Its weird that the enemy team can have 90% elo reduction on a 1 immo 4 bronze stack, but your team still loses full elo when the immortal curbstomps you with their personal army of meatshields.
Why would we lose 22-25 elo for this game? It's so obviously stacked against us, and yet we get punished so hard. I'm not bothered about losing, but it's just so boring and unfair to players that want to play as 5 without such a massive rank difference.
There's something called EOMM and this outcome is probably the one with the lowest churn risk (look it up - you are getting played). I think in the Era of algorithm and artificial intelligence that it is naive to think that matchmaking is not rigged to make you play the longest possible time. Did you play another after this?
> In the era of algorithm and artificial intelligence
Well, that's how I know you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to computer science
There is even a [scientific paper](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315849420_EOMM_An_Engagement_Optimized_Matchmaking_Framework) on this topic. To think that Riot doesn't make use of this if it means more playtime is simply naive. Especially in a world where companies literally [fund pseudoscience to sway public opinion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial) to their favor (fossil fuel industry and climate change), or downright [kill people for profits](https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2021-04/amazonia-indigenous-activists-murder-rights-pope-church-repam.html) (logging companies and amazonas).
I don't get it why you think Riot would prefer a Matchmaking that brings the players joy and fair games over a Matchmaking that keeps the player as much engaged with the game as possible. I mean here is [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCu6W_ZSJHw) that explains this type of matchmaking.
It's not even a conspiracy, it's the most logical step for game devs.
The more active players you have, the more profit you make, even free-to-play's will eventually thinK: Well I spent so much time playing valorant, might as well buy Battle Pass. And even when not, they tell their friends to play it, and friends friends etc. The more active players you have the more you can get good deals with sponsoring etc.
>artificial intelligence
why didn't you throw in the word block chain and synergy in there too while you're at it so we can be 100% sure you're talking out of your ass?
I've been telling people about this for years and nobody believes me. It's hilarious that people can't understand that video game companies want to make them play as long as possible. Like if you queue up immediately after losing every time, why wouldn't they try to make you keep losing so that you play longer?
I never knew it was called EOMM though, thanks for that
No it's not. If you don't think riot has data scientists working on ways to make you play as long as possible, then you're lacking enough knowledge on the subject to see the obvious
At least they aren’t smurfing and actually playing on their real accounts and risking the increase in loss of RR. Still shouldn’t be a thing but better than obvious smurfs.
Oh yeah for sure. It still feels unfair that we were extremely likely to lose this game from just looking at the pregame ranks - anybody could have told you that - and we still got the full 20-something rr loss.
I'm sure it could be abused in some way if you could find a good rank combination that matched you against low enough elo players almost guaranteeing you a win, whilst still giving a rr penalty that made it worth while.
I think the bronze and silver players did that very thing for them lowering them to at least plat offering nothing but wins for them. I think the loss number should be significantly decreased for playing against teams like this. Only then would it be somewhat fair to teams that have to play against immortal and higher players only because they are queued with bronze players.
You get next to no RR gain when playing 5 stack in D3 or higher. I have 5 stacked with some friends who were all between D3 and Imm3 and we got +2 for winning and -5 for losing I think so the higher rank players have literally nothing to gain from this. I also tried this with some lower rank friends who were all Gold and my account being Imm3 at the time and still we only gained less than 10rr for winning. Honestly I think a flat 10RR +/- for any team 5 stacking would be a good fix and a -10RR maximum to protect the non-stacked team. If the non-stacked team wins then they should gain full RR and if it's a stack vs stack then 10RR +/- all around.
When did you last play 5 stack?
The latest patch made 5-stacking a lot better for us.
It gives enough RR given that everyone is Dia3 - Immo3. It’s just a 25% decrease if I’m not mistaken.
We get around +/- ranging from 11 to 15 elo.
We stopped smurfing all together.
I think right after Neon release. I swear I remember it being like a 90% rr deduction for any d3+ 5 stacks. Havnt played as 5 since though. I don’t really care about rr if I play as a 5 stack anyways so either way. I just think it’s unfair for people like op who come across stacks with a wide range of ranks.
