[2021] VALORANT Patch Notes 2.05

This isn't true:

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/m3aa2s/now_that_riot_is_going_to_ban_people_from_rank_if/gqqbnvf/

But I understand the concern - when the system was made, the issue of abusing reports in this manner was known and was taken into account. The team that handles this system has also constantly improved it since Val has launched. If you do, for some reason, get falsely restricted player support has the tools to investigate and fix it. Always open up a ticket to player support if you have an issue like that!

I'll step in here, just to give a brief explanation of why this happens.

There is no fancy wall, or math, holding you back. Ranked is a ladder - if you are constantly winning against opponents at/above your current MMR you will climb. Winning is THE most important part about climbing. Yes, at lower ranks, performance is part of your rank. But, especially in higher ranks, winning is how you will climb. Then, depending on where you are in the ladder, your Ranked Rating points will push you to that exact spot.

At some point you will get to the MMR/Rank you belong. Because you will no longer be consistently winning against opponents at/above your Rank. When you are at your MMR you are most likely hitting a 50%-ish win rate. Because of how Ranked Rating works, there is a chance that you can win streak up into a rank above your MMR, even tho you still are only at a 50% win rate at your current MMR. Because of demotion protection, the system will eat your negative RR losses. The system will also increase your gains, to make sure you are always promoted to at least 10RR. Because of this, you are constantly getting free Ranked Rating points which is assisting in keeping you above your MMR.

Unfortunately, this is part of the system and we knew this would occur. We opted to have a system that favored the player in promotion/demotion. The other issue is that usually this occurs with players that have very high game counts, and doesn't occur as much when we do soft resets. So now that we don't do soft resets on each act, more players are running into this issue when they get into the higher ranked game counts, due to the free Ranked Rating you get from demotion/promotion protection. Now we are working on how to fix this issue - which to be clear this is an issue that lots of ranked systems face as well. That's why many opt into the route of not showing you detailed information, so they can hide the fact you are being held down by the system. We don't think that's fair to the player, or healthy long term.

So, until you actually get above a 50% win rate at your MMR, or start beating higher MMR opponents constantly(when matched against them) you will struggle to climb. Sometimes you'll be pushed down because you happened to win streak and are being protected by demotion protection. If you do start winning constantly, beating opponents more then you lose to them, you will increase your MMR and flip your Ranked Rating gains.

That being said, it doesn't feel good. This is something lots ranked games suffer from, they just hide it or show it to you differently(the arrow system did this, you just didn't see it). We are looking into ways to make this feel better, or improve the perception of being at the rank you are probably currently playing at. Good luck, sorry for the frustrations! We are always going to be trying to improve ranked, remember the system is new and young(just like Valorant!)

This is my personal opinion, but I believe it's a problem with being at the rank you belong at, regardless of what you focus on or even what game you are playing. This is the same complaint we saw with the arrow system when people would complain about getting 3 down arrows, and one upwards green arrow. This is also the same complaint you get from systems that are pure MMR driven where you get +3 for a win and -30 for a loss.

No matter what, every ranked system is going to feel like you are running into a wall. Either there are artificial walls, or barriers, or in a pure MMR system just being at your rank.

The reason this happens is because you are at your rank, and we need to stop ranked inflation. In any system, that does not have some way of pushing players down, there is the problem of ranked inflation. If for example we removed you being able to go negative in points, we would have gold players climbing to immortal over enough games. This would break ranked completely and it would become meaningless/a joke. This gets worse in games, especially shooters, where one player can have a huge impact and you can get carried much easier.

Players will always focus on something, and will always be looking for some reason to blame if they are not climbing. I'm not saying that it feels good, it's a problem that is very difficult to tackle. But I don't think there is a system I've ever experienced where it feels good to be at your rank. League had promotions which helped prevent inflation, pure MMR systems end up pushing you down, or you end up just getting to a rank where you can no longer consistently beat opponents. In all these systems you either end up hitting demotion protection, and getting stuck at the bottom of a rank - alternatively you end up wildly swinging up and down a rank or a couple hundred MMR.

Players focusing on anything is the problem, because in all ranked systems it comes down to "Just win and do better". It doesn't matter what we do, there will always be a focus, or something, that will try to hold you accountable for where you belong. We just shift blame if we change it to something else. I'd argue players shouldn't focus on MMR, because MMR isn't holding them back. If you win against those above you, you climb.

There are things I think we can do to make it feel better, but the feedback to ranked hasn't change it's just shifted from "Why am I getting these amount of arrows" to "Why am I getting these amount of RR" - which in a pure MMR system is the same as "Why am I getting these amounts of MMR".

We have some interesting ideas, and things to do to help reduce these feelings. I think there are ways we can make it better, but these changes will take some time. I may have over dug into your feedback, because I understand focusing on something you don't see feels bad. I just don't have a good immediate answer, hopefully we can help alleviate these frustrations in the future. Good luck out there :)

We did just drop this article!

https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/dev/ask-valorant-rank-rating-edition/

But I think messaging could be improved in lots of ranked systems, it's a good callout.