Oh hey!

You guys look familiar

Hi!

So our previous system was a little more tied to your MMR, almost 1:1. There were some rules that made you deviate, slightly, where your rank wouldn't be exactly your MMR - But that would self correct pretty quick.

Also, to be clear MMR and Elo are used interchangeably. People use "Elo Rating" because most of these systems are Derived from the Elo system(google Arpad Elo!).

So before, we got a lot of feedback that it felt very "swingy" and if you had one bad game it would maybe drop you too quickly. Or if you had one good game it may effect you too much. In the new system, you can get high MMR and say you belong in that rank, but you prove you belong at that rank by consistently playing at that MMR.

The new system will give you more points for a win, and less for a loss, if your MMR is higher then your current rank. So, for example, if you are in Gold but your MMR is Plat, you may be playing against Plat players but as long as you are at least 50% win rate you will climb(because you will be getting more for a win and less for a loss).

Hidden MMR also optimizes matches to be fair, and with it being hidden we can make math tweaks to better the system. It lets us keep a smooth flowing ranked system, while maintaining a strict fair match system.(Also it lets us prevent reverse engineering easily and people finding exploits)

Hey Kabzon4ik, let me answer your questions in line:

1. It is definitely possible. Right now we’ve kept the number small for Radiant so it really focuses on the best of the best for each region. We also felt 500 was a clear number to remember for who is Radiant.
2. We understand that for RU players not being able to speak and hear voice isn’t ideal, however for now we aren't providing the functionality due to legal considerations.
3. Alex (RiotVanCoder9) is going to give more detail on the issue. Our first fix partially fixed the issue, but now the issue should fully be resolved.
4. Yes, we plan to reward players for the Episode 2 rank season as well. We are keeping a close eye on feedback around the Episode 1 rank gun buddy rewards, and based on what we hear that will inform if we continue using that for rewards or make any changes.
5. We are always exploring new ways and options to combat cheating, including improvements to how we action player reports around suspected cheating.

We do take into consideration how you previously played in competitive to decide your placements. It is not a complete reset. That said when a new season starts and you are in your placement matches, your matches have the potential to swing your rank heavily depending on the decisiveness of the match.

We are keeping a close eye on this, you are right that the best few players per region are getting long queues, and definitely longer than we want to see. We want to quickly bring these queue times down. Two things should help with this, one as more players get into Immortal+ they will be required to solo/duo which will help our matchmaker be able to have a greater pool of parties to match these players with.

We are also making some changes for our next patch (2.1 which comes out next week), which will make it so these elite players are more quickly able to get into matches with a broader skill range (at the cost of some impact to match balance). We'll continue to monitor how these changes impact queue times and iterate as needed.

We'll keep a close eye on the new premade cap of two for Immortal and Radiant. That being said we believe this change is important to help with match balance and queue time for these players, and so no plans to make any changes at this time.

Longer term we do want to provide new ways to compete in VAL, including ways for elite players to group up as a team in an environment that is higher stakes than Unrated.

Right now the +50 is a cap, it would only happen in a very extreme case

To specifically answer your question, it would definitely have to be a player whose hidden MMR is very high above their current rank with a 13-0 win. Performance is less about your performance compared to your teammates and more of a performance based on what we expect from you(The amount of points you get for this is very small as well, and more of a “good job” call out). So if you pop-off in a match where the system expected you to go even, you will get slightly more ranked rating.

But to emphasize, the most points comes from winning your match(or losing).

Hi ,

You guys should add a rule that says that you have to communicate in ranked matches and force ppl to talk or they can stick with unrated if they dont wanna/ cant talk.

another point is, griefer/troller/afk/thrower in game not getting punished.

We don't have any plans to hard require players to have to use voice comms to play in rank. We believe its important that if a player doesn’t feel comfortable using voice that they can still play and compete in VAL, we don’t want to exclude them.

