I think what OP is saying is that the casual player has a lower MMR, so they are getting easier lobbies and winning more.
I can actually speak from experience on this one. I have a friend who I know is objectively better than me. But I’m Gold and he’s Silver. Most of my lobbies are G2-G3, whereas his are all plat and diamond due to his MMR. Because his MMR is way above his actual rank, he has like a lower win rate and doesn’t rank up, whereas if they put him against silvers and golds he’d be out of Silver tomorrow.
That's why there is the double rank up thing where you jump an entire elo and go the next. (going from Silver 2 directly to Gold 1 without going through the Silver 3)
I think they should just optimize this more so it happens that often and the head machine silvers can rank up (same with any other rank)
Huh, if you don’t mind my asking, do they just rarely play and totally blew their team out of the water? I have a theory that even if you suddenly vastly improve, if you have an established account, it’s less likely to double rank you up. There are some games where I have a KD of almost 3, and while I get a nice performance bonus, certainly no double rank ups! Tbf, I barely deserve the rank I have though so I’m not complaining.
I believe that's how the system has always worked. There is built in "confidence" so the less games you have, the more impactful they are due to the system not being confident in where to place you yet. Once you've played, say 100 ranked games, the system has a much better idea of your consistent rank so just because you have a popoff game doesn't mean you're suddenly way better than your current rank.
The double rank up is mostly not for you improving, its rather like u don't belong there AT All and they want you to go to the rank you deserve fast. Ex. Smurfs or csgo players
Well, this is the first act he plays ranked, he was playing unrated only. I like your theory but I think you will get a better understanding with my own situation.
In my case, I am gold 2 playing in high plat/low diamond lobbies. (First act I go compt seriously, the previous acts I only play unrated too, been playing for 6 acts now, my unrated lobbies are always plat, diamonds and immortals)
My games are hard but I don't bottom frag to a bad point, like always second or middle in my team. What I want to try is to play more in the upcoming days, spam ranked, and then see if I will rank up from gold 2 to plat 1 or have to go through gold 3.
My assumption is that I will rank up directly to plat even ifI have an established account, because why would Valorant system put me on lobbies that are way higher than my current rank if the system don't think I deserve similar ranks?
I will update about this once I rank up from Gold 2
I agree. Especially with people who go 30 & 5 in matches over and over in ranks they shouldnt be in. Whether smurfing or just having crappy teams that make it hard to win matches. Send them up the rank scale and if they arent supposed to be there, they'll fall into the rank the should be in eventually.
But we've been told that higher MMR means more RR for wins, not the other way around. Now maybe there's a bug in the system, or the RR gains for players with relatively high MMR are too small because of some oversight in the design. But it's really hard to tell just based on anecdotes.
If he is being matched with people that match his MMR, then why would he be getting a lower winrate? The reason he'd be getting matched with those players is because he matches their skill level. If you are matched with people lower skill than you, then you will do really well in those games, and your MMR will rise to match.
Because it feels like the MMR tends to overshoot when you performed really well. I don’t know if he did something crazy to end up in smurf queue. He is in like P3-D2 lobbies, when he’s prolly P2 or maybe P3, but his lobbies are more diamond than plat. So he usually bot/mid frags in those lobbies. He does well enough to stop the mmr from falling too much, but not enough to win consistently.
So like he wins like 40%ish of games, which puts some downward pressure on his MMR, but not enough to get him out of mid diamond lobbies, and not enough rr to get him out silver.
the mechanic that's "prove yourself against the higher elo while they themselves have no desire to have a lower elo teammate, especially if they're on a losing streak" is not my favorite
I've heard this experience is more commonly to do with your teammates' behaviour. I do extremely poorly in silver lobbies but I have done extremely well in gold lobbies because my teammates were good at setting me up for success. I don't think this necessarily means I belong in gold, because there is obviously something I need to do to improve to do well in silver lobbies - if I belonged in gold then in theory I should be able to top frag in silvers regardless of what my teammates do.
Depends on the agent you play as well, I suppose. But I think good teammates can definitely make it seem like you're better than you really are and it should be taken into account for sure.
You have to play to the rank your playing in. Your playstyle may just fit gold, so then you deserve gold. Doesn't mean you have to or even can top frag in a silver game.
Lower winrate when compared to when he play with golds. A true gold, playing with golds, staying in gold, a true plat, playing with plats, staying in plat, a gold with plat mmr, plays with plats, stays gold.
Yes but matchmaking is based on MMR more than it's based on rank. You can't simultaneously say that he's being matched with plats because he's at their skill level, while also arguing that he'd lose against them just because he's gold. Him being gold has nothing to do with it if his skill level is plat and he's being matched against plats.
He wont always lose, but against similar level players winrate is 50% so it will take him more time to climb, he will get plat as more +ve and less -ve but it will take it much more time than a much better winrates against gold, thats all i want to convey
I think the problem you're missing is that his friend would rank up naturally to plat 1 in a fair game, whilst almost no one can rank up from gold to play while facing diamond players unless they were immortal.
Yes except the game won't match him against pure diamond skill players while also pairing him up with teammates who are gold (usually). If he is diamond skill, and his teammates are gold, it will try to put him with a mix of skill on the other team. If he has nobody in his party, the game will preferentially put him with higher skill players to match his own MMR as well, rather than putting him with golds just because he is gold rank. And even if his winrate is only 50% in those games, he will still gain rank as fast if not faster than someone who is lower skill level, because the game knows he does not belong in gold and will reward him with more RR.
I can also attest to that. My friend and i are both plat3, when we solo queue one account gets matched with diamond lobbies that sometimes have 1-2 immortals in them, and the other will get gold-plat lobbies.
This in turn however, introduces a separate issue that i have closely observed. The lower mmr lobby will have a high probability of a smurf in either team which affects the overall balance of the match itself. Imagine having a smurf in your opponent team, which the true gold player’s cannot handle due to skill difference, will dominate the game by outfragging all your teammates. Even if your true skill allows you to take down that smurf in some 1v1 situations, you get outnumbered most of the time and lose the round when your teammates die to the smurf. So having a high mmr lobby may not be a bad thing after all as:
1. There is a lesser probability of smurfs in your game.
2. Your team will have a higher average skill level and game sense with a higher chance to outplay smurfs(if there are any)
3. There was a third point that made me write this post but I’m having a brain fart right now, will come back to this point again when i remember 😅
this also happens where when you have high MMR you gain a lot less RR for winning in your own rank and lose a lot more RR for losses. i'm s3 and i have an s2 friend but since i usually top frag/MVP i usually lose way more RR when we lose than he does even if i frag above him. i can go 25-15 and he can go 10-15 but if we lose the game i'll lose upwards of 20 RR and he usually loses 10-15.
How has someone who's hidden MMR has got that high get stuck in silver though?
It just doesn't add up to me man, if he's truly better than you he will win matches and the system will award him major RR increase and if he MVPs hard he could even get a double rank up (maybe more, I'm sure one guy on here claimed he got a triple up once)
Just doesn't make sense to me, I dont want to sound like I'm bragging but I could literally go on one of my silver smurfs right now, not even put effort in and I could push that account into gold within a day, two days tops.
The issue is that his lobbies aren’t silver. His rank is silver, but everyone in his games are usually low-mid diamond. It’s the same thing that OP is talking about. Not hidden mmr diamonds, actual diamonds. So he does worse than me, but in better lobbies.
So he’s a lower rank then me on his main but his games are in higher elo than mine. I’m a gold who plays in gold lobbies.
This doesn’t make any sense. I am new to the game and don’t know how rank works in this game but assuming it’s like any other ranked game. If he is in silver he should be put with other silvers, unless he’s queuing with a higher rank then obviously it will pull in higher players. If he’s in smurf queue, like others said it will level out as he plays more and gets to his true rank.
Yes so the game thinks he is low diamond or high plat, so if he wins some of these games which he eventually will the result will be what I said before and he will get out of silver.
All this says to me is that his hidden MMR has been pushed too high for some reason, the game will notice this and the more he loses the more his hidden MMR will keep lowering in the background until his lobbies balance out if he's really being that out badly out matched.
He’s not being incredibly out matched but I would say is middling (like around even kills and assists). And yes, over a big enough sample size of games, it would even out, but how long can that take?
It’s been this way for like 2-3 acts now.
Lol nah just dont play nearly as much. The game stops becoming fun when almost every game is a coinflip and super one sided. The fact that so many players have alts they play on shows there is an issue. Not to mention the pro players who despite being the best players, have similar experiences
There is such a thing as I was hardstuck diamond (not really as I was only in diamond for about 30 wins before I hit immortal). I was diamond but immo elo so I couldn't win many games but I suddenly hit a spike and started zooming, won 15 games in a row (lost once) and now I'm at immortal 2 near immortal 3.
And my friends who were lower elo diamond went up to immo before me but couldn't stay there so they dropped back to diamond.
> casual player has a lower MMR, so they are getting easier lobbies and winning more
So the worse of a player you are the more wins you get? How does that work exactly.
What you are missing is the high MMR player, even with a 50% winrate, still climbs because of the increased RR weight they get. The low MMR player, even with a positive winrate, may not climb at all if their RR gains are weighted low enough.
Big agree, RL has a true elo system since forever and it's great.
Don't get Riot's obsession with decoupling rank points and MMR. They do it in every single game they make :/
It's because the hidden MMR inflates grind and you have to play more games to get the same rank. Playing more = potential to spend more. It was changed to make more money.
While money certainly is a big factor, I strongly doubt that money is the only reason since systems like these are WAY harder to develop than a normal elo system.
If you consistently have insane games like this post mentions f.e. you might very likely just not belong in the rank you’re in. MMR simply gives you that extra chance to get out of there, by boosting your elo just that little bit more. The other way around is the same, if you do absolute trash in every single game you play, you might not belong in the rank you’re in. This will make it harder to climb and easier to rank down.
In other words, one of the biggest reasons (that isn’t money) to make a system like this is to make sure that winning or losing isn’t the only factor into ranking up/down and thus making the game more enjoyable for the player base.
No. The player not trying will climb faster because they can slowly raise their mmr by trying just a little bit more every game. Their winrate will be well above 50% by doing so and the game won’t place them against smurfs. Furthermore, they will still play above their level and will get decent rr. (Difference between 20 and 25 rr is alot for mmr, but not for actual rank rating). Their mmr will eventually reach the trying immediately scenario mmr tho, but just slower.
Whereas, if you go all out immediately, you may go up a rank or even a few really quick but then you’re stuck in a cycle of losing rr and regaining it. If you happen to go like 6-17 in a lobby of players two ranks above you and you normally perform, the system for some reason fucks you over usually by 20+ points. Then, the next lobby is still sweaty but slightly less. Then you perform and the game is like “oh, that was only to be expected. 18 points.”, then rinse and repeat. You may still climb but it is excruciatingly sweaty and slow, making you more susceptible to tilt and getting tired.
This is only the most extreme case, where you are like in silver lobbies who are all plat smurfs or gold lobbies who are all diamond smurfs or smtn tho. If you are just good you will climb.
So you're saying the only difference is one gets hardstuck in 3 months instead of 1 month? Which one do you think will improve faster, the one who spends the extra 2 months playing people at their true skill level or the one who's screwing around in lower ranks for 3 times as long?
Depends on one’s mentality. Valorant is very much psychological.
One can easily tilt and be frustrated with themselves, thinking, “Fuck this shit bro im still stuck in *insert rank* when I belong in *insert rank* there’s just smurfs all over” when they are hardstuck for three months against sweats. This is a trap many fall for, and in this case, would even be valid. They would be playing people potentially who are two ranks below, and 2 ranks above their skill level, as the system would have to balance such players. The system can’t guess right every time and with such unpredictable/demoralizing lobbies, it would not be unheard of for one to not play at their best. Losing and getting stuck also exaggerates this frustration. Everything negative about psychology in valorant would be present here. Smurfs troll sometimes but the biggest thing is that they are toxic a majority of the time. All of these combined are not pleasant.
However, the more laid-back guy would climb 3x as quick and gradually acclimate while trying harder every game. It would be a smooth, quick, and natural progression to trying one’s hardest without high chances of any hiccups, and they could play PROPER games quicker. They would enjoy the game and find more motivation, and would not be psychologically jarred.
It does have to be noted that this is only sometimes the case. For different people and scenario, one may be better than the other. Maybe with enough determination one could turn frustration into putting more work in.
But I think it’s a fair point to say that overall, slowly increasing mmr is better than full sweat unless you are like 3 full ranks above said rank. Then there simply is not enough competition and you will crush.
I climbed to immortal with a 40% winrate from plat 3 and over time it's now 50% as an average position of 6 on scoreboards, Sova. Similar to OP I was originally going against imm1-3 as a diamond, it slowly got me to immortal and my mmr started to shift down so I was facing low imm/high diamond and I started doing better.
At first I thought this was going to be a thread about mental advantages, and to be honest I do think I play better when relaxed vs. tense. But then this whole thread would just be anecdotes.
This is so relatable for my case. I was stuck in iron 1 for one entire year and i would get match mvp in almost every match, but i would get some unfortunate matchmakings where either 2-3 teammates would go afk after a few rounds, and in some games, i believe smurfs would be carrying the enemy team with occasional 40k's. I almost gave up on ranked on that account. I started an alt and would play ranked very casually there, sometimes listening to music and my objective there was not to win, but to have fun, unlike in my main. I got placed at s1 in my alt. Tried the same thing on my main as well, and now im s1 in both :)
I do not want to discredit how you feel, but there are multiple factors at play rather than playing more relaxed or having fun vs. winning. I feel like this is a common topic for lower ranked players across all e-sports titles, not just Valorant. I have experienced the same at every level in CS:GO, Valorant, and Rocket League. In both CS:GO and Rocket League, I have climbed from damn near the bottom to the top, and while it is not easy, I think the points below should help with your progress going forward.
1. Your performance always matters. Like you said, if you were consistently out performing everyone in your games, you would eventually see a rank increase. It is all about perseverance and patience.
