already aware of; just know that these things aren't instant, we want to validate anyone caught manipulating ranked to reduce false positives.

Definitely frustrating, but it's easy to see when people are doing this and take action. We understand that this is a bi-product of 5 stacks rules(which we think are worth the cost), and we are only going to get better at preventing it and detecting it. Hope you are having a good first week of the Act otherwise!

We've extremely reduced smurfs, actually by a pretty crazy amount. If you think about all the changes over the past year:

1. Made it easier to play with friends by expanding who can play ranked together; the iron-silver change.
2. Made it easier to play with friends by adding the 5 stack feature.
3. Implemented complex detection systems to remove purchased/bot accounts.
4. Increased the amount of time it takes to get a new account into ranked, by over 500%.
5. Implemented smurf detection systems that help us move smurf accounts to their correct MMR fast.
6. Every ranked changed considering how it will impact smurfing, and always trying to include changes that would reduce smurfs in some way(either by tackling motivation or putting up road blocks).

Despite all of these changes the feedback around smurfs haven't changed. Even when we use data, that isn't fully accurate(because it's extremely hard to for sure detect a smurf), we can tell that smurfs are at an all time low in VALORANT. So, the next thing we have to figure out is how to tackle the perception of smurfs; because no matter what we do the feelings about smurfs doesn't change. We aren't going to ever stop combating smurfs, but I do believe the perception of smurfs probably a little inflated.

I also have a theory, which could be completely wrong, but I feel like alot of players coming from other shooters are extremely aggressive when starting in VALORANT. In the lower ranks I see a lot of players that drop 30 kills one game, but only 10 in the next, when investigating smurfing claims. I believe these players are in lower ranks because they only know how to be aggressive, and hold W, and get kills based on their aim/raw skill and not game sense. Sometimes their aggression pays off, other times they lose games for constantly pushing all the time.

Again, not to make excuses or say there aren't smurfs; we just have way less smurfs and have the same level of complaints since we started our big smurf investigation and changes last year. Hopefully we can help figure out changes to help build faith in match fairness, while also reducing the perception that just because someone drops 30 kills that they are a smurf.

The match-maker tries to make matches for the top players/groups in queue, starting from the longest in queue. If you get a fast pop one match, but a long queue the next, that could be because another squad was waiting a long time and you happened to queue up and be a good match.

I think it just might be confirmation bias on fast queue = stomp, because you can't tell if it was fast because we had someone waiting a long time or another team queueing at the same time matching your skill. You will never be put in a match you can't win, and it's very rare we ever have to make a match outside of 50:50; I'm not going to say they don't happen, but we also have limits of how far we will let expected winrates change.

We monitor the 5 stack changes heavily, because queue time can be a problem in Immortal+, it's all very interesting and I know late nights can have longer queues.