That being said we want to improve our non-verbal comms over time so those players can still have effective ways to communicate with their teammates, even if not over voice. We also want to significantly improve how we handle griefing, trolling, poor player behavior, etc so more people are comfortable talking in voice and there are less disruptive people playing rank in general. We know we have a lot of work to do here, and we have recently spun up a team to focus on this space. They'll be sharing out more broadly their short and longer term plans to make improvements in this space in the coming months.

We are open to feedback on how this feels and will consider adjusting for future Act/Episode starts. The original intent was to make it so players who were previously Diamond+ need to prove their ability to get back to their previous rank. A reset of some kind also helps with leaderboard position as we imagine that each act will have some players engaging heavily vs taking an act and we would like the current seasons leaderboard to be only the highly engaged players for that act. The other nice benefit of having a reset (but not necessarily a reason) is it helps us have a longer window to detect cheaters before those players could potentially end up on the leaderboard.

We will be monitoring the data around how long it takes the average player to return to their previously acquired rank and definitely listening to feedback from players.

Hey There!

Although personal performance is taken into account, your rank is largely determined by whether you win or lose games (and how many rounds you manage to take). In addition to that, the more you play and the higher you climb, the less personal performance matters because we want everyone unified on the goal of winning, rather than just fragging out.

Over time you would eventually out rank your friends if you consistently outperform them, but if you queue Competitive together often your scores will likely go up and down simultaneously :)

While having the separate Immortal tiers helped indicate skill within the rank, we felt it was not needed as we now provide the ability to see Immortal players precise Leaderboard Rank and current Rank Rating.

As for the legitimacy of the leaderboard, this is very important to us. Folks who rush to get on the leaderboard early still will have to fight to keep their position. Ultimately. what we commemorate at the end of the Act (save in your Career: Act Rank tab and display on your Act Rank Badge next Act) will be based on the rank you end the act with. So those players who get on the leaderboard early in the Act are going to have to keep playing and competing in order to stay on the leaderboard and cement their achievement.

Hi,

Don't you think there should be a cap/soft reset on hidden MMR for all Radiants at the start of a season? Currently, the top 1 player of the previous season gets punished by being stuck in unranked with 0 RR gained all the while, players with lower MMR from last season can get to Top 500 by being matched up against easier opponents. I posted on this issue here as well.

People will look at the leaderboard and say, "Meh, Top 500 is bull. TenZ queued for 4 hours being stuck in unranked and can't get a game, pros match against other pros due to high Hidden MMR while lower MMR players get ahead playing easier competition."

The workaround is for TenZ to create a smurf account every season to reset his hidden MMR, but that's unfair since he needs to spend hours to win 10 unranked games and grind 50 ranked games in total to place on the leaderboard. He should be allowed to play the new season on his existing main.

A suggestion:

I think Radiants from last season should all be at the same starting line at the beginning of a new season. At season start, all Radiants last season should have their MMR capped/soft reset to the same Radiant base MMR.

Let's say for example TenZ's MMR was 2800 at the end of last season, it should reset to 2100 at the start of a new season along with every other Radiant. (Note I use 2100/2800 as examples since I don't know the underlying numbers in Riot's MMR system.)

So as long as you were Radiant last season, your MMR will be reset to 2100 so you can theoretically match up against TenZ as your opponent at least in the first few days of a new season. Consider not capping placements to be fair. Alternatively, Riot can cap placements at Plat 3 but give players Plat MMR max.

Also, the current system creates a "cabal" of high MMR players who often get matched up against each other due to the non-resetting hidden MMR (TenZ, Asuna, Shahzam, poiz, Kanpeki, tech, etc.) I don't think it's healthy for them to keep playing each other over and over again across seasons since they'll just keep learning each others' patterns/tactics. A Radiant base MMR cap/reset to 2100 at the start of every season gives these top players more varied opponents and also allows up-and-coming Radiants to test their mettle against them.

Thanks for the question! I actually responded to TenZ’s issue in a tweet last night. I also like your suggestion, this is a longer question so expect a wall of text!

