In general, the rank experience is better in Valorant vs League. Since you've been around league just as long you probably could attest to that. It boils down to a players impact and the feeling of being able to carry or help carry games based of your effective contributions vs the feeling of losing games where you played amazing, but still lose just because 'kek team game'. There's too many variables in League while you can climb and win the entire process is not fun. I'm saying that as someone who climbed up relatively high (high diamond). You can have mega feeders in League, or just generally people who give up or tilt so run it down, the list goes on.
Valorant is a shooter though I was mostly comparing rank system and how a players impact feels in game. In Valorant, your impact feels much higher the better you become and it feels more easier to carry games, especially if you're smurfing.
Because you use an elo system, the rank system can for sure feel yoyo bally sometimes. I'm not going to tell you how to make a better system, but it's not fun sometimes it can be rough.
I don't feel like pro play push has effected balancing as much in Valorant in comparison. In fact, the general balancing of Valorant is the reason why I continue to play it. There isn't too much over nerfing or over buffing.
However, I actually disagree with the feeling / pressure to play comp in Riot titles. It for sure is more prevalent. I can say about 90% of my friends solely play comp, good or bad. I don't play comp at all anymore but get pressured into playing the majority of time if I play better than my friends in the few unrated games I play. This is particularly why I play solo queue or on different accounts just to avoid comp haha.
There's just this need of validation, to be 'good' and the only way that can be achieved is a rank rating worth sharing. Many of my friends can't even explain whether they are competitive or not, they play comp.
You say it's okay to jump right into rank, but there is an overwhelmingly high amount of people who don't play to learn. This I noticed is way more prevalent in riot titles. I'm not sure why haha. It could be because it's f2p game.
But I suspect it's because how often riot highlights / promotes pro gamers. Everyone wants to be like Tenz and so on, even before learning the fundamentals.
This also tends to also breed toxicity, especially in rank because of players having over inflated egos with skills that do not match it. I'm enjoying my time playing unrated but ngl it's getting a little to easy as the better players are in comp.
It's very hard to explain. But overall experience I personally felt is I am for sure 100% very competitive in games and strive to learn and get better. But I don't play comp anymore because I do not enjoy playing with toxic players who often bark more they bite and choose to spend their time shitting on their team rather than learning the game.
I wish there were more coaching guides and content related to learning directly pushed by riot. Or at least something that promotes the message learning and failing is okay.
Cheers.
P.S: Nice to meet you I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
devtrackers.gg