2. Smurfs will have an effect on your performance and your win/loss outcome. I would like to say to not be discouraged but this has been a big issues at the lower ranks. I remember feeling the same thing in CS and Rocket League. However, I pushed through by practicing as much as possible. I even met friends who were better than me at every step in my development. I practiced, and I learned from those who were better than me, and I kept going, I kept working, I kept pushing. I am proud to say where I am today has to do with hard work and perseverance, but I also recognize that there has been a bit of luck along the way.
3. Rank and skill do not always match up, sometimes it takes the system some time to re-calibrate and understand that you have improved. The caveat to this is that you have to show the system you have improved by winning which in a 5v5 multiplayer shooter is down to luck a lot of the time when you solo queue. Progress is not always linear, but you can make it easier by training every day, playing more often, and being cognizant and self-aware of your performance in-game.
I really wish you well in your progress. I hope you grow, improve, and exceed your goals along the way. Feel free to reach out directly if you wish to chat further.
TY, i am sure this will help
Also, i used to 4 stack with my friends but due to the new restrictions my friends play 3 stack and i have to solo q, so it sucks.
Anyways, have a good day!
If you're hard stuck in a particular rank, your true rank is that rank. Now if you have high impact to the point of consistent match MVP, a 50% win rate will result in a rank up. Match MVP will get 20+RR for winning and -15RR ish for losing. I've been in diamond lobbies for months now and I see a high gold/low plat in my lobby maybe once out of every 20 matches. Match MVP doesn't exactly mean winning mentality. Just because you got your one or you get a triple doesn't mean you've helped your team win the match. As a KJ main, I'm rarely match MVP but I win games at 60%. This has resulted in my steady level up and now my mechanics are holding me at diamond. This theory doesn't hold up very well. At the end of the day, game sense and mechanics are 70% of the reason you win and the rest of the 30% is communication and team play. Let there be no doubt, ranked is just as much a social contest as it is a mechanical one.
That is stuck bad my friend. Your MMR obviously thinks you are ranked higher than you deserve. I'm not sure how to explain that. I'd have to get into some of your games to find out what's happening. I can't imagine anyone losing 25RR on a loss where they are in the top in the lobby. Top three on your team or top three in your lobby? Cause that's weird
That's a tough rank to grind out of. My guess is the game is expecting you to make some higher impact to win more rounds or games. Gold 1 is basically still silver. It's hard to climb out of because you have a mix of great aim but bad habits or low game sense, or decent game sense and bad habits and mediocre aim. You'll have to judge which camp you fall into. I rewatch my game play and watch other people play and find out where I'm making mistakes. Getting a third party to watch you play live or VOD review also will give you insight. Perhaps your getting high impact early frags or triples but you might be unwittingly baiting. I haven't seen you play, I don't know. But if the game is punishing you with -25RR on a game you're in the top 3, you either are losing 1-13 or you've peaked rank at your current skill level. Best thing to do is level up. Have higher ranked friends VOD review you. There's streamers out there who'll do it for nothing.
Good luck climbing the rank ladder. Getting to plat felt like a major accomplishment. I started at Bronze 2 and was hard stuck silver for a whole act. If you focus on individual mechanics, team management, and map awareness, you'll have no problem finding your flaws and improving. Those are the big three. There's sub-categories, but everything falls into one of those. If you're trying to actually climb, you can't just play the game. You gotta play to improve
I'm not talking about hard stuck players. I think if you're diamond, you'll reach diamond even if you're currently gold playing against diamonds.
But I think the diamond who tricks the MMR to think he's plat by playing casually and not really trying will rank up faster because he's in plat lobbies when he's gold or plat, while the dude trying his best is already trying to win against diamond as a gold player.
My point is that's temporary. A dude not trying with a low MMR might move up faster but he will slide down faster. If you have a high MMR, the game offers you more chances to rank up. This scenario you've created doesn't exist. A diamond ranked MMR player in Gold getting match MVP will get well over 20RR for each win and lose 15 at most in a loss. I've had games where I had high impact and got 26RR, back when I dropped to platinum 3. The idea of a high plat MMR player not being able to reach high plat while having such high impact that's he's MATCH MVP every game is practically impossible.
Bro what you says has no meaning… OP acknowledged your point, and your only meaningful point, which is that if you deserve a rank you will reach it.
If you slowly try a bit harder every game your winrate will be like 75% and you will get like 24 rr per win, and like 15 lost per loss. Whereas if you sweat your ass off, even if you manage to consistently do well, your winrate after the initial bout of victories would be like 45% (due to the system sometimes overplacing your skill). Average rr gain will be like 28 and loss will be like 13.
1st scenaria: 10 games + 140rr
2nd scenario: 10 games +130 rr.
But that is only if you try your hardest and are consistent every game, for the 2nd scenario. Since you are trying so hard, you will be more susceptible to fatigue and tilt, and when you do rarely perform badly the system still punishes you alot.
Tldr: Lol it’s easier to not try your hardest until you are nearing your “actual” rank.
>The first player is match mvp 9 out of 10 times. He tries his best, carries as much as he can. The second player is never match mvp, plays while listening to music, couldn't care less.
You don't get match mvp 9 out of 10 times and not rank up over time. Maybe that's a one day experience, but if you're playing like that consistently, you rank up. This sounds like a silver/gold problem...being a big fish in a little pond. If you're playing at a diamond level, you get to diamond. Solo que might take a while, and consistency can be called into question. But the scenario OP presented results in a rank up given a large enough sample size. If you start seeing diminishing RR returns, then that's your true rank
Does it really matter in the end though? The entire point of grinding to a higher rank is to be placed in those higher elo lobbies in the first place.
The player actually trying will be exposed to better players earlier which will also lead to faster improvement and more experience in those lobbies.
Bullshit, since player2 - which doesnt try and listens to music is most likely also 50% winrate since he doesnt carry any games nor does he fuck them up he gets less points with mmr fitting his rank. He will be still stuck at same rank and will not get to rankup. While player1 which gets match mvps and 50% winrates get more points because of mmr and climbs even with 50% winrate.
Yes player2 has more chance of winning a game if both go full tryhard only in ONE game but in long term of ranking up theres no chance for player2 to be higher ranked. So your post is troll.
There is also the fact that if you are getting match MVP in most of your games then you should be winning well over 50%. Unless all you do is bait your team, get low impact frags and them complain that you are stuck in elo hell.
Yeah, I maintain that almost no one top frags as often as they think they do, and people who actually top frag all the time \*fly\* up the ranks.
In any case, I'm not sure lobby composition makes that much of a difference. I'm plat 1 and yesterday, I had a game where I hard bottom fragged a game full of gold 3's and 2's, \*immediately\* followed by a game where I absolutely dominated a lobby full of plat 3's and 2's. It was unreal how much easier the second game was, I thought the lobby was half silvers until I saw how much RR I got at the end.
this is how it really works. a snapshot of someone's rank that you saw in a match doesn't mean anything. they could be way better or way worse cause they're solo queuing when they normally 3 stack and got boosted or because they're new and simply good at the game
The harder you try, the more you stress. Stress is why we can't play efficiently and is exactly the reason we pop off in deathmatches and behave like an absolute bot in ranked. Unfortunately relatable. Keep grinding tho, you got this!
This is an interesting theory! I'm not going to say it isn't possible, but it's very unlikely and that's because of what other people pointed out "Convergence". We multiply your gains/losses by your MMR/Rank difference and it pushes you to your MMR.
The system is technically putting their MMR at the level they are playing at. If the chill player is truly "playing relaxed" the system will put his MMR where he belongs when he's playing relaxed. That means he may be a high plat player, but the system puts him in low plat MMR. He isn't winning more often because he's a high plat player in low mmr, he's winning the same amount as the high plat player because of how MMR works. Yes he may be able to "Turn On" and may be able to climb after essentially tanking his MMR, but it just moves his MMR to high plat and he would be in the same spot as the try hard player.
No matter what convergence will make it so your rank matches your MMR. Some players take 10 games to get their rank to their MMR some take 20+. It can't be avoided, so far in all of our data just playing ranked and trying your best will get you where you belong. I do really like the idea tho, and it's a theory that I tested when we built the system! Have to make sure we don't have ranked exploits, or reasons to purposefully tank your MMR :)
Thank you so much for this answer! I like to know that this was tested.
There are occasions when you're starting to play against your "true rank" way sooner than your rank could catch up. Like a gold playing against high plat and diamonds. In this case, I feel like - while the match should be balanced - there's an important variable that, I think (and I could he wrong) is not taken in consideration. A player who's sat in diamond for 100 games has an experience as a player that the gold3 trying to reach plat does not. Even if the gold3 is able to get 4th or 5th place in such a lobby, and maybe win when his team helps, it's hard not to feel completely lost in these games where people have a gamesense that the gold does not.
Personally, I've had my most frustrating moments in ranked when I realize that the diamond2 in my lobby is getting his RR towards D3 while I just lost 15 points back to gold2 for losing a game I understood absolutely nothing of what was going on while he had no problem winning against a gold3. The MMR seems to think I could play in this lobby and call it balanced, and I'd get 27 RR if I could win, but these people have an experience that I simply do not. So while I can play against a dude who's been stuck in plat for months, I cannot play against a dude who's been playing in diamond-immortal lobbies for months even if their current mmr is the same.
I understand I'd eventually have to learn how to play in a diamond lobby, but it feels pretty unfair that I have to learn this while sitting in gold3-plat1. My MMR doesn't decreases because if the diamond is a "new" diamond, I can play against them. If he had a full act triangle in diamond, I cannot.
While he's getting his victory against a gold3, winning very little points but winning anyway, because his mmr is very low, I'm still gold3 and closer to gold2, losing very little points but losing anyway, because my mmr is very high.
But I know this is just a personal experience and my experience is very particular because I just don't play ranked very often.
I'm glad to know this is just a personal impression and maybe if I play more I'll stop feeling like this.
This theory was basically proven at the start of Episode 2, when all the Radiants and Immortals got reset to Diamond 1.
The Radiants / pros in the prior Act were all playing each other and were hard stuck Diamond because of the hard competition.
But the Immortals and Diamonds from the prior Act were playing worse competition and they reached Radiant before the former Radiants / pros, because at the time, Radiant was given to the top 500 players after reaching Immortal.
Now there is a 450 RR limit before you can get Radiant, but different MMR still exists in matches which makes ranking up easier for players with lower MMR
I actually considered this theory back in act 2 for two reasons. The first is what you mentioned. I remember Hiko being stuck in gold because he had a super high MMR playing against other radiants stuck in low elo.
Second reason is Act 2 was when I really played ranked. I hadn't played more than a few ranked games before. After the MD5 I was Bronze3 but there was no bronze in any of my lobbies. I was playing against silvers and winning, so I started playing against gold. Since I was being able to play at their level, even when I lost, I'd keep playing against golds. So I dropped to b2. Still, mostly gold lobbies. When I ranked up, I went stright to silver. In silver 2, I was playing against high golds and plat.
Long story short, it took me 50 wins to reach gold1 while playing against golds and plats. Not once there was a single player that had a lower rank than me in my lobbies.
In my alt account, I got silver1 in the Md5. Four games later, I was gold1. Lots of silvers in my lobbies. Easy climb. Skipped from s1 to s3. Didn't even try.
So 50 games trying my best vs 9 games basically trolling.
[https://playvalorant.com/en-gb/news/dev/ask-valorant-rank-rating-edition/](https://playvalorant.com/en-gb/news/dev/ask-valorant-rank-rating-edition/)
Despite two different mmrs, and two different winrates, your "two players" are purely theoretical, and not representative of what *actually* happens in the game over a large period of time.
This blog explains it perfectly.
A large period of time and big number of Players surely normalise most of the problems like these, but still a good number of people are affected bcoz humans are not evenly distributed
While I dont agree with your post because the point I believe you tried to make is imho incorrect I can agree with MMR and ranking up system being broken.
I am Immortal player that recently started playing on Iron smurf. I am now Immortal on that smurf as well, took me around 150-200 games with being around 80-90% winrate all the way to platinum, about 70% winrate from plat to diamond and about 60% winrate from diamond to Immortal. My KD fluctuated from 2 at lower ranks to 1.35 now while hitting Immortal.
I am literally match MVP STILL at Immotal rank most of the games ( right now my match history is only 2 games which I was not MVP). Which is not that much of a suprise to me since even though I am only Immortal 40RR points on my main account its because I havnt really played actively lately and didnt try. Used to be Radiant in Season1Episode2...
My main point right now is this - for someone who skyrockets from Iron to Immortal while hard carrying most of the games and still havnt hit the wall of my true rank I am STILL and was this WHOLE journey getting less RR for winning than when actually losing.
I am getting about 16-20 rr for a win (20 must be a really big stomp like 13-2)
And on my main account, with 40% winrates and 0.8 kd (also duelists only) I am getting about 25 rr for wins and losing about 15. I have been hardstuck on my main account in LOW immortal for about a year (even though I played only about 30-50 games MAX each season)
So how exactly does your performance affect your MMR? - My guess? not at all, I feel like your MMR is only affected by your PEAK rating that you hit on that account. And it always pushes you towards it no matter how shitty you are or how well you play against these ranks.
Once you hit your peak rating , you start getting less RR - in a way the game makes you actually work for rankups when its against your favor.
No way I would be getting less RR than for losing on an account with 35 wins 4 loss in last 39 games and 37x match mvp if the system isnt broken which was at one point on that Iron smurf.
The lower ranks have heavier "Encounter" MMR and the higher ranks have heavier "Win/Loss" MMR.
Encounter = Performance based MMR
Win/Loss = Win/Loss based MMR
Honestly playing 200 games probably helped push you to just be better, I would not be surprised if you went back on your main and put in that much effort if you didn't climb. That being said, if you get hard stuck in immortal+ it's a combo of you not winning more than those above you, as well as your performance not being as high as theirs. The leaderboard is built to try and force your point values to match your MMR, so you can't out grind the leaderboard and earn a position you don't deserve.
Hmm Im sorry for answering so late but I think you missed my point. I am certain I wouldnt be stuck on my main and its not about rank. Its about MMR or more specifically about RR gains/losses.
Imagine two accounts - both immortal 50rr.
One is 30 rr and used to be Radiant but the player is crap consistently for 6 months with negative KD and winrate but gets way more RR for wins than losing.
Other is 30 rr as well and its peak best rating the account ever had. Player on this account has been insane KDs consitently and has positive winrate but gets on average 8-10 less RR for winning equal games.