So resetting MMR is something we are thinking about. I don’t think it’s entirely needed, because our MMR system is very good at correcting your MMR, if you are familiar with TenZ he got a smurf to Radiant in less than 20 games(I think? I don’t have the exact number). Resetting the MMR would be the same as a player creating a smurf and just stomping on lower MMR players. That being said, if our MMR numbers get out of control it is a way to prevent MMR creep. It’s something we are talking about.

The issue is more of finding TenZ, or other players with long que times, matches faster. If you think about it, the matchmaker is always trying to make fair matches as close to a 50:50 win/loss chance as possible. That means everyone is, hopefully, getting the most fair matches and it is less “Dumpster people as fast as possible” and turns into “Everyone has the same chance to win/lose a game and climb”.

Now there is a second part to this, your MMR also makes it so you will get more Ranked Rating for a win if your actual rank is lower than your hidden MMR. TenZ will be gaining higher Ranked Rating for a win consistently, even after he gets on the leaderboard. Where alternatively a player that was immortal last season will start to gain Ranked Rating much slower once they get on the leaderboard.

So I think the combination of “Make everyone try to have the same chance to win/lose” and then “Ranked Rating is increased based on your hidden MMR” makes it so everyone has a fair chance at racing to the leaderboard, then also the big dogs will climb it more effectively as they play.

TenZ is a unique situation, his MMR is extremely high. We are currently investigating a solution to high MMR matchmaking problems. If we can make it so all players can get matches at the same rate, they are fair, and they are gaining and losing ranked rating affected by their hidden MMR, then suddenly we have a very fair environment for the leaderboard.

Right now plat3 is mostly high diamond, immortal, and radiants. I could see us possibly shrinking that even more. But honestly, because we use your MMR to find a match, plat3 is really just the starting point and isn’t what we use to match make those players. So really having them reset to a different rank would just slow/speed up how fast they get to the leaderboard.

Thank you for the feedback!

We are actively talking about what this could look like for our game. We do have concerns around what this could do to our queue health especially at top ranks. For example, if we made an implementation where you only ever get the maps you select, a top player who is playing to optimize for their rank, it would benefit them to learn a single map really well. They would then only select that map which could further segment the top ranks into needing to find 9 other people on that map.

Map fairness also has the benefit that we don’t have weird situations where a player whose favorite map is unpopular has to suffer significantly higher queue times than they otherwise would have if they queued for other maps.

This isn’t to say we won’t do this, just that we are discussing internally how best to do this for our ecosystem.

Yea, exactly!

There are also concerns in lots of systems that people focus really hard on MMR without fully understand all the match and calculations going on to determine it. We have to set the bar for what MMR means. If I told you your MMR was 1534, what would that mean to you? If I told you that your MMR is 1534, and 1500-1600 is gold, you would then be like "Oh I'm gold". It makes it more palatable.

There is an interesting balance with saying "This MMR is gold or this MMR is Diamond." - because you want to make sure that those MMR's FEEL like they are actually that rank. If there are too many players in a rank, then it's hard to see a players skill and for the community to say "That player is diamond, that was a diamond play" and instead turns into "I have no idea what level of play, or skill, this reddit clip was."

So not only does it help you understand where your skill is, in terms of a given rank name like Gold, Plat, Diamond. It also gives you an idea of what level of skill those groups are. There are games that overinflate high ranks, and usually what happens is that there are too many players that are high rank and suddenly you have low diamond players that are awful while high diamond players are some of the best. It just becomes weird and feels wrong. This is something that isn't always thought or talked about in the ranked queue world of games.

So more in-depth of an answer, but there are a few reasons MMR is hidden. Not easy to reveres engineer for exploits, not easy to reverse engineer so a competitor could copy it, it can confuse players how the number is calculated and what it means, and lastly it lets us tweek the system on the math end without players wondering why these numbers may change often(because no system is perfect).

You have two MMR's, one for skill and one based on wins. In lower ranks skill MMR matters more, in determining your true hidden MMR. As you climb winning becomes more important.

