[2020] Immortal Ranked isn't based on Win or Loss - Pictures included. Discuss?

Hey guys, for those of you who don't know me I'm the new competitive designer on Valorant! So, I'll try to explain this as best as possible - because I've only been at Riot for a month and have just learned how most of this stuff is working.

First off, remember that the arrows are only reflective of your current rank not your teammates. Because you may be sitting higher in immortal elo then your teammate you may gain or lose more based on match outcome. I don't know the exact elo calculation numbers on the backend so I'm going to make up imaginary numbers as an example. If you had 13 elo, but your friend had 6 elo, and lets say the enemy team(on average) had around 6 elo, you would most likely lose more elo because you lost to opponents way below your elo.

So yes, higher ranks are based mostly on the win/loss, but how ELO systems usually work is gathering the average rank of both teams and you gain/lose elo based on the match outcome. In essence a lower skilled player who beats a pro will get more points then a pro that beats a lower skilled player.

Lastly you can also see changes in your rank/elo depending on the last time you played, or maybe losing/winning games in a row. The elo and match making system in Valorant is super impressive. It doesn't decay you when you haven't played in a while, or aggressively eats your MMR if you go on a loss streak. What it does do is increase the variance so depending on how often you play you may swing a little bit harder in rank, if you were to take a break for a bit or go on a win/lose streak.

Immortal 3 is 100% win based, I believe Immortal plus is AT MOST 20% performance based. Performance isn't just kills, it looks at things like assists, flashes, smokes, utility, entry fragging, etc. so players that play a supportive role also see performance % increases for playing utility(alternatively entry fraggers that successfully help their team take sites my not be as effected for being an entry fragger and dying). Being the top killer doesn't always mean you were the highest performer on your team. I'm lightly explaining the system, as best as I understand it; like I said I've only been at Riot as the competitive designer for a month. BUT ranked is a complicated beast and while there are still improvements we need to make, the actual back end elo system is super impressive.

This may not be the answer you want, but there are a lot of factors and unfortunately I can't tell you why this example above occurred. Hopefully I painted a better picture for you tho! I'll try to show this post to the person who trained me on the system, so they can give me more insight and make sure my explanation was correct. I can't always answer every post that says "Why did X rank change happen when Y event occured." but I would like to hop in from time to time to help people understand what may be occurring.

Whew, that was a long post. I'm off to grind some ranked myself!

I can confidently say we haven't changed gains or losses for ranked, or any major changes that would result in this post or what you talked about.

I think the major factor that may be playing a role for you, and possibly this post, is the variance I talked about. Think of variance as how confident the system is that you are at the correct rank. The more confident, the less change you will go up and down. The less confident, you will swing a little harder then others. If you aren't seeing lots of movement in ranked it's probably because you've played alot of games, you play regularly, and you probably have a pretty even win/loss ratio; if you were in a lower rank where performance is factored in you may also be performing at that expected rank on average. So until you start win/loss streaking or out performing in a low rank, the game is going to be confident you belong at that rank and your movement may slow down.

If I were to be honest I think a big problem that leads to complaints/questions about "why did X rank change happen in my given game" is that the arrows are very vague. The arrows, along with not knowing when you may promote/demote, leave alot of questions and speculation. If I was just another community member, that didn't understand how this system works, I could try to fill in the blank and say "the system is broken because of X" just as easily as I could grab an example and say "the system is working because of Y". This is something I want to solve.

The rank system is young, just like Valorant! I've only been here a month, but these are things we talk about and we are always looking to improve. I can't talk about what, when, how, etc. but know that ranked will constantly be updated/improved and we have a team that is focused on it.

ANYWAYS, to summarize ranked is a complex beast with a ton of factors. I personally don't see anything that jumps out to me as completely out of the realm of possibility. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for issues like this, to ensure there aren't any bad bugs/outliers that may need to get fixed. I said it above, but I will be bringing this up to one of the people who wrote the back end to ensure I'm correct in how this posts gains/losses could occur.

I'm also struggling to climb right now, I have an eSports background in COD from a long time ago but I still need to get better. I think another thing that may be effecting personal perception of skill could be not knowing how you are really doing. It's easy to think about the games you went off in, or focus on the games you get stomped, but it helps to go check out your overall performance and see how you are trending win/loss or performance wise. There are so many sites to track that kind of thing, so that could also be a good place to figure out how you're trending.

I'm sorry I couldn't give an exact answer to this situation, but again hopefully I painted a picture of what I think is happening.