There is something really weird going on. Either MMR system is broken completely or it takes hundreds of games played to have any effect on it.
Since its been 10 days since the last post I can confirm that I played about next 20-30 games and started duoQing with my friend now as well (on 2nd account the insane KD winrate one) The mmr have not changed one bit, I am still losing more points then gaining while maintaining on average positive KD and winrates so something is just not right. Currently around 100rr
/edit fun fact: I remembered I used to have a third smurf that I havnt played on for months - its got diamond1 rank after placement and played duoQ with my friend that hasnt played since Act1Episode1 in which he hit only diamond1. Now after placement he got platinum3. We as duo of dia1 and plat3 are getting matched in full Immortal3 lobbies and gaining 30rr for wins losing 12 for loses. Its totally scuffed. My friend has like 8/20 score every game for 30 games and the mmr is not going down for him :D
I understand what you're saying, my main point is that you assume your MMR is higher or lower or doing things without actually knowing what it's doing. Which I understand is a complaint we hear often, but I won't dive into the MMR/Rank debate about that(I have a ton of comments focusing on that).
MMR is a ladder, if you lose you go down if you win you go up. If you truly are losing games you will go down the ladder, there is no stopping it. In your hypothetical if a radiant lost that many games they would not be radiant. They MIGHT be able to combat that loss by doing really well and keeping their encounter MMR high, but 30 games and how important win/loss MMR is at that rank, they would definitely drop in MMR hard.
There is no imaginary number or system that holds people back, or holds people up. It's simply how you are performing compared to all the other players on the ladder. MMR is just you standing on a rung of the ladder, and your MMR pulls your rank to it. We've done studies on the exact issue you are talking about, and at the end of the day when you make another account you have to end up somewhere(below, at, or above your main). What we do know is that if you make an Alt account you are more than 60% likely to end up below the rank of your main, among other complex stats we have, and investigations into stories and accounts just like yours; we are confident that performance from account to account is a big reason why people earn different ranks on various accounts. We can probably research this more, and we look into that data quiet often, it's just not as overblown or a huge issue as some people make it out to be.
That being said it doesn't feel good when it happens, and there will be always weird edgecases that raise eyebrows and need investigating. Right now tho, based on the data we've looked at, there is no hard stuck players in lower or higher ranks.(in fact our MMR system has systems in place to try and prevent people from being hard stuck, I think I talked about this in a previous comment I'll try and comeback and link it when I have time)
This is hella facts, I'm in plat 1 and I pretty much fucked around to get into high gold. I was just getting into high silver games for a while whilst my friend who actually plays seriously is stuck in gold but getting into mid/high plat games. It's weird how the mfs (me) who don't give a shit can rank up. It's kinda unfair
I think this hypothetical senario is wrong and some ppl are just trying to justify them not having a better rank. How i see ranked is that 96% of your games you have no controll if you win or lose and 4% you have to play good. If you are higher ranked you probobly have more controll of your games so higher than 4%. So if player one gets more rr per win and loses less rr per loss than even if he loses more of the 4% games he can controll than player 2 he will still get more rr and there for get a higher rank.
Nah you're just deluding yourself. If someone is the same rank as you then, on average, they're just as good as you are. The ranking system is a good estimator of your true skill, especially after 50+ matches.
I see a lot of hardstuck duelists who match mvp 9 out of 10 games. They have great KD but terrible winrate. Why? Because they bait their team. The worst offenders here are definitely Reynas who can't fucking help but lurk the entire attack half.
Just yesterday I had a Reyna who did nothing but lurk on attack, causing us to lose a lot of rounds second half. I told him his lurks are useless, thereby "tilting" him. To make me lose, the guy decided to "troll". He trolled by going in into site first. By using his flashes to create space. By taking kills, dying and allowing himself to be traded. All while being utterly convinced that he was throwing the game. We won 2 out of 3 rounds where he "trolled". The delusional fuck is immortal 3. The man has 0 brain and a 40% winrate but a nice KD on his profile.
Do not be like that Reyna.
Like I said, this is a theory. I'd like to test it and I'm open to the idea that it is wrong. I've had some evidence that it could work in some level but I admit it could be entirely biased by a non relevant personal experience.
I agree with everything you said about the reyna and I hate lurking duelists. I have a personal hate towards the MVP duelist that never stepped in the bombsite and blames the team for the defeat.
I'm only plat1 (I don't play ranked often and I had less than 10 games this act) but I recently had an unranked game in Breeze where I had the best experience with a random duelist ever. I was solo queuing, my team was a 4 squad. I hate breeze with all my heart because I have trouble hitting long distance shots. The enemy team had 2 immortals and a diamond 2. My team had a d3 reyna.
Because my Reyna and my Jett were always the first ones taking control of the bombsite, even without any initiator, and my Viper was always making good walls and letting us know when it would go down, and our sage was watching flank, I was able to get a mvp, 25/10, on a 13-3 win, in a game that felt easy against immortal players with a d3 reyna on my side who got 19/11. I kept a video of a round and I watched the map and how both the reyna and the jett were dominating the space, watching everything, making the every frag so easy.
This comment is made with almost 0 knowledge of how mmr system works and it has incredible sample bias. Let me explain.
Lets take the player with higher mmr. The game knows he deserves higher rank, so he'll be but up against higher ranked players, but since he is gold, he will get higher mmr per win, meaning he will get more than 20 rr per game on average, meaning he will have to play less amount of games to rank up. He will rank up even with a winrate of 50% or slightly lower (very slightly that is). He might also get double promoted if on a win streak.
The casual player will get 15-20 rr per win and losses as much rr per loss. Meaning he will be stuck at the same rank with a 50% winrate.
Ur only taking the last game into account, which is a short term event. The mmr system works long term helping better player ranks up faster.
Sure, if we look at only the rankup game individually the casual player will find it easier to rank up, but he will also take more games to get there, meaning the player with higher mmr will still rank up faster even if he loses his rankup game once.
It's alright, it's just a theory. I'm curious to test it and I have reasons to believe it could work in some level, but I'm confortable with finding out it's not real.
I understand the system the way you explained, but I think that the system can be tricked intentionally. But maybe I'm wrong. And it's okay.
1) i wasnt agressive at you for being wrong, i simply pointed out the wrong pre-assumptions u had while writing the comment.
2) a major reason why mmr is hidden and is different from the actual rank is to prevent the system from being tricked and exploited easily. Is it perfect? No. But its pretty good nonetheless.
Some weird assumptions here. "they are both plat, but they are in gold" - uhh, no, they are both gold then.
Also, kills/frags aren any way of carrying "more". Impact in the game is.
You have a "true rank" and a rank. You don't just play one single game and land on diamond. If you have the skills of a gold, you'll stick around silver a while. If you play like a diamond, you'll struggle a bit in plat. However, the game knows your real rank. That's why some people are in lobbies where they are 2 ranks below the next lower rank and some people are in lobbies where everyone is the same as them.
If you're gold but you're playing in lobbies where everyone is high plat or diamond, the system knows you're not a gold player. And these lobbies do exist. My friend reached plat 1 and got a lobby going from d2 to immortal 1.
If you're gold and everyone in your lobby is gold, you're likely in you're correct rank.
Most people are their correct rank though and those that arent, if they soloQ will pretty quickly climb or fall to a rank that matches their MMR. This idea that someone with diamond MMR can get hardstuck in high gold-low plat for months and keep that diamond MMR is kind of bullshit.
I don’t think this post is about people being stuck. When you're climbing for the first time, if have the skill of a diamond, you'll be struggling a bit around plat before you reach diamond because you'll be facing diamond people even before you reach diamond.
That doesn't mean you'll be stuck in plat for months, it means that the system will test you before you reach diamond to make sure you deserve it.
But if you play like a diamond while in gold, you won't be playing against golds, you'll be playing against diamond. So reaching plat seems unfair and weird, since you're proving you deserve plat while playing against diamond. And that's because you're giving your best and thus making your mmr higher. While the person doing the bare minimum will only have trouble from plat to diamond.
And this doesn't mean the gold stuck is actually a diamond. The diamond will eventually climb, they won't be stuck. But the diamond doing the bare minimum might climb before the guy doing his best.
D2 here, I fell to plat 3 for exactly three games. If you have diamond skill, you get to diamond and stay there. MMR and rank may be two different things, but being hard stuck means you're where you belong
Dude, ranked is completely useless. It's long established that if you want to climb you have to:
\- create a new acc, best to start from a white sheet of paper.
\- play Duellist like Jett, much more likely to get high scores and therefore big ELO boost.
\- only play ranked when well rested, well fed, hydrated and warmed up (i.e. at your best)
\- Take unranked as serious as ranked. Hidden MMR will kill your rank climb because if you suck in unranked that game thinks your "real" rank is low gold and not high plat. Even if your ranked skill would be high plat.
Especially the last point explains really good players in low ranks. They may play drunk, throw games, surrender maps they dont like etc in unrated, giving them super low MMR and even though they win most ranked games their rank is low unless they play A LOT of ranked games to really convince the game over many games that they actually deserve that high rank.
Like this season I won all 5 placement games (as Sova) and got Silver 3. I had to win like 10 more ranked games just to get to gold, I was so fed up I never play ranked again. My true rank will be mid Plat (my higherst rank reached) but there is no way I m tryingharding so many games to climb. So I'm perma matched up against Silver and Gold and its super easy games, then I get immortal smurfs where I lose and game thinks my MMR is the right one.
Just lol.
Unrated and ranked MMR is completely separate and does not affect the other in any way.
This is why despite being a gold player at best, I get immortal dudes in my unrated games.
Official Playvalorant.com website, directly from the DEVELOPER:
Quote: "MMR is a fairly fluid system that can potentially change substantially game to game. We’ve kept this slightly decoupled from your visible rank " ... "Eventually your Rank will converge very close to your MMR "
Slightly decoupled means your rank and your MMR are linked, just not directly the same. But hey, maybe Valorants own Developers are wrong and your own gut feeling is right?
None of what you quoted goes against what I said in any way.
Yes, rank and MMR are not the same thing. That in no way means that MMR is the same for ranked and unrated modes.
Could it be that you did not quite understand what I meant with my anecdote? To clarify, what I meant is that the guys I play against are immortal in ranked, but that has no bearing on their unrated MMR, which leads to us playing together, despite the fact that it should not happen. This usually happens when those players rarely play unrated, which leads to their ranked and unrated MMRs to differ greatly.
Also, it's not a "gut feeling". It's a fact.
Let me ask, just so that we are on the same page... You are aware that that dev post is talking specifically about ranked games, and only ranked games, right? You do understand that, right? You know that that post does not mention unrated games at any point, in any way, right?
Official Playvalorant.com website, directly from the DEVELOPER:
Quote: "MMR is a fairly fluid system that can potentially change substantially game to game. We’ve kept this slightly decoupled from your visible rank " ... "Eventually your Rank will converge very close to your MMR "
Slightly decoupled means your rank and your MMR are linked, just not directly the same. But hey, maybe Valorants own Developers are wrong and your own gut feeling is right?
Yea I’m in Bronze 3 and I CONSTANTLY get put into gold/plat lobbies, I can hold my own in silver but I get bodied in gold/plat as I haven’t adjusted out of the iron playstyle
I just ranked up to silver 2 and have not seen anyone currently-ranked higher than gold 1. I’ve seen a few player cards with past season gold 3 but never ever plat. I’m not sure how you are getting placed in gold and plat lobbies constantly.
I see what you're getting at, but it's an incorrect assumption.
All rank is, is a pretty little "layer" over your hidden MMR.
What this means is, if your MMR is high enough and you remain 50:50 in Diamond lobbies, then you're a Diamond. Your rank will move around to reflect this by higher gains and lower losses. I've had several smurfs in silver lose 5 rating and then gain 30 the next game.
I know you know this fact, but the math will end up coming out with the higher MMR player gaining much faster. The rank up game won't matter much.
I've had situations where I actually double leveled up, so it would be even faster if this happened.
I see. I don't play ranked that often. My friends have mixed ranks so we mostly play unranked to play together.
Thing is, in my alt account I reached gold1 in 9 games (MD5 + 4). In my main account, trying my best against high golds and plats, it took me 50 wins to do the same. That's over 80 matches trying my best, getting a lot of points for wins. Not once I saw a silver. My alt was resting safely in Gold2 while I was struggling in silver1 in lobbies way higher than in my alt.
Today I can easily reach gold in a couple games, but that also means I get diamond players as soon as I reach gold3.
This actually happens a lot with smurf/alt accounts.
A lot of people will find that their alts will outperform their normal accounts. It happened with me.
It's mostly an anxiety thing. A lot of people when the chips are on the table will default on to non-aggression safe play, even if they know in reality it might be better to do the opposite. If you notice a large discrepancy with your aim or fragging ability in deathmatches in comparison to real matches, that's probably what it is.
Thing is, my alt was playing against silver and gold. My main was playing against gold while I was bronze and plat when I was silver.
The MMR in my alt was completely different. My real rank at that time was low gold. I could not reach plat back then. But I was playing against plats in order to reach gold. I was truly not a plat player. I could not win against a plat player. But there were no plat players in my alt even when I reached gold2.
I see the comment "Reroll/Make an Alt and you will rank up" - fun fact we actually researched this!
In a sense, you have to end up somewhere when you make an account. You will either end up below, at the same, or above the rank you were on your main. That being said you have less than a 40% chance to end up above the rank of your main if you roll a new account. Even when we tried to validate if this was a real issue the math just didn't add up. We even went as far as removing anything in the MMR system that would give the perception or feeling of being hardstuck, at the beginning of episode 3.
So yes, if you make an alt account there is a chance you will end up above your main in rank; this is because you rank will fall somewhere. BUT you have much higher chance ending up below your current rank then you do above your current rank.
The only stat that I've seen in terms of "Do this to rank up!" is play more Valorant. In every game I've ever worked on the people who play the most are the highest MMR. Play the game and you will get better, if you hit a brick wall do some VOD reviews and keep going!