When you get into a match, we know every players hidden MMR and used that to put you in that match. The match maker has a level of confidence in how it thinks you will perform. If you are one of the higher MMR players in the game, you probably should perform better then others in that match. But if you have the lowest MMR, you probably should be lower in performance.

If you exceed the expectation we reward you a few extra ranked rating points. Eventually I'd like to tell you when you had a stellar performance.

Also the system looks at a ton, more so then I think players realize. Things like healing, ability usage, 1v1's, being an entry fragger, setting up teammates, etc. So it's not only about topping the leaderboard, it's about using your agent effectively to help your team win.

I think we will always have some sort of soft reset. I really like how we soft reset rank, but kept MMR. If you have a higher hidden MMR you will climb quickly, but because your MMR is the same everyone is getting fair matches. You may have a 50% win/loss rate, because we are trying to get you fair matches. But because you have a higher hidden MMR you are winning more ranked rating and losing less. There is a chance you fall below 50% win rate and you start to even at the rank we placed you in, and given the same reasons /u/RiotVanCoder9 listed above, soft resets are healthy for ranked.

edit: Not resetting MMR also makes it so you don't have radiant players stomping bronze's, there is still legitimacy in the match making in trying to create fair matches.

Every single season of ranked players improve, and the community as a whole gets better. This is true of most games, season 1 of league is very different in terms of average skill compared to season 5. These soft resets are how people prove they belong in a rank. It lets us test players, to ensure that if they stopped playing or if the community as a whole has improved, that they actually belong in that rank.

If you can't get back to that rank do you really deserve it in the current season? If we start to be flexible and let players maintain their rank, not having them prove themselves, we also lose faith in the player base/community that your rank means anything at all. You definitely need to maintain some expectation that players need to keep proving themselves, because that legitimizes the rank system as a whole.

I definitely understand the frustrations and concerns about not being able to get to the leaderboard due to prior rank/MMR. Remember your leaderboard position at the end of the act will be what is displayed on your act rank. While these players are being rewarded for getting their quickly now, the players that end up at the top at the end of the season are what matter in terms of your act rank.

We are definitely talking about this and trying to figure out what is healthy and enjoyable. I definitely hear the feedback about finding matches, 5 stacks, and the speed at which some players are getting on the leaderboard and getting radiant. There are things we can't fix right now, but we will be looking to improve in future acts/episodes.

A little hectic, trying to gather as much info on how ranked is doing. How it feels, and analyze if what we may need to improve on!

I have a 9 month old boxer puppy, who needs to go out way to often. Other then that pretty good!

Decay is hard because you have to start thinking of how much decay, what is a fair amount of time, how long it takes to decay out of X rank, etc. We have a decay style system in place, but it's more on the confidence in your MMR so it kind of does this already.(we don't decay your rank at all, just to clarify)

I believe there is also something to the perception and excitement of a new season. In game design players will just leave if they don't have goals; I don't like this answer as a reason why you should drop players even if psychologically it makes sense. I do not like letting players ride their rank, because it gives them a sense that they are entitled to their rank just for getting it once and riding it out. Who knows how new balance, maps, characters, etc. will effect your MMR. Maybe a new map gets in the rotation and you never learn it. How does that effect your rank? As long as it's not an insane reset and it is sensible I think it's okay. Realistically if you really deserve a rank it should take less then 20 games to get back to it.

It's actually kind of a hard problem to solve. We are talking about how to handle it.

So think of it this way, if Radiant was, before, the top MMR players that climbed there. Technically the first players to get to upper immortal 3 turned to Radiant because they were the highest players there. So this was a problem last season, because players would have gotten to Radiant just because they grinded out ranked faster and got there first(not because after the ranks normalized they actually belonged there in the long run). Eventually those players fell out, back into immortal.

