I have a question for you, being the new designer.
Don't you think it's extremely unfair for people to get demoted/lose 3 arrows on games where it's a total stomp?
I've found myself in games where the final score is 13-1 or 13-3 and it's extremely frustrating to be in a game where the odds are stacked against you.
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...
Read moreYes community been asking for this for long time. Hope Riot will hear to us.
we hear you
What happens when a teammates leaves and doesnt come back? Does your mmr get lowered like a normal match? Or is it different?
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.
Congrats! Radiant is a huge achievement, I'm trying to climb ranked and I can't even imagine setting aside the time as well as the dedication required to hit that rank. Seriously, great work.
Good luck in your future endeavors, and if you do comeback hopefully we've made some great changes for you to dig your teeth into!
Read moreHi Evrmoar,
Thank you for responding to my thread!
I was actually really excited to hear my post had gathered the attention of a real Riot employee. I really wish I could've responded in a more real time basis, but with finals right around the corner I've been a little busy. Also this thread blew up, so it's been hard to see every single comment.
I'd just like to say that you're right in that ranked means different things to different people. Since you said you did a lot of esports related to COD I think this will make some sense: I recently joined a collegiate team and was put into the entry fragger role. Even though I'm on paper an Immortal 1/2 I'm Match MVPing in high tier tournaments even against a team with full radiants. We're currently set to play in the finals tomorrow. (If you were curious we're Oregon State University).
To me, ranked isn't that big of a deal anymore, since my main focus is now on tournament / pro play. However it's...
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 :)
As someone who also plays too much warzone, I would be lying if I said putting a warzone dev on Valorant sounds like a good idea to me, but I hope you have a good time working on a more stable product. It’s pretty cool that you’ve worked on both of the current most popular FPS games. Good luck with ranking up and the new job dude, I’m sure you’ll do great stuff for Valorant :)
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 >:)
Read moreYou hit the nail exactly on the head !
This is what I meant to say, but unfortunately, it raises some extremely concerning questions...
- If matching is done by MMR, why are we restricted BY RANK ?
- If the system tries to get matches by RANK ? Then Why am I (Bronze) matched with 2 Plats ? (And this not the ONLY time it has happened)
- I am pretty sure that I wasn't on a massive win streak, so what you say is quite probable. They might have been on a massive loss streak to have a ridiculous variance to end up in this situation. Should this level of variance even be allowed without demoting them ? I mean, I have played over 200 games and I still get demoted 2 tiers down in 3 losses, which I have to recover by having 8+ solid wins. Why is the system so pleased with them that they get to have 10+ solid loss streak to gather up that kind of variance but still get to keep their ranks ?
- And let's say their MMR hasn't fallen up, but mine was a li...
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...
Read moreI get that but like I said earlier I have been gold for about 200 games nows. Usually teetering between silver 3 and gold 2. Gold 1 for like 80% of the games this season.
So, my variance should be low right, since its been this way for 2 acts now. If anything, I should be seeing more rating slightly affected. But for whatever reason, it doesn't.
I am not too bothered with climbing or anything, just trying to have fun and find some nice people to play with on the way. If I rank up that's great, if not then it's whatever.
I found a stark difference in performance when playing with no packet loss. Some servers give me massive spikes that have me lose every duel. I did a WinMTR and its in the final leg before reaching the Valorant server from Bell's center. Not even sure it can be fixed since my ISP uses Bell's hardware and only provide the "last mile" service. Anyway, this has nothing to do with your work or the rank system, its just something I am dealing wi...
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.
Read moreIf I could quickly ask a simple question - "What exactly does my ELO have to do with respect to my current RANK / TIER ?"
And I'm not asking about Act Ranks and what effect they might have on matchmaking or determining future ranks, I'm asking what is the exact nature of ELO in Valorant "in relation with" RANK / TIER.
To elaborate - Consider a below average player like myself. My RANK / TIER is Bronze 3. (Given that GOLD was considered average up until ACT 2). Now the dynamics of win / loss against other Bronze, Silver and Gold players are pretty much clear to me, but what is so unclear is how my ELO / MMR can be so high to match me with / against Platinum, but I'm still at Bronze ?
https://twitter.com/Refl3ction/status/1309547207641579520?s=20
So, to summarize, what exactly are these ranges of ELO that determine what RANK or TIER you have ? Is it fixed / static ? or dynamic...
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 g...
Read moreIm trying to understand the elo system for a while now and i experienced alot of weird scenarios that never made any sens to me and to alot of other players i showed the scenarios.
Still, with all the explanations some/alot scenarios dont make sense. I have 2 friends with having the same frequency of played games per day and the same variance(they play immortal 3 and radiant since act 2 and didnt really down or uprank at all).By looking at this picture its really really hard/confusing to understand how omen results in 3 up while the lower ranked cypher results into getting only 2 up. I have alot of those scenarios tracked but selected this one to showcase because it might be one of the most obvious ones.
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.
Thanks for making this comment, you explained a lot of things that we needed to hear. I’ve written toy elo systems and even though I understand how they work, I occasionally get frustrated by the arrows too. I really appreciate the transparency and community interaction from the dev team. Also your job sounds super cool.
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.
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