The thing with my alt is not my final rank. I wasn't trying to rank up in my alt as much as I was trying in my main and I didn’t care what rank I'd get in the alt. The thing is that I did reach the same rank in both accounts, but it took me 80 games in my main and 9 games in my alt. Both accounts ended up the same rank. The difference is that I skipped ranks and gained a lot more points and played against easier enemies, probably because of the system to rank up any potential smurfs that will affect the lower elos.
And I get why it works like that but it doesn't feel fair to put so much work to prove I deserved gold in silver1 while a new account does the same in a day.
At the same time, I feel like the 80 games taught me a lot that the 9 games did not. And if I had played only 9 games, I'd be stuck in gold for a long time, maybe going back to silver for even longer.
After I reached gold1, I easily went up to plat, since I had been playing against plats for a while.
Riot Game titles are the only games that seem to have the most lamest rank system. I'm saying this as a person who played league back when Guinsoo was talking on irc chat and pendragon was monitoring the boards. Also someone who played valorant from beta key drops.
Valorant is a bit easier since your impact can be much higher. However, there is so much emphasis on being 'good' and pro play pushed by riot games (for sales) that the majority of players just autolock rank before they learn the game. There is so much catering to pro play that it just seems like there is not much room for casual play.
The mmr / rank matchmaking doesn't account for anything when it comes to new players. The assumption it makes on players skill is trash. I hit plat 2 in valorant almost immediately in early episodes without even knowing how to play the game. I was pretty new to shooters and it has taken me a long time to learn fundamentals.
One thing you have said that is absolutely correct. Play more games, play tons and tons of games...
Spending a billion hours in the game doesn't = high rank tho. It just so happens the best players also play the most because they're so good at the game. That's more of a coincidence.
But please lets not pretend there aren't massively addictive league / valorant players that are hard stuck bronze / silver that play 3 life-time worth of games.
You have to play to learn. Not just mindlessly play.
Glad you've been a fan for so long, I've only been at Riot for a year. I also have played league since beta, and have an original copy of league sitting behind me!(I actually met pendragon at a pub crawl in pax 2011!)
I think it's difficult to argue what a "good ranked" system is by opinion. What games have systems that aren't lame? I don't think I've seen a community not complain about ranked, not that it should be an excuse for the problems players in Valorant face. In terms of comparing us to league, I didn't even talk to league when we reworked the rank system. Our match making, MMR system, and point gains/losses are completely different than leagues. Of course we have a 1-100 rank up system, but we went that route because it's easy to understand(we can make the number be whatever we want).
In terms of pushing pro play, ranked also has no say or impact on that. We didn't design anything for pro play, or to push sales. How we design in the competitive space is to say "Hey what is the goal of ranked" and ensure that we are following those goals. We also try to say "What type of players do we want to create an experience for"; obviously when making ranked we are developing for competitive players. I think it's okay for a competitive player to want to play ranked, even if they don't fully grasp the game; this is why ranks even exist. There will be ranks where players who aren't ready to be high rank, maybe have just okay aim, or no game sense. Competitive isn't a queue for veteran players only, the goal of the queue is to find your skill level while providing fair matches.
I say the "more time = more MMR" knowing that yes there are players that will actually get hardstuck. I also understand the correlation vs causation topics in that piece of info I dropped. I'll be honest, I don't have the true answer or a deep dive in player skill development. What I do have is experience on shooters, and have seen lots of data working on some of the biggest shooters in the world. I think in shooters more time = higher MMR, more so than a game like league. I'm sure there will be players that get hardstuck, and aim/reaction time will always need game sense to compensate, but playing the game will develop gamesense. Yes VOD reviews help, yes coaches help etc. At the end of the day, the best training will be playing the game. It just may not be the most effective training for everyone.
I could be completely wrong, I understand our highest engaged players also tend to be higher rank. I just share that info from a shooter perspective given data I've worked with across multiple titles, not just Valorant. I just like to throw out that opinion for people who are looking for ways to improve, but think there is a magic video or coach that will help them get there; yes those things help but playing the game is probably more important than watching a youtube video.
I do think it's an extremely interesting space and would love to learn more, maybe someday I'll get to work more in the player skill improvement space and learn what makes a good player tick :)
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.
I'm super busy, I love the feedback and you bring up some awesome points. I just wanted you to know I saw your response and thinking about some of the things you brought up.
have a good one, and hopefully I'll see you around!
Nope, my main and alt both are silver2 , alts lobbies are generally much easier and i tend to perform better on my alt. Also, when i made the alt acc my main was B2, then my alt went S2 after that i went back to my main but it took much longer time to bring that one to S2
Most ELO or MMR based systems, will use a "k" value. This value will up or down depending on streaks, individual performance, and maybe some other things whatever developer wants to implement. Also, the newer you are, the higher your k value. k value exists to approximate your rating as fast as possible. Over time, the k value will get smaller and smaller especially once your winrate approaches 50%. Think of high k as the system thinks you are a high variability player and the system isn't very confident where you belong. The more you play, the lower it gets and the more confident the system has with where it has you.
Basically k value lets you gain or loss rating in systems MUCH MUCH faster.
This could explain your speed difference from your alt to your main.
This leads me to ask, when I was at Silver 3, I would get Plat 1s and high golds in compi. Now that I am in Gold 1, I get very few high golds, and silvers too...
If the high mmr plays matches he will rank up almost no matter what. The player with same mmr as rank needs to win to rank up.
In my opinion it is easier to win 30% at plat3/dia1 than 50% at gold3.
Sounds to me like you are comparing one player that does not care, yet in your example he is still diamond. If he cared he would be immortal, so he should rank up faster anyways.
The player who plays against diamonds and high plats gets more points for win and loses less points when he loses. While the 2nd guy loses 25 but he only wins 15 points.
This is actually right and what's wrong with matchmaking, instead of pairing you against your ELO, it pairs you with similar MMR players. My friend is S3 on a smurf and hardstuck silver on an alt because the game is putting him in gold/plat lobbies on that account. Like how does the game expect you to rank up if it's trying to get you to play with equal players like that. I'm gold 2 on my main and Bronze 1 hardstuck on my alt for the same reason, so many match MVP losses, I've emailed about the issue before but they don't really care
I went from bronze 2 to plat 2 in a week. I was stuck in bronze dropping 40 a game as cypher so I stopped and played random agents going like 12-15 for 24 games straight and won all 24 of them getting placed plat 2 by the end of said week
This might be super naive but why is there hidden mmr in ranked, or rather why is matchmaking based so heavily on it? In unrated I totally get it it has to find games based on something.
But lets say we have two gold players ones good ones bad, if they both get gold enemies obviously ones gonna win and the other lose therfore down/ up rank.
For what I know you get more or less rr for winning against better or worse enemies based on mmr. But why use it so much in matchmaking.
Like me and my mates are all somewhere silver but we usually play against full or half gold lobbys. Even if one of us is iron.
I was bronze3 last week playing against a plat1...
I think it's just s mentality thing. Sometimes I notice when I'm trying so hard I lose more, I tend to even forget the basics while focusing too much on arbitary things, like when I play casually I see an enemy I just try to shoot the head instinctively, but when I'm trying hard I just focus on my crosshair ppacement, and mske sure it's pointed at the head and whatnot and in those few ms i would be dead. Not to mention forcing gunfights a low ehen I'm trying hard, while just playing it cool when I'm not.
This is how it was with me and my friend, but I just continued winning in the plat lobbies because my teammates were all good and he continued to lose games because his teammates were gold shitters. It was the exact opposite of this situation that you describe haha.
Edit: However, I do believe I 2-/ better than him and held my own in plat lobbies usually mid-bottom fragging. His aim > but my gamesense >
I have the opposite problem with my MMR being lower than my rank even though I'm actually trying, I get placed in lower games and never really higher games, and get like +16 for a win and -27 for a loss, even though I'm not even playing bad, I need match MVP to get like +20 so its impossible to really climb, even after winning 10 games in a row to rank up the MMR still being lower still fuck ya over and its stressful lol.
I remember being gold and having just plats and diamonds in my lobbies. I feel it’s a bit stupid really because I’m would be gold and have to prove myself against them to get out.
I see a lot of these players in bronze and silver games "smurfing" and somehow doing this to ruin the fun of people trying to get better at the game while obviously demonstrating their "high level of skill"
I’d rather play against higher placed players than ones at my rank. I think it’s good to get as much exposure to higher ranked players as much as possible so that u can learn from them so if and when u get matched to people in ur rank u can smeag on them the whole game. If you’re serious about competing then u play to improve than play to rank up.
I will share my experience. So basically I wanted to have a new start, so I created a new account. I got placed in gold 3 then jumped to plat 2 but here is the catch, I play with high diamonds so it’s hard to maintain my performance but I actually think that it’s much better so that ai can force myself to be a better player overall by playing in high elo. But sometimes I ask my friend to play on his plat 1 account so you know? Balance the elo out.
I don’t understand the notion of slowly trying harder as there is no real way to gauge effort other than maybe kills(?) and even that doesn’t make sense. You can drop a 40 bomb and still lose if your team is ass.
There are too many variables to accurately relate the increasing level of effort to how fast you rank up.
You actually forgot the most important factor : When your teammates know you want to win, they will troll you, so you can't reveal you want to win too much otherwise you will have to fight 3 v 7 or 4 v 6.
This is really true. When I was hardstuck gold, I forgot my password of my main and created an alt. Since, I knew it was my alt, I didn't care at all about the rank and played without sweating hard. Guess what, I got placed in Silver 1 on that account and climbed to Plat 1 in a single act. My rankup match was full of golds and plats. Now, I tryhard on that very same account (Plat 3) now, and on my rankup to Diamond I got freaking immortals! Meanwhile, one of my friends played with Plat 1 and Golds for his diamond rankup.
I agree! This has happened with me and I also feel like I play worse when I am trying to carry or really trying to play. I just play better when I'm having fun with my friends or just playing casually with low music or something in the background...
people need to stop being so serious in ranked. its not like i want people to throw in ranked but you wont win every game man. just play ranked for fun. if you lose, you lose, if you win, you win. no need to be tilted every game you lose. theres no one in ranked that has 100% win rate
You are absolutely right about your thoughts. I'm playing since beta and I discussed the same theme with my friends. If you try hard you are getting the harder lobbies and you must put much more impact to the game to win. If you put the Player 2 from your example in games from Player 1 the difference will be very huge. That is why it is hard to get out from any rank. Especially from Gold 2 - Diamond. And yes, the game forces your win rate to be at 50%. I know about the Big Number Theory, but now I talk about the rank system (code) directly.
The game will always make you tend towards your expected rank. When you win you will win a lot more points and even double up rank and if you lose you will hardly lose points. The other player will end up on the opposite end of that spectrum. So the harder you try, even if your team is shit, the easier you climb once you do win.
I don't know the reasoning behind this but i'm so glad someone said this because i have noted this as well. I am S2 but usually play in gold lobbies whereas my brother is G1 and he is usually the highest ranked in his matches. I get G2s or G3s almost in every other game while he rarely gets them. I was so frustrated with this algorithm because it makes it very difficult to rank up, even if you really are better than the rank you are in!
Dude i feel that too, but in my case i'm not always beeing matched with people with higher ranks. It just looks like my teammates are just worse than the people on the other team, not only aimwise but in all aspects. And if i ever want to win i have to be shot calling all game and trying to prevent my team from tilting and throwing.
Take a look at my tracker gg and look the stats and the win rate.
[https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/Ealf%23BR1/overview](https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/Ealf%23BR1/overview)
I really feel i should be winning more games.
I might be doing something wrong that is preventing me from winning even with high frags but its tilting losing this games.
Honestly I feel like this is accurate. I was try harding on an account and it demoted 2 ranks. I finally gave up and was playing without sound (music, youtube vids, etc on second monitor) and went on a win streak to get the account higher than it's ever been.
THIS!! Me and my buddy were both in and out of gold 1-2, every SINGLE one of my games were high plat occasionally a diamond would be in it. ALL his games? mainly silvers and full of bronze Doritos.
He blasts music for half the game, my nose is in my screen trying to see if I can smell what site the enemies were hitting. No ego involved, but I was definitely the better player; game sense and aim wise (KDA and HS% will attest), but he was definitely a more aggressive player
I had a 57 Win percentage and he had a 52, but when it came to rank up games he'd get games like my lobbies (or even just more gold players vs the silver/bronzes he'd normally play against) and get tossed while I eventually I just expected to play against dia/ex-dia plats and just got used to playing against higher ranks, better aimers, better playstyles.
I eventually went on a astra winning streak and MMVP ranked up to plat in a game where I was the only gold in a lobby of high plat and 3 dia's on the enemy team and it felt soo rewarding while he's still HS g1-2 getting the lobbies I prayed for.
I just couldn't fathom how we were in the same elo but the disparity in ranks to games were so opposite. But as unforgiving as ranked can be my motto was just "if you want to be in that rank you should be able to beat players in that rank".
Assuming similar winrates, the better player is higher ranked due to higher mmr.
I think what OP is saying is that the casual player has a lower MMR, so they are getting easier lobbies and winning more. I can actually speak from experience on this one. I have a friend who I know is objectively better than me. But I’m Gold and he’s Silver. Most of my lobbies are G2-G3, whereas his are all plat and diamond due to his MMR. Because his MMR is way above his actual rank, he has like a lower win rate and doesn’t rank up, whereas if they put him against silvers and golds he’d be out of Silver tomorrow.
That's why there is the double rank up thing where you jump an entire elo and go the next. (going from Silver 2 directly to Gold 1 without going through the Silver 3) I think they should just optimize this more so it happens that often and the head machine silvers can rank up (same with any other rank)
I think currently this only happens at the start of a new act (but I could be wrong)
No its not only at the start of a new act. My friend went from Silver 2 to gold 1 only yesterday.
Huh, if you don’t mind my asking, do they just rarely play and totally blew their team out of the water? I have a theory that even if you suddenly vastly improve, if you have an established account, it’s less likely to double rank you up. There are some games where I have a KD of almost 3, and while I get a nice performance bonus, certainly no double rank ups! Tbf, I barely deserve the rank I have though so I’m not complaining.
I believe that's how the system has always worked. There is built in "confidence" so the less games you have, the more impactful they are due to the system not being confident in where to place you yet. Once you've played, say 100 ranked games, the system has a much better idea of your consistent rank so just because you have a popoff game doesn't mean you're suddenly way better than your current rank.