The new system is more visible, and obviously we just don't have that buffer of immortal 1,2,3 before Radiant. I really enjoy rewarding people who grind really hard and fast and get to the leaderboards. I think the excitement of saying "I got to the top 500 of the leaderboard because I got there first" is kinda cool. If I can figure out a way to keep that feeling, but through the season the correct MMR players take over, I think I'm okay with that.

We will see, I have some ideas to make this process better. I think we could probably award more ranked rating based on your hidden MMR, the further you are from it. For example right now last season players that were immortal and radiant are getting very similiar ranked rating points. Maybe we tweak the math so that players with Radiant MMR get slightly more ranked rating then Immortal, during that begining of season race to the leaderboard.

I think it's fair to say that if you have Radiant MMR you will get more Ranked Rating then someone in Immortal for a win at the same rank(plat3 start of season), that you should get similar que times so you can all find matches at the same pace, and your position in the leaderboard at the end of season is what we call out for leaderboard act rank. This way we can have a fun beginning of season race, but the leaderboard balances out quickly as it fills up.

This is a test, lots of new stuff dropped with this update. We are going to have lots of talks and who knows maybe we will come up with better solutions, or find better solutions.

We are talking about how the 3 rank difference has been effecting que and looking at some data points. Who knows, ranked will always be evolving and trying to get better!

You're still matched based on your MMR, the games are still fair. The match maker isn't using your rank to match you. Then you gain more, or lose more, ranked rating if your Rank is far from your actual MMR. So as long as you go 50:50 in your matches you will climb to the rank you belong in.

If you can't go 50:50 in the rank you belong in, you probably don't deserve to be at that rank. And if you don't go 50:50 your MMR will drop, and you will get to the rank you belong in.

That being said we have identified key issues we want to solve. It's a huge rework to the ranked system that we really wanted to get out to the community. Even if the soft reset was a little chaotic, overall I believe the system improved the things we wanted and has been seen as a positive change. Sometimes these things take time and we are already planning our next steps to improve ranked.

Something we've talked about. We have a handful of solutions or changes we could do, we are talking them over.

The one concern I have about this is that we are just setting a time limit which will punish our most dedicated players that are willing to grind and do work. It goes both ways, do we reward players for grinding matches and climbing fast beginning of the season? Or do we just say "no" and reward the players that were already high rank in the previous season but won't be grinding as fast.

I think we can hit a good middle ground. It's on the list!

I'm trying to go back and answer questions through the day. Next time I'll see if we can get a better time for EU!

We are talking about what we are seeing, with 5 stacks being popular to try and get to leaderboard quick. No solution, or anything we want to do yet, but we are aware and it's on the list to talk about!

This will not be penalizing your MMR only your Ranked Rating. I definitely understand there will be games you want to dodge, just because the chat is toxic, maybe something comes up, life happens, etc.

What we think is unhealthy is people trying to dodge to manipulate que to possibly win trade, get certain teammates, etc. So this will probably have some form of tiny almost negligible penalty for first dodge, increasing for consecutive dodges. But we are still talking about how to implement this.

We are looking into what some team competitive modes/features would look like and want to do something this year.

The hardest part about these systems is a team MMR system is alot of work and why alot of games struggle with healthy team ranked ques. Another issue is match making gets very messy, because it gets harder to pair pre-made's against each other since we can't move people around to get more equal MMR's.

Not saying anything is off the table, I just wanted to call out the problems these systems face and that it requires some extra time and effort to make sure we do it right.

Your MMR should determine match, not your rank. The soft reset happens for various reasons, but is for the most part important for healthy resets of the ranked que(I know there are debates and opinions about this).

Being this our first big overhaul of the ranked system, as well as lots of new things happening, we are monitoring and already planning fixes/changes to various things about the system. We definitely wanted this system to come online for the new episode, so we pushed to get this out to the community. Now we have to look at how to improve it, and make sure the math is right now that we have the system is in players hands.

Yup, we have something in the works that should be hitting next Tuesday!

The leaderboard was a big push to use your leaderboard as a standing. We will be calling out your leaderboard standing on your act rank badge as well. We could reinstate Immortal 1, 2, 3, etc. But players will definitely focus on their leaderboard standing/number, and if they are immortal 1, 2, 3 as an after thought.