Unrated, because it requires you to play it before going into ranked, is definitely used as a "guideline" on where to test you in your placements. Due to it being unrated it's very loose, but it's the only info we have on you that directly translates to the bomb game mode.

That being said I believe the system is very good at figuring out where you belong during your placements, or at least shortly after. I actually think the changes requiring games won over games played will help the lower ranks and placements(creating more fair matches).

Because some players don't have to try in their first 20 games to get to ranked, or you have people afk'ing/voting to surrender, it really throws off their initial testing/variance area when stepping into ranked. Now that we will be requiring unrated wins, players will have to try in unrated. This will give us a better idea of where they may belong so we can test them better in placement. That also means you will have less players who afk'ed in unrated to get to ranked, placements thinking they belong in iron, when in reality they could be a gold+ player.

So short answer, yes your unrated can matter your death match does not.

I unfortunately do not know enough about combat score and what stats it tracks. My guess is that the combat score doesn't take into account every individual players skill, where as the elo system does.

So the combat score may be saying "you get 5 points for a kill"(I made that number up). Then the elo system is going to go "You are X elo, opponent was Y elo, do some calculations - that kill was worth 3.14"(again made up numbers).

Obviously we don't want anyone to be able to figure out how we do things, so there is probably always a level of transparency we can't offer(this also can prevent figuring out exploits). But maybe this is an area we can improve visibility on someday.

Also I could be wrong because I don't know how the combat score works, unfortunately. I'm still learning and asking questions about the system as I'm diving in. I'll try to figure out what it's doing so I can talk about it more informed in the future. The above text was purely a guess.

Top radiant is probably most effected by win/loss streaking. There are all the factors I listed above, and as teams start to get mixed up and elo ratings start to get mixed, the system is pretty good at seeing who should be rising up and who shouldn't. Of course, this is win/loss base and not performance, but even just using win/loss alot of things can happen.

Thanks! My job is definitely a change of pace from what I was doing before. I was a systems designer on COD and the last thing I worked on was Warzone. It's nice being able to dive into such an awesome product, with an awesome dev team, and really engaging with the community to try and make a difference - I've had a blast so far.

There are so many learnings from ranked, elo systems, match making, so we definitely can't sit still and think we know what is best. Trying to constantly improve it and get feedback is super important.

Hmm I can't answer this well, my guess would be having different variance on where the game thinks you belong. I know that's not a good answer, but variance can be unconfident in you, because it also tries to take into account how likely you are to have a bad day, good day, how swingy you are in win/loss streaking.

One thing to think about, and this isn't ment as a slight to you or your skill, is how quickly you hit those ranks. If your friend hit Radiant before you, it might be likely that the system identifies him as the better player. Be it the performance before hitting immortal 3 where only winning/losing really matter, along with the confidence the system had in where he or you belong.

Congrats on making it to immortal and getting close to radiant tho! I'm striving to at least get to immortal someday. Hopefully we can make some improvements to ranked so you get a better idea of how you're progressing and why these situations could be occurring.

Valorant is unique in the fact that your elo/rank/mmr is very closely tied and almost one in the same after you play your placements, or maybe a few games after placements if the game can't tune in on your exact skill.

The one thing that I think that helps with getting where the game thinks you belong is that Variance/Confidence I talked about. The system will tighten your gain/loss amount when you start to even out in a certain rank because it thinks you belong there. If your win/loss or performance, depending on how much those things may matter(example; immortal3+ is win/loss only), start to change then that variance will increase because you probably don't belong in that area and you will find it easier to climb/derank.

If you are swinging ranks really hard, you may not be playing games consistantly, or if it's in lower ranks your performance may be very inconsistant. If you pop-off for two games against plat players, but then get stomped when there is an enemy gold on the team, you will have high variance because the system can't be confident of where you belong.

In the end consistency is usually the mark of a high ranking player. Unfortunately the variance system works because there are so many factors to being consistent/inconsistent as a player in Valorant. You could be a diamond level cypher when playing on Haven, but if you play on your worst map split and forced onto anyone but cypher you may be silver level. I would say the best way to climb is to make sure you can perform consistently across all maps, as well as find a few characters that work best for you as well.

I wouldn't get wrapped up too much in the numbers, I know that can be kind of a kick in the face to hear/say. Ranked means different things to different people. Focusing on improving and what you may be doing wrong helped me when I was trying to climb to diamond in league. It can just be emotionally taxing to lose, drop rank, etc. But if you can figure out how to improve, what improvement means to you, the rank increase will also happen.