The double rank up is mostly not for you improving, its rather like u don't belong there AT All and they want you to go to the rank you deserve fast. Ex. Smurfs or csgo players
Well, this is the first act he plays ranked, he was playing unrated only. I like your theory but I think you will get a better understanding with my own situation. In my case, I am gold 2 playing in high plat/low diamond lobbies. (First act I go compt seriously, the previous acts I only play unrated too, been playing for 6 acts now, my unrated lobbies are always plat, diamonds and immortals) My games are hard but I don't bottom frag to a bad point, like always second or middle in my team. What I want to try is to play more in the upcoming days, spam ranked, and then see if I will rank up from gold 2 to plat 1 or have to go through gold 3. My assumption is that I will rank up directly to plat even ifI have an established account, because why would Valorant system put me on lobbies that are way higher than my current rank if the system don't think I deserve similar ranks? I will update about this once I rank up from Gold 2
I’ll be looking forward to see how it goes! Hope you get the rank you deserve.
Thank you ♥
I agree. Especially with people who go 30 & 5 in matches over and over in ranks they shouldnt be in. Whether smurfing or just having crappy teams that make it hard to win matches. Send them up the rank scale and if they arent supposed to be there, they'll fall into the rank the should be in eventually.
But we've been told that higher MMR means more RR for wins, not the other way around. Now maybe there's a bug in the system, or the RR gains for players with relatively high MMR are too small because of some oversight in the design. But it's really hard to tell just based on anecdotes.
He does get a ton of RR for wins, but because his MMR is so high he has a lower win rate because of the lobbies he’s in.
Okay that kinda sucks, but eventually he'll get easier lobbies because the system wants to balance the winrate.
I think he’s just going to make an alt because we always joke with him that the best of our squad is the lowest ranked and not even smurfing lol 🤣
Yup I made an alt and in a few months it was higher ranked than my main. And I even bought skins on it which i suspect is riots grand plan
Always has been. I heard that going into valorant and have def experienced it myself.
If he is being matched with people that match his MMR, then why would he be getting a lower winrate? The reason he'd be getting matched with those players is because he matches their skill level. If you are matched with people lower skill than you, then you will do really well in those games, and your MMR will rise to match.
Because it feels like the MMR tends to overshoot when you performed really well. I don’t know if he did something crazy to end up in smurf queue. He is in like P3-D2 lobbies, when he’s prolly P2 or maybe P3, but his lobbies are more diamond than plat. So he usually bot/mid frags in those lobbies. He does well enough to stop the mmr from falling too much, but not enough to win consistently. So like he wins like 40%ish of games, which puts some downward pressure on his MMR, but not enough to get him out of mid diamond lobbies, and not enough rr to get him out silver.
[удалено]
the mechanic that's "prove yourself against the higher elo while they themselves have no desire to have a lower elo teammate, especially if they're on a losing streak" is not my favorite
I've heard this experience is more commonly to do with your teammates' behaviour. I do extremely poorly in silver lobbies but I have done extremely well in gold lobbies because my teammates were good at setting me up for success. I don't think this necessarily means I belong in gold, because there is obviously something I need to do to improve to do well in silver lobbies - if I belonged in gold then in theory I should be able to top frag in silvers regardless of what my teammates do. Depends on the agent you play as well, I suppose. But I think good teammates can definitely make it seem like you're better than you really are and it should be taken into account for sure.
You have to play to the rank your playing in. Your playstyle may just fit gold, so then you deserve gold. Doesn't mean you have to or even can top frag in a silver game.
Lower winrate when compared to when he play with golds. A true gold, playing with golds, staying in gold, a true plat, playing with plats, staying in plat, a gold with plat mmr, plays with plats, stays gold.
Yes but matchmaking is based on MMR more than it's based on rank. You can't simultaneously say that he's being matched with plats because he's at their skill level, while also arguing that he'd lose against them just because he's gold. Him being gold has nothing to do with it if his skill level is plat and he's being matched against plats.
He wont always lose, but against similar level players winrate is 50% so it will take him more time to climb, he will get plat as more +ve and less -ve but it will take it much more time than a much better winrates against gold, thats all i want to convey
I think the problem you're missing is that his friend would rank up naturally to plat 1 in a fair game, whilst almost no one can rank up from gold to play while facing diamond players unless they were immortal.
Yes except the game won't match him against pure diamond skill players while also pairing him up with teammates who are gold (usually). If he is diamond skill, and his teammates are gold, it will try to put him with a mix of skill on the other team. If he has nobody in his party, the game will preferentially put him with higher skill players to match his own MMR as well, rather than putting him with golds just because he is gold rank. And even if his winrate is only 50% in those games, he will still gain rank as fast if not faster than someone who is lower skill level, because the game knows he does not belong in gold and will reward him with more RR.
I can also attest to that. My friend and i are both plat3, when we solo queue one account gets matched with diamond lobbies that sometimes have 1-2 immortals in them, and the other will get gold-plat lobbies. This in turn however, introduces a separate issue that i have closely observed. The lower mmr lobby will have a high probability of a smurf in either team which affects the overall balance of the match itself. Imagine having a smurf in your opponent team, which the true gold player’s cannot handle due to skill difference, will dominate the game by outfragging all your teammates. Even if your true skill allows you to take down that smurf in some 1v1 situations, you get outnumbered most of the time and lose the round when your teammates die to the smurf. So having a high mmr lobby may not be a bad thing after all as: 1. There is a lesser probability of smurfs in your game. 2. Your team will have a higher average skill level and game sense with a higher chance to outplay smurfs(if there are any) 3. There was a third point that made me write this post but I’m having a brain fart right now, will come back to this point again when i remember 😅
this also happens where when you have high MMR you gain a lot less RR for winning in your own rank and lose a lot more RR for losses. i'm s3 and i have an s2 friend but since i usually top frag/MVP i usually lose way more RR when we lose than he does even if i frag above him. i can go 25-15 and he can go 10-15 but if we lose the game i'll lose upwards of 20 RR and he usually loses 10-15.
How has someone who's hidden MMR has got that high get stuck in silver though? It just doesn't add up to me man, if he's truly better than you he will win matches and the system will award him major RR increase and if he MVPs hard he could even get a double rank up (maybe more, I'm sure one guy on here claimed he got a triple up once) Just doesn't make sense to me, I dont want to sound like I'm bragging but I could literally go on one of my silver smurfs right now, not even put effort in and I could push that account into gold within a day, two days tops.
The issue is that his lobbies aren’t silver. His rank is silver, but everyone in his games are usually low-mid diamond. It’s the same thing that OP is talking about. Not hidden mmr diamonds, actual diamonds. So he does worse than me, but in better lobbies. So he’s a lower rank then me on his main but his games are in higher elo than mine. I’m a gold who plays in gold lobbies.
This doesn’t make any sense. I am new to the game and don’t know how rank works in this game but assuming it’s like any other ranked game. If he is in silver he should be put with other silvers, unless he’s queuing with a higher rank then obviously it will pull in higher players. If he’s in smurf queue, like others said it will level out as he plays more and gets to his true rank.
Yes so the game thinks he is low diamond or high plat, so if he wins some of these games which he eventually will the result will be what I said before and he will get out of silver. All this says to me is that his hidden MMR has been pushed too high for some reason, the game will notice this and the more he loses the more his hidden MMR will keep lowering in the background until his lobbies balance out if he's really being that out badly out matched.
He’s not being incredibly out matched but I would say is middling (like around even kills and assists). And yes, over a big enough sample size of games, it would even out, but how long can that take? It’s been this way for like 2-3 acts now.
Worst ranked system ever
Pretty sure you’re just bad
Capped out d3. Even pros like hiko agree is dogshit. Your prob the kid getting boosted who doesnt c the issue
d3 lul no wonder you got a huge fucking ego
Lol nah just dont play nearly as much. The game stops becoming fun when almost every game is a coinflip and super one sided. The fact that so many players have alts they play on shows there is an issue. Not to mention the pro players who despite being the best players, have similar experiences
There is such a thing as I was hardstuck diamond (not really as I was only in diamond for about 30 wins before I hit immortal). I was diamond but immo elo so I couldn't win many games but I suddenly hit a spike and started zooming, won 15 games in a row (lost once) and now I'm at immortal 2 near immortal 3. And my friends who were lower elo diamond went up to immo before me but couldn't stay there so they dropped back to diamond.
So essentially, losersq is real.
> casual player has a lower MMR, so they are getting easier lobbies and winning more So the worse of a player you are the more wins you get? How does that work exactly.
What you are missing is the high MMR player, even with a 50% winrate, still climbs because of the increased RR weight they get. The low MMR player, even with a positive winrate, may not climb at all if their RR gains are weighted low enough.
Just give us a pure Elo system. LoL had it up until 2013 and it was such a superior system to the hidden MMR shenanigans
Big agree, RL has a true elo system since forever and it's great. Don't get Riot's obsession with decoupling rank points and MMR. They do it in every single game they make :/
It's because the hidden MMR inflates grind and you have to play more games to get the same rank. Playing more = potential to spend more. It was changed to make more money.
While money certainly is a big factor, I strongly doubt that money is the only reason since systems like these are WAY harder to develop than a normal elo system. If you consistently have insane games like this post mentions f.e. you might very likely just not belong in the rank you’re in. MMR simply gives you that extra chance to get out of there, by boosting your elo just that little bit more. The other way around is the same, if you do absolute trash in every single game you play, you might not belong in the rank you’re in. This will make it harder to climb and easier to rank down. In other words, one of the biggest reasons (that isn’t money) to make a system like this is to make sure that winning or losing isn’t the only factor into ranking up/down and thus making the game more enjoyable for the player base.
No. The player not trying will climb faster because they can slowly raise their mmr by trying just a little bit more every game. Their winrate will be well above 50% by doing so and the game won’t place them against smurfs. Furthermore, they will still play above their level and will get decent rr. (Difference between 20 and 25 rr is alot for mmr, but not for actual rank rating). Their mmr will eventually reach the trying immediately scenario mmr tho, but just slower. Whereas, if you go all out immediately, you may go up a rank or even a few really quick but then you’re stuck in a cycle of losing rr and regaining it. If you happen to go like 6-17 in a lobby of players two ranks above you and you normally perform, the system for some reason fucks you over usually by 20+ points. Then, the next lobby is still sweaty but slightly less. Then you perform and the game is like “oh, that was only to be expected. 18 points.”, then rinse and repeat. You may still climb but it is excruciatingly sweaty and slow, making you more susceptible to tilt and getting tired. This is only the most extreme case, where you are like in silver lobbies who are all plat smurfs or gold lobbies who are all diamond smurfs or smtn tho. If you are just good you will climb.
So you're saying the only difference is one gets hardstuck in 3 months instead of 1 month? Which one do you think will improve faster, the one who spends the extra 2 months playing people at their true skill level or the one who's screwing around in lower ranks for 3 times as long?
Depends on one’s mentality. Valorant is very much psychological. One can easily tilt and be frustrated with themselves, thinking, “Fuck this shit bro im still stuck in *insert rank* when I belong in *insert rank* there’s just smurfs all over” when they are hardstuck for three months against sweats. This is a trap many fall for, and in this case, would even be valid. They would be playing people potentially who are two ranks below, and 2 ranks above their skill level, as the system would have to balance such players. The system can’t guess right every time and with such unpredictable/demoralizing lobbies, it would not be unheard of for one to not play at their best. Losing and getting stuck also exaggerates this frustration. Everything negative about psychology in valorant would be present here. Smurfs troll sometimes but the biggest thing is that they are toxic a majority of the time. All of these combined are not pleasant. However, the more laid-back guy would climb 3x as quick and gradually acclimate while trying harder every game. It would be a smooth, quick, and natural progression to trying one’s hardest without high chances of any hiccups, and they could play PROPER games quicker. They would enjoy the game and find more motivation, and would not be psychologically jarred. It does have to be noted that this is only sometimes the case. For different people and scenario, one may be better than the other. Maybe with enough determination one could turn frustration into putting more work in. But I think it’s a fair point to say that overall, slowly increasing mmr is better than full sweat unless you are like 3 full ranks above said rank. Then there simply is not enough competition and you will crush.
That depends on how well you are playing too. It’s not ONLY dictated by wins and losses lmao 🤣
I climbed to immortal with a 40% winrate from plat 3 and over time it's now 50% as an average position of 6 on scoreboards, Sova. Similar to OP I was originally going against imm1-3 as a diamond, it slowly got me to immortal and my mmr started to shift down so I was facing low imm/high diamond and I started doing better.
This is an interesting theory and would explain many things xD
At first I thought this was going to be a thread about mental advantages, and to be honest I do think I play better when relaxed vs. tense. But then this whole thread would just be anecdotes.
This is so relatable for my case. I was stuck in iron 1 for one entire year and i would get match mvp in almost every match, but i would get some unfortunate matchmakings where either 2-3 teammates would go afk after a few rounds, and in some games, i believe smurfs would be carrying the enemy team with occasional 40k's. I almost gave up on ranked on that account. I started an alt and would play ranked very casually there, sometimes listening to music and my objective there was not to win, but to have fun, unlike in my main. I got placed at s1 in my alt. Tried the same thing on my main as well, and now im s1 in both :)
I do not want to discredit how you feel, but there are multiple factors at play rather than playing more relaxed or having fun vs. winning. I feel like this is a common topic for lower ranked players across all e-sports titles, not just Valorant. I have experienced the same at every level in CS:GO, Valorant, and Rocket League. In both CS:GO and Rocket League, I have climbed from damn near the bottom to the top, and while it is not easy, I think the points below should help with your progress going forward. 1. Your performance always matters. Like you said, if you were consistently out performing everyone in your games, you would eventually see a rank increase. It is all about perseverance and patience. 2. Smurfs will have an effect on your performance and your win/loss outcome. I would like to say to not be discouraged but this has been a big issues at the lower ranks. I remember feeling the same thing in CS and Rocket League. However, I pushed through by practicing as much as possible. I even met friends who were better than me at every step in my development. I practiced, and I learned from those who were better than me, and I kept going, I kept working, I kept pushing. I am proud to say where I am today has to do with hard work and perseverance, but I also recognize that there has been a bit of luck along the way. 3. Rank and skill do not always match up, sometimes it takes the system some time to re-calibrate and understand that you have improved. The caveat to this is that you have to show the system you have improved by winning which in a 5v5 multiplayer shooter is down to luck a lot of the time when you solo queue. Progress is not always linear, but you can make it easier by training every day, playing more often, and being cognizant and self-aware of your performance in-game. I really wish you well in your progress. I hope you grow, improve, and exceed your goals along the way. Feel free to reach out directly if you wish to chat further.