That being said I think there is value in chase goals. So maybe they return, or we find a different way to call out leaderboard standing. We are having a lot of discussions right now and trying to nail down what our next steps/improvements to ranked are.

I use Elo/MMR interchangeably here, they mean the same thing.

You have two MMR's, one for wins and one for skill. Skill is calculated on a ton of factors, based on ability usage, if you should be winning a 1v1, if your smoke helped take a bomb site, entry fragging, etc. Your win MMR is more straight forward, win games it goes up.

Lower ranks your skill MMR matters more, if you perform better it will up your Skill MMR which will make your wins reward more Ranked Rating. As you get into higher ranks your Win MMR will start to take over. Until Immortal+ where it is exclusively Win MMR.

So, in short, everything is important. I would focus less on what matters and focus on getting consistent at the game. Being consistent, able to play well on a couple of agents and all maps, will help you climb the fastest. Good luck!

We've answer this in a few places, so this answer may be shorter.

The community as a whole gets better at the game, a silver player now is better then a silver player in beta/alpha. Soft resets helps ensure that players don't get to a rank and just kind of idle at that rank. It also reinforces the legitmacy of ranks.

Something I like to say, and it may sound harsh but it's completely valid, "If you can't earn that rank in the current season, do you deserve it?" - We let you keep your hidden MMR, which is what influences your Ranked Rating gain. So realistically, as long as you can maintain a 50:50 win rate you will get back to your rank because you belong there. But if you start to slip, and can't prove you belong there, then you may find your hidden MMR dropping and it may be harder to climb ranked.

Also, it helps get boosted players out of higher ranks again maintaining ranked legitimacy. But honestly this is such a tiny factor it's not the main reason we do this.

I see some comments like "You just soft reset to make it so we have to grind" or "You just want people to play more". I'm going to be completely transparent and say that is not even a concern to the team, to make gimmicks to get players to engage with the system or grind it. The goal of ranked is to create a competitive queue where players can prove themselves. In the end, create a fun competitive game and people will want to engage with it competitively. We believe it's more important to maintain competitive integrity then it is to create a fake grind.

There are probably some small math tweaks we are going to look into making, for the next time we do this. Thanks for the question!

We are looking at how to do a team competitive mode at some point this year, we are still looking over are options and how we want to do it! What that looks like is still up in the air.

I love ranked gun buddies, I'm not sure if they will change or how they will evolve in the future. But rewards for ranked, and being able to immortalize your achievement is definitely important to us.

The problem is a mix of perception/MMR, and the queue grouping rules.

There is always a struggle to make sure we maintain competitive integrity in ranked, but allow people to be social and play ranked with their friends. That's a big reason why we are looking at how to do a team competitive mode/system(still early and who knows what it will end up like).

If you get paired with, or against, someone that normally you couldn't group with, that persons MMR is shifting hard because of their play. This can happen because someone was too high of a rank, and their MMR thinks they need to be brought down, or because they are over performing and need to get brought up.

Unfortunately we don't allow you to group up based on hidden MMR. It's difficult because we don't show it to you, and you don't know if your friends MMR is even close to yours. With the ranked rating system it could allow some manipulation if we allowed this, and weirdness to occur, and MMR is used more for finding fair matches and helping influence your ranked rating to converge and get you to the correct rank.

I know that doesn't take away the frustrations of not being paired with your friends, but I think it's valid to say we want to make sure we can get fair matches in ranked and try to assist in creating a social competitive space where you can play with your friends.

Thank you for the question, and we are currently talking about things like this and working on solutions. We got more stuff up our sleeves, we just shipped a new ranked mode so no we have to set our sights on whatever is next and improving it.

Your hidden MMR is used for queueing/match fairness. That also will increase your ranked rating for wins, or decrease ranked rating lost for a loss. So you will get paired up in fair matches, with players around your skill.

