[2021] Went from Silver 2 to Plat 2 this season, and I honestly don't notice a difference

Up until immortal the system uses both performance, and wins, to determine your MMR.

If you are not performing effectively, against higher MMR opponents, it becomes very hard to get boosted. The system looks at every interaction with enemies in every match, and the MMR of all the players involved with those interactions. You have to win duels, use abilities, and win against players above your MMR to climb. If you are constantly losing duels, or not setting up assists/site takes with your abilities, you will not increase your performance MMR and will struggle to get past Plat.

There are pretty decent skill differences between each rank, because we look at every fight every player takes in every game, the system is actually really good at determining if you are better then any given player in the match you are in because of this!

The ranked system isn't magic math just pushing you upwards, it's a ladder. These systems work because you have to perform better, and win against, higher skilled opponents bringing yourself up the ladder.

You can learn a little bit from this article we posted here!

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

I see this alot, but unfortunately MMR resets won't do anything besides cause chaos until everything ends up exactly where it is now.

MMR isn't some magical math holding you back, it's a ladder. If you beat players above you, you climb up the ladder stealing some MMR from them. Reseting MMR won't make the players above you any easier to kill, it will just squish everyone and make it so the first few months are "hope I got the guy who was immortal+ on my team this match". It would be radiants, immortals, bronze, irons, etc. all on the same team, and the good players would just stomp their way to the top, waiting for the lower ranks to fill out.

We also do soft MMR resets each episode, so if you really believe you are hardstuck next Episode would be the perfect time to prove that. But like other posts I've written, the system looks at not only winning but performance(diamond and under). It looks at every interaction with enemies you have, every assist you help get, and the MMR of all players involved. If you are truly better then people in your lobby, but lose the match, you can increase your performance MMR(but decrease your win MMR) and still open yourself up to climb. This is also why pros fly through low ranks fast, and even tho smurfs are a hot topic, why it's hard to maintain a smurf in low ranks unless you are purposefully throwing to do so.

Hope that explains a little bit why we won't probably ever reset MMR. Right now the conversation is how do we reduce the reasons players want to smurf, how to identify smurfs, and how do we handle smurfs when we identify them. That being said, even if the entire playerbase over plat smurfed, they wouldn't even be able to fill every single match in gold that occurs. So while smurfing is currently a topic the ranked team is focused on, our intial investigations make us think it may be slightly blown up in how often it's occurring. It's always hard to determine if a player that's popping off is actually a smurf, or just having a good game.

? I guess I don't understand what you mean by this, if you are targeting my talk on MMR soft reset or smurfing.

Obviously amount of games played is important for MMR, I don't think I need to cover that.

In terms of smurfing, if a player is winning and stomping lots of lower games then they would increase their rank and their smurf account would no longer be smurfing but at the rank it belongs at. Radiants can often get up to Radiant MMR in around 20 games from a brand new account.

But yes when talking about these issues internally we are very aware of the amount of matches played and how it factors into all of this.

No problem!

It's extremely difficult, because there are two types of conflicts when thinking about ranked. You have the want to increase your skill, find your exact skill, and be a better player. Then you also have the want to express your skill and the prestige of high ranks. So the prestige of the high rank can cause pressure, or even overtake, the goal of finding your true skill. Also players value these things differently.

Luckily our comments are pretty typical, most ranked systems see negative feedback with smurfs, match making quality, MMR representation, grouping with friends, etc. So we are on the right track and just need to try and figure out how to improve or reduce friction for these pain points.

https://twitter.com/TenZOfficial/status/1348551918763663360

We haven't changed the MMR system, just how we message your rank. So here is an example of someone getting to "Radiant MMR" in 16 matches(because we haven't change the MMR system, you can still get your MMR there).

I have lots of write-ups on this reddit account that explains why we have MMR separate from Ranked. The highest you can place a new account is Plat 3, so there is a world where you could be Plat in Radiant MMR. For brief reasons why we do this is that it stops cheaters, and we need you to play multiple matches to prove your rank at least a little bit(so a lucky win streak doesn't put you at a higher rank then you belong). This also makes it harder to boost, or create new accounts and get them to a high rank with the goal of selling them.

Hope that helps!

All abilities, and everyone involved in kills, are taken into account!

It looks different depending on the game or ranked system. Usually it's some sort of "squish" where it kind of grabs all the ranks like a sandwhich and squishes them together - everyone is essentially brought towards some center point(usually around silver).

In our game we have a confidence system, which has an idea how you might perform if you are having a good, bad, or average match. So when you are match made, it tries to keep you in that range of where it thinks you are performing at. This is just match making, and does not effect how much MMR you will gain from that match. If you start wining a bunch, or losing a bunch, and the system starts to think you may have had a big change in your skill it widens that confidence area and lets you match further up or down. This is to make sure you never get hardstuck if you truly are winning more then you are losing.

We loosen the confidence on all players, essentially resetting it. So again, if you were truly hardstuck, you are given space to prove that. This is also why we see lots of feedback at the beginning of the episode that match making feels a little crazy, because the match maker is letting all players prove themselves again. If a simple change of letting the match maker let you match make a little further outside your confidence gives us that much feedback at start of season, you can bet match making on a full reset would be pure chaos.

It's always an interesting topic, but so far we've been happy with Episode resets, and the new act starts(no resets).