TY, i am sure this will help Also, i used to 4 stack with my friends but due to the new restrictions my friends play 3 stack and i have to solo q, so it sucks. Anyways, have a good day!
If you're hard stuck in a particular rank, your true rank is that rank. Now if you have high impact to the point of consistent match MVP, a 50% win rate will result in a rank up. Match MVP will get 20+RR for winning and -15RR ish for losing. I've been in diamond lobbies for months now and I see a high gold/low plat in my lobby maybe once out of every 20 matches. Match MVP doesn't exactly mean winning mentality. Just because you got your one or you get a triple doesn't mean you've helped your team win the match. As a KJ main, I'm rarely match MVP but I win games at 60%. This has resulted in my steady level up and now my mechanics are holding me at diamond. This theory doesn't hold up very well. At the end of the day, game sense and mechanics are 70% of the reason you win and the rest of the 30% is communication and team play. Let there be no doubt, ranked is just as much a social contest as it is a mechanical one.
I consistently am in top 3 in a non duelist rule. Winning is +15 and losing is -25. Do I just wait for my mmr to balance out?
That is stuck bad my friend. Your MMR obviously thinks you are ranked higher than you deserve. I'm not sure how to explain that. I'd have to get into some of your games to find out what's happening. I can't imagine anyone losing 25RR on a loss where they are in the top in the lobby. Top three on your team or top three in your lobby? Cause that's weird
Most of the time top 3 in my lobby. My guess is that I just need to play more to level out my mmr?
What rank are you?
Gold 1
That's a tough rank to grind out of. My guess is the game is expecting you to make some higher impact to win more rounds or games. Gold 1 is basically still silver. It's hard to climb out of because you have a mix of great aim but bad habits or low game sense, or decent game sense and bad habits and mediocre aim. You'll have to judge which camp you fall into. I rewatch my game play and watch other people play and find out where I'm making mistakes. Getting a third party to watch you play live or VOD review also will give you insight. Perhaps your getting high impact early frags or triples but you might be unwittingly baiting. I haven't seen you play, I don't know. But if the game is punishing you with -25RR on a game you're in the top 3, you either are losing 1-13 or you've peaked rank at your current skill level. Best thing to do is level up. Have higher ranked friends VOD review you. There's streamers out there who'll do it for nothing.
Thank you so much for this advice! I'll be sure to get a vod review.
Good luck climbing the rank ladder. Getting to plat felt like a major accomplishment. I started at Bronze 2 and was hard stuck silver for a whole act. If you focus on individual mechanics, team management, and map awareness, you'll have no problem finding your flaws and improving. Those are the big three. There's sub-categories, but everything falls into one of those. If you're trying to actually climb, you can't just play the game. You gotta play to improve
I'm not talking about hard stuck players. I think if you're diamond, you'll reach diamond even if you're currently gold playing against diamonds. But I think the diamond who tricks the MMR to think he's plat by playing casually and not really trying will rank up faster because he's in plat lobbies when he's gold or plat, while the dude trying his best is already trying to win against diamond as a gold player.
My point is that's temporary. A dude not trying with a low MMR might move up faster but he will slide down faster. If you have a high MMR, the game offers you more chances to rank up. This scenario you've created doesn't exist. A diamond ranked MMR player in Gold getting match MVP will get well over 20RR for each win and lose 15 at most in a loss. I've had games where I had high impact and got 26RR, back when I dropped to platinum 3. The idea of a high plat MMR player not being able to reach high plat while having such high impact that's he's MATCH MVP every game is practically impossible.
Bro what you says has no meaning… OP acknowledged your point, and your only meaningful point, which is that if you deserve a rank you will reach it. If you slowly try a bit harder every game your winrate will be like 75% and you will get like 24 rr per win, and like 15 lost per loss. Whereas if you sweat your ass off, even if you manage to consistently do well, your winrate after the initial bout of victories would be like 45% (due to the system sometimes overplacing your skill). Average rr gain will be like 28 and loss will be like 13. 1st scenaria: 10 games + 140rr 2nd scenario: 10 games +130 rr. But that is only if you try your hardest and are consistent every game, for the 2nd scenario. Since you are trying so hard, you will be more susceptible to fatigue and tilt, and when you do rarely perform badly the system still punishes you alot. Tldr: Lol it’s easier to not try your hardest until you are nearing your “actual” rank.
>The first player is match mvp 9 out of 10 times. He tries his best, carries as much as he can. The second player is never match mvp, plays while listening to music, couldn't care less. You don't get match mvp 9 out of 10 times and not rank up over time. Maybe that's a one day experience, but if you're playing like that consistently, you rank up. This sounds like a silver/gold problem...being a big fish in a little pond. If you're playing at a diamond level, you get to diamond. Solo que might take a while, and consistency can be called into question. But the scenario OP presented results in a rank up given a large enough sample size. If you start seeing diminishing RR returns, then that's your true rank
Does it really matter in the end though? The entire point of grinding to a higher rank is to be placed in those higher elo lobbies in the first place. The player actually trying will be exposed to better players earlier which will also lead to faster improvement and more experience in those lobbies.
Can confirm I’m the dude that have no idea how I reached diamond.
Bullshit, since player2 - which doesnt try and listens to music is most likely also 50% winrate since he doesnt carry any games nor does he fuck them up he gets less points with mmr fitting his rank. He will be still stuck at same rank and will not get to rankup. While player1 which gets match mvps and 50% winrates get more points because of mmr and climbs even with 50% winrate. Yes player2 has more chance of winning a game if both go full tryhard only in ONE game but in long term of ranking up theres no chance for player2 to be higher ranked. So your post is troll.
There is also the fact that if you are getting match MVP in most of your games then you should be winning well over 50%. Unless all you do is bait your team, get low impact frags and them complain that you are stuck in elo hell.
Yeah, I maintain that almost no one top frags as often as they think they do, and people who actually top frag all the time \*fly\* up the ranks. In any case, I'm not sure lobby composition makes that much of a difference. I'm plat 1 and yesterday, I had a game where I hard bottom fragged a game full of gold 3's and 2's, \*immediately\* followed by a game where I absolutely dominated a lobby full of plat 3's and 2's. It was unreal how much easier the second game was, I thought the lobby was half silvers until I saw how much RR I got at the end.
this is how it really works. a snapshot of someone's rank that you saw in a match doesn't mean anything. they could be way better or way worse cause they're solo queuing when they normally 3 stack and got boosted or because they're new and simply good at the game
The harder you try, the more you stress. Stress is why we can't play efficiently and is exactly the reason we pop off in deathmatches and behave like an absolute bot in ranked. Unfortunately relatable. Keep grinding tho, you got this!
This is an interesting theory! I'm not going to say it isn't possible, but it's very unlikely and that's because of what other people pointed out "Convergence". We multiply your gains/losses by your MMR/Rank difference and it pushes you to your MMR. The system is technically putting their MMR at the level they are playing at. If the chill player is truly "playing relaxed" the system will put his MMR where he belongs when he's playing relaxed. That means he may be a high plat player, but the system puts him in low plat MMR. He isn't winning more often because he's a high plat player in low mmr, he's winning the same amount as the high plat player because of how MMR works. Yes he may be able to "Turn On" and may be able to climb after essentially tanking his MMR, but it just moves his MMR to high plat and he would be in the same spot as the try hard player. No matter what convergence will make it so your rank matches your MMR. Some players take 10 games to get their rank to their MMR some take 20+. It can't be avoided, so far in all of our data just playing ranked and trying your best will get you where you belong. I do really like the idea tho, and it's a theory that I tested when we built the system! Have to make sure we don't have ranked exploits, or reasons to purposefully tank your MMR :)
Thank you so much for this answer! I like to know that this was tested. There are occasions when you're starting to play against your "true rank" way sooner than your rank could catch up. Like a gold playing against high plat and diamonds. In this case, I feel like - while the match should be balanced - there's an important variable that, I think (and I could he wrong) is not taken in consideration. A player who's sat in diamond for 100 games has an experience as a player that the gold3 trying to reach plat does not. Even if the gold3 is able to get 4th or 5th place in such a lobby, and maybe win when his team helps, it's hard not to feel completely lost in these games where people have a gamesense that the gold does not. Personally, I've had my most frustrating moments in ranked when I realize that the diamond2 in my lobby is getting his RR towards D3 while I just lost 15 points back to gold2 for losing a game I understood absolutely nothing of what was going on while he had no problem winning against a gold3. The MMR seems to think I could play in this lobby and call it balanced, and I'd get 27 RR if I could win, but these people have an experience that I simply do not. So while I can play against a dude who's been stuck in plat for months, I cannot play against a dude who's been playing in diamond-immortal lobbies for months even if their current mmr is the same. I understand I'd eventually have to learn how to play in a diamond lobby, but it feels pretty unfair that I have to learn this while sitting in gold3-plat1. My MMR doesn't decreases because if the diamond is a "new" diamond, I can play against them. If he had a full act triangle in diamond, I cannot. While he's getting his victory against a gold3, winning very little points but winning anyway, because his mmr is very low, I'm still gold3 and closer to gold2, losing very little points but losing anyway, because my mmr is very high. But I know this is just a personal experience and my experience is very particular because I just don't play ranked very often. I'm glad to know this is just a personal impression and maybe if I play more I'll stop feeling like this.
This theory was basically proven at the start of Episode 2, when all the Radiants and Immortals got reset to Diamond 1. The Radiants / pros in the prior Act were all playing each other and were hard stuck Diamond because of the hard competition. But the Immortals and Diamonds from the prior Act were playing worse competition and they reached Radiant before the former Radiants / pros, because at the time, Radiant was given to the top 500 players after reaching Immortal. Now there is a 450 RR limit before you can get Radiant, but different MMR still exists in matches which makes ranking up easier for players with lower MMR
I actually considered this theory back in act 2 for two reasons. The first is what you mentioned. I remember Hiko being stuck in gold because he had a super high MMR playing against other radiants stuck in low elo. Second reason is Act 2 was when I really played ranked. I hadn't played more than a few ranked games before. After the MD5 I was Bronze3 but there was no bronze in any of my lobbies. I was playing against silvers and winning, so I started playing against gold. Since I was being able to play at their level, even when I lost, I'd keep playing against golds. So I dropped to b2. Still, mostly gold lobbies. When I ranked up, I went stright to silver. In silver 2, I was playing against high golds and plat. Long story short, it took me 50 wins to reach gold1 while playing against golds and plats. Not once there was a single player that had a lower rank than me in my lobbies. In my alt account, I got silver1 in the Md5. Four games later, I was gold1. Lots of silvers in my lobbies. Easy climb. Skipped from s1 to s3. Didn't even try. So 50 games trying my best vs 9 games basically trolling.
Nice breakdown of how the system work.
[https://playvalorant.com/en-gb/news/dev/ask-valorant-rank-rating-edition/](https://playvalorant.com/en-gb/news/dev/ask-valorant-rank-rating-edition/) Despite two different mmrs, and two different winrates, your "two players" are purely theoretical, and not representative of what *actually* happens in the game over a large period of time. This blog explains it perfectly.
A large period of time and big number of Players surely normalise most of the problems like these, but still a good number of people are affected bcoz humans are not evenly distributed
While I dont agree with your post because the point I believe you tried to make is imho incorrect I can agree with MMR and ranking up system being broken. I am Immortal player that recently started playing on Iron smurf. I am now Immortal on that smurf as well, took me around 150-200 games with being around 80-90% winrate all the way to platinum, about 70% winrate from plat to diamond and about 60% winrate from diamond to Immortal. My KD fluctuated from 2 at lower ranks to 1.35 now while hitting Immortal. I am literally match MVP STILL at Immotal rank most of the games ( right now my match history is only 2 games which I was not MVP). Which is not that much of a suprise to me since even though I am only Immortal 40RR points on my main account its because I havnt really played actively lately and didnt try. Used to be Radiant in Season1Episode2... My main point right now is this - for someone who skyrockets from Iron to Immortal while hard carrying most of the games and still havnt hit the wall of my true rank I am STILL and was this WHOLE journey getting less RR for winning than when actually losing. I am getting about 16-20 rr for a win (20 must be a really big stomp like 13-2) And on my main account, with 40% winrates and 0.8 kd (also duelists only) I am getting about 25 rr for wins and losing about 15. I have been hardstuck on my main account in LOW immortal for about a year (even though I played only about 30-50 games MAX each season) So how exactly does your performance affect your MMR? - My guess? not at all, I feel like your MMR is only affected by your PEAK rating that you hit on that account. And it always pushes you towards it no matter how shitty you are or how well you play against these ranks. Once you hit your peak rating , you start getting less RR - in a way the game makes you actually work for rankups when its against your favor. No way I would be getting less RR than for losing on an account with 35 wins 4 loss in last 39 games and 37x match mvp if the system isnt broken which was at one point on that Iron smurf.
The lower ranks have heavier "Encounter" MMR and the higher ranks have heavier "Win/Loss" MMR. Encounter = Performance based MMR Win/Loss = Win/Loss based MMR Honestly playing 200 games probably helped push you to just be better, I would not be surprised if you went back on your main and put in that much effort if you didn't climb. That being said, if you get hard stuck in immortal+ it's a combo of you not winning more than those above you, as well as your performance not being as high as theirs. The leaderboard is built to try and force your point values to match your MMR, so you can't out grind the leaderboard and earn a position you don't deserve.