This is why TenZ was having an issue finding matches, his MMR was extremely high and it was hard finding players to make fair matches with him. We are also working on a fix for this. But that's a good example to see the system in action.

I think this answer is kinda what you're looking for.

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/kxh45h/valorant_competitive_team_ama_on_20_update/gje6sfk/

Your MMR influences your gains/losses in ranked rating. There is a convergence that happens, so after you play ranked games and your MMR shifts it will influence how many points you get for a win/loss. Then after placements, and a few games, you will converge with your MMR and your MMR will be around your current rank. Then if you want to climb you win games, increase your MMR, which will also help give you more ranked rating for a win.

This is because MMR can fluctuate pretty heavily from game to game. If you remember posts from last season, people would often have posts like "I had a bad loss and was demoted, this is unfair." that's because last season your MMR was your Rank for the most part. This system is less "swingy" and doesn't penalize you as harsh for a bad night of games.

It also makes ranked more tangible and easy to understand. There are no more arrows, you can see how much rating you are gaining per win, and understand about how many wins you need to rank up.

This is more of the social teams space, so I don't know! But I also like the honor system from league! Sorry I didn't have an answer, thanks for the question!

hahaha, thank you!

I'm newer to the team, but after being on the team and designing this new ranked system I have to give them a huge shoutout. The match making system, and MMR system, is super impressive and one of the best I think I've seen. I know I'm biased, after working on the team and being a Rioter, but they've done a great job in making a system that I believe does its job. Hope you enjoy the new changes if you play!

Yes, because it's unfair to have a ranked system where you are purposely dodging to manipulate your rank. Also it sucks to be on the receiving end to try and get a game and you get 5+ dodges in a row. There are people who stop playing because they can't find a match after they keep getting dodged, especially when in diamond+ que times can get in the 2-5minute time(even worse in immortal/radiant).

Being high in rank is being good at playing all maps, so dodging because you don't like a map(or are familiar with it) is manipulating your rank. I think it's valid to want to dodge a game, maybe once a play session/day. I think it's manipulative if you are dodging multiple games a night.

You also have to attack this from the perspective of why people are dodging, and other ways to stop that behavior. Right now we have a social player dynamics team that is working on how to fight toxicity, afk, etc. If you are dodging due to toxicity, that is somewhere we can improve to ensure that we are handling toxic players better.

If we get a better handle on toxic situations, where they occur less often, then really you are dodging to manipulate the system slightly in your favor. I understand people may dodge because of lack of voice comms, or not being able to select an agent as well. Maybe we need some form of restriction from ranked if you are voice comm banned(something the community calls out alot)? These are all problems that can be solved, removing the reasons you may dodge(or reducing them) so that we can have healthier ques with less dodging.

Thank you for the question this topic to me is very interesting!

It sounds like your MMR somehow got below your rank. Do you play grouped alot? If your rank some how gets boosted above your MMR the system will try to push you down, because it believes you some how got above your rank. Alternatively if you had a streak of bad games, it could have dropped your MMR. If you keep doing well you will reverse your MMR, and start to climb.

Your earn rates are dependent on you MMR, which is dependent on your average match performance. That means one match of being MVP may not make you gain a ton more points, but it will help boost your MMR which will help all of your matches and make it easier to climb.

It sounds like your MMR somehow got below your rank. Do you play grouped alot? If your rank some how gets boosted above your MMR the system will try to push you down, because it believes you some how got above your rank. Alternatively if you had a streak of bad games, it could have dropped your MMR. If you keep doing well you will reverse your MMR, and start to climb.

Your earn rates are dependent on you MMR, which is dependent on your average match performance. That means one match of being MVP may not make you gain a ton more points, but it will help boost your MMR which will help all of your matches and make it easier to climb.

(Above comment pasted from another response)

That's really strange that it's kicking in that much in Iron. It may be discouraging but keep playing and improving. We haven't seen any math or match making issues so far, but I'll take another look at iron gains/losses to make sure there aren't any sketch issues.