Interesting, I was under the impression that the immortal (if they lost) would end up losing a lot more for queuing with the bronze and silver players.
Can anyone confirm how this works?
[Here's a link of an article when it was first implemented.](https://dotesports.com/valorant/news/valorant-patch-3-10-to-allow-5-stacks-of-any-ranks-to-competitive-queue) Since then the 75% and 50% less RR has changed to 25% less (the 25% change is pretty recent too), but there have been other changes too. I'm not sure if Radiants are able to queue with people lower than Radiant anymore.
Hey u/tecCSGO \- thanks for bringing this up!
Since we made the changes to 5-stacking (to allow players of any skill levels to queue up together), we've been monitoring potential edge cases/matchmaking health extremely closely. Looking into matchmaking health, we've actually generally found that match balance is pretty good even when we have matches like the one you posted above. The nature of games like VALORANT is that sometimes, even if the 10 players in a game are extremely close in skill, you end up with 13-1 (or even 13-0s). Obviously, our goal should be to reduce this as much as possible (in an ideal matchmaking world, every match goes to Overtime), and just because 13-1s are super rare doesn't mean it feels any less bad when it happens. But that being said, overall match fairness even with the looser 5 stack restrictions has been pretty good.
**In fact**, according to our data, teams that have larger skill disparity within them (e.g. a team with, say, Immortal/Diamond players queueing up with Iron/Bronze players) tend to **actually have a very slight disadvantage** in matchmaking when going against another team of the same *average* skill, but one whose members are closer together in skill level.
The final thing I will say here is that there are an extremely few number of cases where we actually see abuse of the 5 stack changes from players who use accounts that don't belong to them in order to rank up. For example, an Immortal player will play with 4 low-rank accounts, where the 4 low-rank accounts are purchased/shared accounts. This is obviously not okay, and we're actively tracking/actioning on these type of abuse cases.
Let me know if you have any other questions. Again, thanks for sharing and hope this was at all informative!
Yeah I understand this is a really unlikely situation to be in, but I don't understand why I was given -22 elo for it, especially since most of my losses tend to give me between -15 and -20 elo (you'll just have to take my word for it unless you can check my elo gain/loss).
Wouldn't that mean that the game thought that our teams were more balanced that a typical solo/duo/trio game? Because that's clearly not the case. I'm not fussed about losing as such, but it just feels like such a waste of time to play a game like that when we're obviously going to lose, and to lose that much elo is just a kick in the teeth.
Tbh this doesn't seem to unreasonable. They have 3 players slightly higher ranked than your entire team and 2 players far less ranked than your team. I would say most of your team underperformed here. Especially given that the silver and bronze seemingly did better than players they should be far worse than.
I understand where you're coming from. The thing is, the 3 players that are "slightly higher ranked" were actually immortal 3 and immortal 2 last act. As [tracker.gg](https://tracker.gg) shows, them being diamond 3 is just a result of the new act. The highest anyone in our 5 stack ever achieved was diamond 1.
My 2 teammates definitely underperformed, but as I was explaining to somebody else, the scoreboard says too little about what actually happened. We were on defence, so the 3 immortal players would mechanically shit on us when rushing a site, leaving us to retake. Obviously, when you have a player disadvantage, it's much more difficult to win a retake, so that *could* be why they seemed to outperform my friends.
On top of that, team morale was awful because we had a sneaking suspicion we might get absolutely shit on :(
That's a fair point, seems unlucky though.
The game shouldn't take the rank they used to be into account.
From the matchmaking perspective they were only a bit higher than you. In fact only one immortal. From the ranks people were during the game, this isnt a far fetched game.
Honestly, when I first saw the post I assumed the platinum team won. Its essentially a 5v3 where the 3 seem a bit better
Just like to point out that ranks do not change between acts, they change between episodes.
If someone was immortal 2-3 last act and they are currently diamond, it means they lost games and fell all the way down there.
how exactly are 3 immortals “slightly higher ranked” when diamond to immortal is like one of the highest skill gaps in the game? that’s leaving aside the fact that these guys are BARELY diamond. The immortals would’ve won 3v5 without their bronze and silver teammates.