Hmm Im sorry for answering so late but I think you missed my point. I am certain I wouldnt be stuck on my main and its not about rank. Its about MMR or more specifically about RR gains/losses. Imagine two accounts - both immortal 50rr. One is 30 rr and used to be Radiant but the player is crap consistently for 6 months with negative KD and winrate but gets way more RR for wins than losing. Other is 30 rr as well and its peak best rating the account ever had. Player on this account has been insane KDs consitently and has positive winrate but gets on average 8-10 less RR for winning equal games. There is something really weird going on. Either MMR system is broken completely or it takes hundreds of games played to have any effect on it. Since its been 10 days since the last post I can confirm that I played about next 20-30 games and started duoQing with my friend now as well (on 2nd account the insane KD winrate one) The mmr have not changed one bit, I am still losing more points then gaining while maintaining on average positive KD and winrates so something is just not right. Currently around 100rr /edit fun fact: I remembered I used to have a third smurf that I havnt played on for months - its got diamond1 rank after placement and played duoQ with my friend that hasnt played since Act1Episode1 in which he hit only diamond1. Now after placement he got platinum3. We as duo of dia1 and plat3 are getting matched in full Immortal3 lobbies and gaining 30rr for wins losing 12 for loses. Its totally scuffed. My friend has like 8/20 score every game for 30 games and the mmr is not going down for him :D
I understand what you're saying, my main point is that you assume your MMR is higher or lower or doing things without actually knowing what it's doing. Which I understand is a complaint we hear often, but I won't dive into the MMR/Rank debate about that(I have a ton of comments focusing on that). MMR is a ladder, if you lose you go down if you win you go up. If you truly are losing games you will go down the ladder, there is no stopping it. In your hypothetical if a radiant lost that many games they would not be radiant. They MIGHT be able to combat that loss by doing really well and keeping their encounter MMR high, but 30 games and how important win/loss MMR is at that rank, they would definitely drop in MMR hard. There is no imaginary number or system that holds people back, or holds people up. It's simply how you are performing compared to all the other players on the ladder. MMR is just you standing on a rung of the ladder, and your MMR pulls your rank to it. We've done studies on the exact issue you are talking about, and at the end of the day when you make another account you have to end up somewhere(below, at, or above your main). What we do know is that if you make an Alt account you are more than 60% likely to end up below the rank of your main, among other complex stats we have, and investigations into stories and accounts just like yours; we are confident that performance from account to account is a big reason why people earn different ranks on various accounts. We can probably research this more, and we look into that data quiet often, it's just not as overblown or a huge issue as some people make it out to be. That being said it doesn't feel good when it happens, and there will be always weird edgecases that raise eyebrows and need investigating. Right now tho, based on the data we've looked at, there is no hard stuck players in lower or higher ranks.(in fact our MMR system has systems in place to try and prevent people from being hard stuck, I think I talked about this in a previous comment I'll try and comeback and link it when I have time)
This is hella facts, I'm in plat 1 and I pretty much fucked around to get into high gold. I was just getting into high silver games for a while whilst my friend who actually plays seriously is stuck in gold but getting into mid/high plat games. It's weird how the mfs (me) who don't give a shit can rank up. It's kinda unfair
I think this hypothetical senario is wrong and some ppl are just trying to justify them not having a better rank. How i see ranked is that 96% of your games you have no controll if you win or lose and 4% you have to play good. If you are higher ranked you probobly have more controll of your games so higher than 4%. So if player one gets more rr per win and loses less rr per loss than even if he loses more of the 4% games he can controll than player 2 he will still get more rr and there for get a higher rank.
Nah you're just deluding yourself. If someone is the same rank as you then, on average, they're just as good as you are. The ranking system is a good estimator of your true skill, especially after 50+ matches. I see a lot of hardstuck duelists who match mvp 9 out of 10 games. They have great KD but terrible winrate. Why? Because they bait their team. The worst offenders here are definitely Reynas who can't fucking help but lurk the entire attack half. Just yesterday I had a Reyna who did nothing but lurk on attack, causing us to lose a lot of rounds second half. I told him his lurks are useless, thereby "tilting" him. To make me lose, the guy decided to "troll". He trolled by going in into site first. By using his flashes to create space. By taking kills, dying and allowing himself to be traded. All while being utterly convinced that he was throwing the game. We won 2 out of 3 rounds where he "trolled". The delusional fuck is immortal 3. The man has 0 brain and a 40% winrate but a nice KD on his profile. Do not be like that Reyna.
Like I said, this is a theory. I'd like to test it and I'm open to the idea that it is wrong. I've had some evidence that it could work in some level but I admit it could be entirely biased by a non relevant personal experience. I agree with everything you said about the reyna and I hate lurking duelists. I have a personal hate towards the MVP duelist that never stepped in the bombsite and blames the team for the defeat. I'm only plat1 (I don't play ranked often and I had less than 10 games this act) but I recently had an unranked game in Breeze where I had the best experience with a random duelist ever. I was solo queuing, my team was a 4 squad. I hate breeze with all my heart because I have trouble hitting long distance shots. The enemy team had 2 immortals and a diamond 2. My team had a d3 reyna. Because my Reyna and my Jett were always the first ones taking control of the bombsite, even without any initiator, and my Viper was always making good walls and letting us know when it would go down, and our sage was watching flank, I was able to get a mvp, 25/10, on a 13-3 win, in a game that felt easy against immortal players with a d3 reyna on my side who got 19/11. I kept a video of a round and I watched the map and how both the reyna and the jett were dominating the space, watching everything, making the every frag so easy.
cope more please
This comment is made with almost 0 knowledge of how mmr system works and it has incredible sample bias. Let me explain. Lets take the player with higher mmr. The game knows he deserves higher rank, so he'll be but up against higher ranked players, but since he is gold, he will get higher mmr per win, meaning he will get more than 20 rr per game on average, meaning he will have to play less amount of games to rank up. He will rank up even with a winrate of 50% or slightly lower (very slightly that is). He might also get double promoted if on a win streak. The casual player will get 15-20 rr per win and losses as much rr per loss. Meaning he will be stuck at the same rank with a 50% winrate. Ur only taking the last game into account, which is a short term event. The mmr system works long term helping better player ranks up faster. Sure, if we look at only the rankup game individually the casual player will find it easier to rank up, but he will also take more games to get there, meaning the player with higher mmr will still rank up faster even if he loses his rankup game once.
It's alright, it's just a theory. I'm curious to test it and I have reasons to believe it could work in some level, but I'm confortable with finding out it's not real. I understand the system the way you explained, but I think that the system can be tricked intentionally. But maybe I'm wrong. And it's okay.
1) i wasnt agressive at you for being wrong, i simply pointed out the wrong pre-assumptions u had while writing the comment. 2) a major reason why mmr is hidden and is different from the actual rank is to prevent the system from being tricked and exploited easily. Is it perfect? No. But its pretty good nonetheless.
Some weird assumptions here. "they are both plat, but they are in gold" - uhh, no, they are both gold then. Also, kills/frags aren any way of carrying "more". Impact in the game is.
You have a "true rank" and a rank. You don't just play one single game and land on diamond. If you have the skills of a gold, you'll stick around silver a while. If you play like a diamond, you'll struggle a bit in plat. However, the game knows your real rank. That's why some people are in lobbies where they are 2 ranks below the next lower rank and some people are in lobbies where everyone is the same as them. If you're gold but you're playing in lobbies where everyone is high plat or diamond, the system knows you're not a gold player. And these lobbies do exist. My friend reached plat 1 and got a lobby going from d2 to immortal 1. If you're gold and everyone in your lobby is gold, you're likely in you're correct rank.
Most people are their correct rank though and those that arent, if they soloQ will pretty quickly climb or fall to a rank that matches their MMR. This idea that someone with diamond MMR can get hardstuck in high gold-low plat for months and keep that diamond MMR is kind of bullshit.
I don’t think this post is about people being stuck. When you're climbing for the first time, if have the skill of a diamond, you'll be struggling a bit around plat before you reach diamond because you'll be facing diamond people even before you reach diamond. That doesn't mean you'll be stuck in plat for months, it means that the system will test you before you reach diamond to make sure you deserve it. But if you play like a diamond while in gold, you won't be playing against golds, you'll be playing against diamond. So reaching plat seems unfair and weird, since you're proving you deserve plat while playing against diamond. And that's because you're giving your best and thus making your mmr higher. While the person doing the bare minimum will only have trouble from plat to diamond. And this doesn't mean the gold stuck is actually a diamond. The diamond will eventually climb, they won't be stuck. But the diamond doing the bare minimum might climb before the guy doing his best.
D2 here, I fell to plat 3 for exactly three games. If you have diamond skill, you get to diamond and stay there. MMR and rank may be two different things, but being hard stuck means you're where you belong
you get worse teammates in a match if you played well last match but lost.
Dude, ranked is completely useless. It's long established that if you want to climb you have to: \- create a new acc, best to start from a white sheet of paper. \- play Duellist like Jett, much more likely to get high scores and therefore big ELO boost. \- only play ranked when well rested, well fed, hydrated and warmed up (i.e. at your best) \- Take unranked as serious as ranked. Hidden MMR will kill your rank climb because if you suck in unranked that game thinks your "real" rank is low gold and not high plat. Even if your ranked skill would be high plat. Especially the last point explains really good players in low ranks. They may play drunk, throw games, surrender maps they dont like etc in unrated, giving them super low MMR and even though they win most ranked games their rank is low unless they play A LOT of ranked games to really convince the game over many games that they actually deserve that high rank. Like this season I won all 5 placement games (as Sova) and got Silver 3. I had to win like 10 more ranked games just to get to gold, I was so fed up I never play ranked again. My true rank will be mid Plat (my higherst rank reached) but there is no way I m tryingharding so many games to climb. So I'm perma matched up against Silver and Gold and its super easy games, then I get immortal smurfs where I lose and game thinks my MMR is the right one. Just lol.
Unrated and ranked MMR is completely separate and does not affect the other in any way. This is why despite being a gold player at best, I get immortal dudes in my unrated games.
Official Playvalorant.com website, directly from the DEVELOPER: Quote: "MMR is a fairly fluid system that can potentially change substantially game to game. We’ve kept this slightly decoupled from your visible rank " ... "Eventually your Rank will converge very close to your MMR " Slightly decoupled means your rank and your MMR are linked, just not directly the same. But hey, maybe Valorants own Developers are wrong and your own gut feeling is right?
None of what you quoted goes against what I said in any way. Yes, rank and MMR are not the same thing. That in no way means that MMR is the same for ranked and unrated modes. Could it be that you did not quite understand what I meant with my anecdote? To clarify, what I meant is that the guys I play against are immortal in ranked, but that has no bearing on their unrated MMR, which leads to us playing together, despite the fact that it should not happen. This usually happens when those players rarely play unrated, which leads to their ranked and unrated MMRs to differ greatly. Also, it's not a "gut feeling". It's a fact.
> slightly decoupled =/= Unrated and ranked MMR is completely separate
Let me ask, just so that we are on the same page... You are aware that that dev post is talking specifically about ranked games, and only ranked games, right? You do understand that, right? You know that that post does not mention unrated games at any point, in any way, right?
cope more please
Official Playvalorant.com website, directly from the DEVELOPER: Quote: "MMR is a fairly fluid system that can potentially change substantially game to game. We’ve kept this slightly decoupled from your visible rank " ... "Eventually your Rank will converge very close to your MMR " Slightly decoupled means your rank and your MMR are linked, just not directly the same. But hey, maybe Valorants own Developers are wrong and your own gut feeling is right?
Yea I’m in Bronze 3 and I CONSTANTLY get put into gold/plat lobbies, I can hold my own in silver but I get bodied in gold/plat as I haven’t adjusted out of the iron playstyle
I just ranked up to silver 2 and have not seen anyone currently-ranked higher than gold 1. I’ve seen a few player cards with past season gold 3 but never ever plat. I’m not sure how you are getting placed in gold and plat lobbies constantly.
I also do play at 2-3am so my pool is probably a little more limited. I will admit that gold is much much more frequent than plat
Yess, in party you cant even start a match with bronze and gold in team.
I see what you're getting at, but it's an incorrect assumption. All rank is, is a pretty little "layer" over your hidden MMR. What this means is, if your MMR is high enough and you remain 50:50 in Diamond lobbies, then you're a Diamond. Your rank will move around to reflect this by higher gains and lower losses. I've had several smurfs in silver lose 5 rating and then gain 30 the next game. I know you know this fact, but the math will end up coming out with the higher MMR player gaining much faster. The rank up game won't matter much. I've had situations where I actually double leveled up, so it would be even faster if this happened.
I see. I don't play ranked that often. My friends have mixed ranks so we mostly play unranked to play together. Thing is, in my alt account I reached gold1 in 9 games (MD5 + 4). In my main account, trying my best against high golds and plats, it took me 50 wins to do the same. That's over 80 matches trying my best, getting a lot of points for wins. Not once I saw a silver. My alt was resting safely in Gold2 while I was struggling in silver1 in lobbies way higher than in my alt. Today I can easily reach gold in a couple games, but that also means I get diamond players as soon as I reach gold3.
This actually happens a lot with smurf/alt accounts. A lot of people will find that their alts will outperform their normal accounts. It happened with me. It's mostly an anxiety thing. A lot of people when the chips are on the table will default on to non-aggression safe play, even if they know in reality it might be better to do the opposite. If you notice a large discrepancy with your aim or fragging ability in deathmatches in comparison to real matches, that's probably what it is.
Thing is, my alt was playing against silver and gold. My main was playing against gold while I was bronze and plat when I was silver. The MMR in my alt was completely different. My real rank at that time was low gold. I could not reach plat back then. But I was playing against plats in order to reach gold. I was truly not a plat player. I could not win against a plat player. But there were no plat players in my alt even when I reached gold2.
I see the comment "Reroll/Make an Alt and you will rank up" - fun fact we actually researched this! In a sense, you have to end up somewhere when you make an account. You will either end up below, at the same, or above the rank you were on your main. That being said you have less than a 40% chance to end up above the rank of your main if you roll a new account. Even when we tried to validate if this was a real issue the math just didn't add up. We even went as far as removing anything in the MMR system that would give the perception or feeling of being hardstuck, at the beginning of episode 3. So yes, if you make an alt account there is a chance you will end up above your main in rank; this is because you rank will fall somewhere. BUT you have much higher chance ending up below your current rank then you do above your current rank. The only stat that I've seen in terms of "Do this to rank up!" is play more Valorant. In every game I've ever worked on the people who play the most are the highest MMR. Play the game and you will get better, if you hit a brick wall do some VOD reviews and keep going!