This isn't the best answer, I do believe your frustrations are mirrored in lots of posts/comments. Ranked needs to be improved, and knowing what "arrows" mean seems to be a possible pain point. We are having talks about this and the competitive team is very aware of these issues. Keep improving in game(it may not seem like it but I promise you'll climb), and know that we are trying to do the same for ranked.

Connection issues can be roughhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don't live in the Riot area/LA yet, but I just got fiber where I love and it's been insane. Unfortunately I will have to move sometime next year and have to figure out a good place to live, that also has amazing internet. It's always a struggle lol, especially because sometimes living out of town is cheaper but also has worse internet.

I wouldn't say you are restricted by rank. I think it's better to look at it as you need to prove you belong where you belong. Your mmr/elo/rank almost become one in the same after so many games and the game has a pretty good idea of where you currently belong. That's where the variance comes into play. Variance is like saying "hey we think you belong where you are at in elo/rank, but you are starting to improve/decline in skill. We are going to loosen how far +/- we can match you to test you and see if that's true."

At lower ranks performance is important for this, so even tho you may not be win/losing you may be having mixed performances against people above or belong your rank. The system will compare every single interaction in a match. So if you are gold, and you are going even with other gold players, but getting stomped by silver players, that could negatively impact where the system thinks you belong.

The system is intensely complex, and I said this in other threads but we are always trying to improve it. Hopefully you can climb a bit in this second half of the act, and we will be trying to work on ways to improve rank in the meantime :).

Thank you! I'm just like everyone here, I want to play good games! I really just want a space where the community, and myself, can have fun and to push the industry forward. Valorant is so baby so there is so much potential for the game and that is extremely enticing for a designer.

I shipped about 8 COD titles, so it was definitely time for a change of pace. I've also been a huge Riot fan and played league since beta, so I was super excited to join the team.

Warzone was a blast to work on, I feel very pillaged to have a big part in the design of it. Thank you for fragging out and playing the games I've worked on! Without people playing our games, we wouldn't have a job or a community to play against >:)

Good luck with your team and your climb in the Valorant eSports scene! There is something special about being on a team, grinding out games, tournament play, etc. I wish more people got to experience it.

Your frustrations are definitely heard. Ranked is going to evolve and hopefully, given the time needed to improve the system, you and the community feel like we improved ranked as Valorant grows over the next months/years. Again good luck, and yes your feedback/issue/situation has been heard :)

I do not have a good answer for this, I was told but I can't fully remember. I will follow-up and ask to make sure I find out.

We also have a social player dynamics team which focuses on this kind of thing, so they are the ones that would be better suited to answer this. So, I'm sorry I don't have an answer but know that we are aware of toxic behavior and have a team dedicated to solving these issues.

It depends, there are instances where you can get stomped and get less then 3 arrows.

I think looking at the overall system, and not that one match, is probably better way to think about it. Lets say you could lose 0-100% rating for losing a match. If you get stomped, aside from AFK/Leavers/etc., there is probably a skill disparity between both teams and you should lose a higher percent. So it doesn't matter if it was arrows, LP, or some other point system you would be losing a high % of rating for that match. Unfortunately when you gain/lose rating the best way to determine how well a match went was how hard of a win/loss that match was. This also helps prevent smurfing, slightly. If we didn't let you move so quickly, smurfs would sit at lower ranks longer and you would have more of these stomps and bad experiences for players below the smurfs skill.

Or another way to think about it. Do you enjoy how fast you can rank up? We let people rank up pretty fast, compared to league of legends. Again this helps prevent smurfing a bit, but it could be frustrating that you can fluctuate so quickly. You will also only swing rank quickly when the system is not confident in your skill, it gets harder to climb when the system starts to know where you belong and you are having consistent win/losses.

I think the problem is the perception of arrows. An arrow is about a 33% range of gain/loss(because you only get 3 arrows ma). So when you get a win, see three arrows, then have to win 2-5 more games to get a promo it can make 3 arrows seem like they do nothing. Alternatively when you see 3 arrows down, instantly get demoted, then maybe lose two more matches and get demoted again - it can make you wonder why you are being punished so bad. The exact opposite can happen, but the situations I listed are frustrations I see talked about alot. I think you get the idea, those arrows mean nothing and you don't really understand why you are moving so quickly(or slowly) up/down. I said it before but I want to find a solution for that perception.

It sucks, I wish I could wave my wand and have the perfect ranked system. BUT we are always talking about these things and ranked will constantly be evolving and hopefully improving.