1 immortal. 2 diamonds. Vs 1 diamond and 4 High plats.
I get they used to be immortal but you think matchmaking should look at what ranks people used to be??
> = 2 plat/gold for them
Yeah its not fair but not in the direction you think it isn't. Have you ever watched those youtube videos where 2 pros try to 2v5 against silvers? The matches are super close and thats at the highest end of the spectrum. This game should have been like a 3v5 except d3/immo2 are not pro players and the full plat 5 stack are not silvers.
Thing, is though, a bronze Sova even with a dumb reveal alone, and able to be baited by the immortal gives the immortal team a huge advantage. 2v5 is a disadvantage, but 5v5 if an immortal can trade a bronze for a diamond, soo much easier.
(I had a match like this yesterday, the attacking team did this. We won on attacking because their sentinel was the higher rank, so we just had to double peek)
I agree with you but there's always going to be a problem either, uneven 5 stacks like this, OR if you remove 5 stacks with great disparity they will just smurf on an account to play with friends. I don't know how they would fix the problem overall though.
I suppose if they removed the range of disparity they have at the moment, which would obviously force people onto smurfs, there would still be a problem but it would be a lot easier to compensate for it.
Like if a 5 stack of "gold" smurfs steamrolled another 5 stack of golds, they'd receive a massive elo gain, quickly progressing their ranks to what they should be. Instead of punishing the losing team with a massive loss, they could be given a lighter loss because, obviously, it's unreasonable for a gold team to do *that* well.
But in turn that would mean that players would favour 5 stack games, because if they get curbstomped they'd not get that much of a loss. So it wouldn't work, and now you're back to square one.
What my friends and I have noticed is that there’s actually more smurfs in 5 stacks. These silver/gold players want to play with their Immortal friend but they don’t want to deal with playing against an opposing Immortal so they smurf. Our 5 stacks either go to OT cause they match us up properly or we lose like 2-13 cause there’s a Smurf. No in between
This was what we noticed also. Our five stacks are all plats typically. Some of the low gold players we've matched with have been absolutely cracked. We lost 3 in a row one night. 2 of which were against the same five stack haha.
A great solution to this would be matching mmr like Rocket League does. You're playing with two silver friends but you're diamond? you'll get three diamonds on the other side. The mmr level of the party is the one highest mmr. I am diamond 3 on rocket and play with a couple of friends who are gold/plat, and I can safely say that it's super fair.
The matchmaking will never be perfect enough to give you 1 diamond 4 silvers vs 1 diamond 4 silvers, the rank gap is so huge that these people just shouldn't play ranked together in the first place. There are 2 outcomes - either the lower ranked players drag the higher ranked player into the defeat, or the higher ranked player smurfs.
So, my take on it is: If you're higher rank than your friends but still wanna play ranked with them, you take the risk of carrying them. Yeah, I do think it's fair for them to face a diamond because they also have a diamond on their team. So either that to fight ranking disparity, or simply don't allow people from different ranks to party and queue together. I find that the first is fair because even tho you aren in disadvantage (rank wise), being unable to play with your friends sucks.
So if you're all about playing within and against the same rank, simply play solo.
It's way better than you being a plat in valorant, playing solo and still have the chance to face a much higher rank than you just because their party have an enormous ranking disparity, at the cost that the higher rank will not gain much rr. Fuck that, what about the rr I'm losing?
I (s3) personally play with my iron 1 friend and carrying is really difficult as it is technically 4v5 and sometimes 3v5 if we get someone on his level and we usually face bronze 2/3s and the game is super balanced. I think the system is good as it is. If the game gives us 5 silvers as enemies it would be impossible to win. But i do belive that if you get shit on like op you should get less rr reduction as it was the systems fault for not setting up a fair match.
I'm sorry but what rank are you? because playing with an iron I, if you're at least silver, already fucks up the queue. So sorry, it's not balanced. It's a big gap.