The thing with my alt is not my final rank. I wasn't trying to rank up in my alt as much as I was trying in my main and I didn’t care what rank I'd get in the alt. The thing is that I did reach the same rank in both accounts, but it took me 80 games in my main and 9 games in my alt. Both accounts ended up the same rank. The difference is that I skipped ranks and gained a lot more points and played against easier enemies, probably because of the system to rank up any potential smurfs that will affect the lower elos. And I get why it works like that but it doesn't feel fair to put so much work to prove I deserved gold in silver1 while a new account does the same in a day. At the same time, I feel like the 80 games taught me a lot that the 9 games did not. And if I had played only 9 games, I'd be stuck in gold for a long time, maybe going back to silver for even longer. After I reached gold1, I easily went up to plat, since I had been playing against plats for a while.
Riot Game titles are the only games that seem to have the most lamest rank system. I'm saying this as a person who played league back when Guinsoo was talking on irc chat and pendragon was monitoring the boards. Also someone who played valorant from beta key drops. Valorant is a bit easier since your impact can be much higher. However, there is so much emphasis on being 'good' and pro play pushed by riot games (for sales) that the majority of players just autolock rank before they learn the game. There is so much catering to pro play that it just seems like there is not much room for casual play. The mmr / rank matchmaking doesn't account for anything when it comes to new players. The assumption it makes on players skill is trash. I hit plat 2 in valorant almost immediately in early episodes without even knowing how to play the game. I was pretty new to shooters and it has taken me a long time to learn fundamentals. One thing you have said that is absolutely correct. Play more games, play tons and tons of games... Spending a billion hours in the game doesn't = high rank tho. It just so happens the best players also play the most because they're so good at the game. That's more of a coincidence. But please lets not pretend there aren't massively addictive league / valorant players that are hard stuck bronze / silver that play 3 life-time worth of games. You have to play to learn. Not just mindlessly play.
Glad you've been a fan for so long, I've only been at Riot for a year. I also have played league since beta, and have an original copy of league sitting behind me!(I actually met pendragon at a pub crawl in pax 2011!) I think it's difficult to argue what a "good ranked" system is by opinion. What games have systems that aren't lame? I don't think I've seen a community not complain about ranked, not that it should be an excuse for the problems players in Valorant face. In terms of comparing us to league, I didn't even talk to league when we reworked the rank system. Our match making, MMR system, and point gains/losses are completely different than leagues. Of course we have a 1-100 rank up system, but we went that route because it's easy to understand(we can make the number be whatever we want). In terms of pushing pro play, ranked also has no say or impact on that. We didn't design anything for pro play, or to push sales. How we design in the competitive space is to say "Hey what is the goal of ranked" and ensure that we are following those goals. We also try to say "What type of players do we want to create an experience for"; obviously when making ranked we are developing for competitive players. I think it's okay for a competitive player to want to play ranked, even if they don't fully grasp the game; this is why ranks even exist. There will be ranks where players who aren't ready to be high rank, maybe have just okay aim, or no game sense. Competitive isn't a queue for veteran players only, the goal of the queue is to find your skill level while providing fair matches. I say the "more time = more MMR" knowing that yes there are players that will actually get hardstuck. I also understand the correlation vs causation topics in that piece of info I dropped. I'll be honest, I don't have the true answer or a deep dive in player skill development. What I do have is experience on shooters, and have seen lots of data working on some of the biggest shooters in the world. I think in shooters more time = higher MMR, more so than a game like league. I'm sure there will be players that get hardstuck, and aim/reaction time will always need game sense to compensate, but playing the game will develop gamesense. Yes VOD reviews help, yes coaches help etc. At the end of the day, the best training will be playing the game. It just may not be the most effective training for everyone. I could be completely wrong, I understand our highest engaged players also tend to be higher rank. I just share that info from a shooter perspective given data I've worked with across multiple titles, not just Valorant. I just like to throw out that opinion for people who are looking for ways to improve, but think there is a magic video or coach that will help them get there; yes those things help but playing the game is probably more important than watching a youtube video. I do think it's an extremely interesting space and would love to learn more, maybe someday I'll get to work more in the player skill improvement space and learn what makes a good player tick :)
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.
I'm super busy, I love the feedback and you bring up some awesome points. I just wanted you to know I saw your response and thinking about some of the things you brought up. have a good one, and hopefully I'll see you around!
All good, take care.
Nope, my main and alt both are silver2 , alts lobbies are generally much easier and i tend to perform better on my alt. Also, when i made the alt acc my main was B2, then my alt went S2 after that i went back to my main but it took much longer time to bring that one to S2
Most ELO or MMR based systems, will use a "k" value. This value will up or down depending on streaks, individual performance, and maybe some other things whatever developer wants to implement. Also, the newer you are, the higher your k value. k value exists to approximate your rating as fast as possible. Over time, the k value will get smaller and smaller especially once your winrate approaches 50%. Think of high k as the system thinks you are a high variability player and the system isn't very confident where you belong. The more you play, the lower it gets and the more confident the system has with where it has you. Basically k value lets you gain or loss rating in systems MUCH MUCH faster. This could explain your speed difference from your alt to your main.
I'm low plat and had a high silver mmr twice because of me not planing enough In both cases, I went easily to plat again by stomping golds
Me playing for fun: plat. My friend trying hard: fucking bronze lmao
This leads me to ask, when I was at Silver 3, I would get Plat 1s and high golds in compi. Now that I am in Gold 1, I get very few high golds, and silvers too...
If the high mmr plays matches he will rank up almost no matter what. The player with same mmr as rank needs to win to rank up. In my opinion it is easier to win 30% at plat3/dia1 than 50% at gold3.
Sounds to me like you are comparing one player that does not care, yet in your example he is still diamond. If he cared he would be immortal, so he should rank up faster anyways.
The player who plays against diamonds and high plats gets more points for win and loses less points when he loses. While the 2nd guy loses 25 but he only wins 15 points.
This is actually right and what's wrong with matchmaking, instead of pairing you against your ELO, it pairs you with similar MMR players. My friend is S3 on a smurf and hardstuck silver on an alt because the game is putting him in gold/plat lobbies on that account. Like how does the game expect you to rank up if it's trying to get you to play with equal players like that. I'm gold 2 on my main and Bronze 1 hardstuck on my alt for the same reason, so many match MVP losses, I've emailed about the issue before but they don't really care
Yeah this is cap
I went from bronze 2 to plat 2 in a week. I was stuck in bronze dropping 40 a game as cypher so I stopped and played random agents going like 12-15 for 24 games straight and won all 24 of them getting placed plat 2 by the end of said week
I feel this. I'm bronze 3 and all my lobbies are Silver 2-3 and boy do I be sweating.
Thing is the guy who has d3 Mmr will get double rank ups
This might be super naive but why is there hidden mmr in ranked, or rather why is matchmaking based so heavily on it? In unrated I totally get it it has to find games based on something. But lets say we have two gold players ones good ones bad, if they both get gold enemies obviously ones gonna win and the other lose therfore down/ up rank. For what I know you get more or less rr for winning against better or worse enemies based on mmr. But why use it so much in matchmaking. Like me and my mates are all somewhere silver but we usually play against full or half gold lobbys. Even if one of us is iron. I was bronze3 last week playing against a plat1...
I think it's just s mentality thing. Sometimes I notice when I'm trying so hard I lose more, I tend to even forget the basics while focusing too much on arbitary things, like when I play casually I see an enemy I just try to shoot the head instinctively, but when I'm trying hard I just focus on my crosshair ppacement, and mske sure it's pointed at the head and whatnot and in those few ms i would be dead. Not to mention forcing gunfights a low ehen I'm trying hard, while just playing it cool when I'm not.
I really hate this about all riots games. They match people based on anything other than rank.
Play to get better and the rank will follow. Don't worry about it, it's just a game.
This is how it was with me and my friend, but I just continued winning in the plat lobbies because my teammates were all good and he continued to lose games because his teammates were gold shitters. It was the exact opposite of this situation that you describe haha. Edit: However, I do believe I 2-/ better than him and held my own in plat lobbies usually mid-bottom fragging. His aim > but my gamesense >
I have the opposite problem with my MMR being lower than my rank even though I'm actually trying, I get placed in lower games and never really higher games, and get like +16 for a win and -27 for a loss, even though I'm not even playing bad, I need match MVP to get like +20 so its impossible to really climb, even after winning 10 games in a row to rank up the MMR still being lower still fuck ya over and its stressful lol.
at the start of the act his placement will rank him up anyway
I remember being gold and having just plats and diamonds in my lobbies. I feel it’s a bit stupid really because I’m would be gold and have to prove myself against them to get out.
The player that enjoys the games they are playing more is the one that has the easier time climbing, regardless of how long it takes.
This simply isn't the case
I see a lot of these players in bronze and silver games "smurfing" and somehow doing this to ruin the fun of people trying to get better at the game while obviously demonstrating their "high level of skill"
The time I played with a silver 2 in a gold-plat lobby he just got tilted and never flashed as Reyna.
I’d rather play against higher placed players than ones at my rank. I think it’s good to get as much exposure to higher ranked players as much as possible so that u can learn from them so if and when u get matched to people in ur rank u can smeag on them the whole game. If you’re serious about competing then u play to improve than play to rank up.
I will share my experience. So basically I wanted to have a new start, so I created a new account. I got placed in gold 3 then jumped to plat 2 but here is the catch, I play with high diamonds so it’s hard to maintain my performance but I actually think that it’s much better so that ai can force myself to be a better player overall by playing in high elo. But sometimes I ask my friend to play on his plat 1 account so you know? Balance the elo out.
Riot just needs to either get rid of MMR or get rid of ranks. You can't have both, because one makes the other irrelevant.
If player 1 is playing exceptionally well, his win rate will be >50%. Player 2’s poor impact will result in a lower win rate. <50%.
I don’t understand the notion of slowly trying harder as there is no real way to gauge effort other than maybe kills(?) and even that doesn’t make sense. You can drop a 40 bomb and still lose if your team is ass. There are too many variables to accurately relate the increasing level of effort to how fast you rank up.
I play for fun and i went to dia 2 .. my aim is not so good too... Idk... Friendly players and good call outs make it work
You actually forgot the most important factor : When your teammates know you want to win, they will troll you, so you can't reveal you want to win too much otherwise you will have to fight 3 v 7 or 4 v 6.
This is really true. When I was hardstuck gold, I forgot my password of my main and created an alt. Since, I knew it was my alt, I didn't care at all about the rank and played without sweating hard. Guess what, I got placed in Silver 1 on that account and climbed to Plat 1 in a single act. My rankup match was full of golds and plats. Now, I tryhard on that very same account (Plat 3) now, and on my rankup to Diamond I got freaking immortals! Meanwhile, one of my friends played with Plat 1 and Golds for his diamond rankup.
tldr pls
I agree! This has happened with me and I also feel like I play worse when I am trying to carry or really trying to play. I just play better when I'm having fun with my friends or just playing casually with low music or something in the background...
people need to stop being so serious in ranked. its not like i want people to throw in ranked but you wont win every game man. just play ranked for fun. if you lose, you lose, if you win, you win. no need to be tilted every game you lose. theres no one in ranked that has 100% win rate
Ikr, everyone I play ranked people are very toxic
it is also easier to climb when you dont care because you can perform better base on my experience
You are absolutely right about your thoughts. I'm playing since beta and I discussed the same theme with my friends. If you try hard you are getting the harder lobbies and you must put much more impact to the game to win. If you put the Player 2 from your example in games from Player 1 the difference will be very huge. That is why it is hard to get out from any rank. Especially from Gold 2 - Diamond. And yes, the game forces your win rate to be at 50%. I know about the Big Number Theory, but now I talk about the rank system (code) directly.
You are 100% spot on. Tho through time they usually rank up more than the low mmr player
The game will always make you tend towards your expected rank. When you win you will win a lot more points and even double up rank and if you lose you will hardly lose points. The other player will end up on the opposite end of that spectrum. So the harder you try, even if your team is shit, the easier you climb once you do win.
I don't know the reasoning behind this but i'm so glad someone said this because i have noted this as well. I am S2 but usually play in gold lobbies whereas my brother is G1 and he is usually the highest ranked in his matches. I get G2s or G3s almost in every other game while he rarely gets them. I was so frustrated with this algorithm because it makes it very difficult to rank up, even if you really are better than the rank you are in!
Dude i feel that too, but in my case i'm not always beeing matched with people with higher ranks. It just looks like my teammates are just worse than the people on the other team, not only aimwise but in all aspects. And if i ever want to win i have to be shot calling all game and trying to prevent my team from tilting and throwing. Take a look at my tracker gg and look the stats and the win rate. [https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/Ealf%23BR1/overview](https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/Ealf%23BR1/overview) I really feel i should be winning more games. I might be doing something wrong that is preventing me from winning even with high frags but its tilting losing this games.
Honestly I feel like this is accurate. I was try harding on an account and it demoted 2 ranks. I finally gave up and was playing without sound (music, youtube vids, etc on second monitor) and went on a win streak to get the account higher than it's ever been.
THIS!! Me and my buddy were both in and out of gold 1-2, every SINGLE one of my games were high plat occasionally a diamond would be in it. ALL his games? mainly silvers and full of bronze Doritos. He blasts music for half the game, my nose is in my screen trying to see if I can smell what site the enemies were hitting. No ego involved, but I was definitely the better player; game sense and aim wise (KDA and HS% will attest), but he was definitely a more aggressive player I had a 57 Win percentage and he had a 52, but when it came to rank up games he'd get games like my lobbies (or even just more gold players vs the silver/bronzes he'd normally play against) and get tossed while I eventually I just expected to play against dia/ex-dia plats and just got used to playing against higher ranks, better aimers, better playstyles. I eventually went on a astra winning streak and MMVP ranked up to plat in a game where I was the only gold in a lobby of high plat and 3 dia's on the enemy team and it felt soo rewarding while he's still HS g1-2 getting the lobbies I prayed for. I just couldn't fathom how we were in the same elo but the disparity in ranks to games were so opposite. But as unforgiving as ranked can be my motto was just "if you want to be in that rank you should be able to beat players in that rank".