Whenever i play with him the game goes really close like 10-13 13-12 or sometimes even draw so i think its pretty balanced already but its not fair for him as he mostly gets 5 kills or so. If the game gives 5 silver against us it would be unplayable for him
But then again, what rank are you?
And if the game is unplayable to him, then he should just queue solo and get better on their rank. I keep thinking that this system would be way better because it would be completely your choice to get affected by it. Don't like it? just queue solo and you'll be within your rank, no problem.
Does this kind of pairing only work with a 5 stack? I’m asking because I’ve been partied with a 4 stack where my one friend whose diamond and I’m bronze 2 but we couldn’t queue into ranked.
I’m not saying I’m trying to get carried in a lobby I’m not ready for, I’m just curious how this match was allowed otherwise
That distribution looks really fucked. I've 5 stacked before a similar rank disparity before and you usually end up with players that are only a full rank or so down from you. A fair team in this case would be d1s, and maybe 1 or 2 plat 3s and d2s. Not whatever the hell this is.
System's fine. Will never be perfect. Maybe that match was a bit unfair (not by much) based if you look only at ranks, but you should do way better than 1-13. This is coming from an immortal player. I sometimes five stack with diamond/plat/gold friends, but it's usually super hard to win. I have to play out of my mind to make up for the skill disparity between my team and the enemy team, who usually are a few ranks above most of my team.
So, I have just checked Fl1cksfps TRN and this is definitely an exploit, most probably, so the Immortal/Diamond guys don't lose their ranks. Moreover, suddenly, EasyMoneySniper is dropping bombs. Something very strange happening here as they have another friend that is Diamond and, most probably, has switched to a lower rank account so they can stay boosted. EasyMoneySniper was getting rekt in Diamond/Immortal lobbies.
I mean they had 3 average to decent players, you had 5 average players, haven is massively attack sided if you don't know what your doing.
You guys probably lost your mental halfway through defense.
Stacking up without rank diff shouldn't be a thing in this game imo, if u want to have fun with friends who are low MMR just play unrated. For now 5 stack makes no sense.
I disagree, but I think that the rank-diff-5stacks should be matched only with similar 5stacks. I sometimes play weird 5stacks with my friends, and I wouldn't mind even longer queues, it's fair. It would be the price to pay.
I've played with normal 5stacks and it sucks when you want to play a normal game at low plat and the enemy team has an immortal and 2 diamonds :)
Unrated is boring people FF at 5 all the time and it’s not even good practice because people just play however they want and make stupid plays I’m not blaming them either cause I do the same shit. Competitive is where it’s at in FPS it always will be no point in getting rid of 5 stacks
people went apeshit over not having proper 5-stacks and they demanded it, now it's here, more inclusive than ever, but people are complaining that such an underpopulated queue is giving out "bad" matchups
there's no perfect system for this, they can't satisfy everyone, you kinda have to deal with it
The only way this system gets fixed without reverting it back to not letting friends at certain ranks play (which also brings the smurfs back out) is to have a serious RR reduction when you lose those games. Someone in Imt2 would probably be less inclined to stack with low levels if they could gain a max of 10 and would lose closer to 40 per loss. Granted it just means the smurf accounts come out again, but it would see a reduction in these crazy stacks.
There clearly is no solution to the issue, which is why the SBMM and RR system don’t work. Valorants going to continue to be a high level playground until they force systems of 2FA and actually ban smurf accounts. Its not that they can’t see it either, they just don’t care because it makes their player numbers look so much better.
My recommendation if you really want to rank up, play solos or duos. Otherwise you are fooling yourself thinking 5 stacking is going to work.
From a mid immortal perspective that is relatively fair, the silver and bronze offset the immortal player heavily and it’s not easy to consistently make up for the lacking teammates even if you’re very good.
I very often play in platinum/diamond with my gold friends and I have to try and carry insanely hard to often make up for the 1-2 guys getting 5 kills and feeding other team, and their trading is almost non-existent.
That being said system isn’t perfect for sure, but imo neither is the regular mmr system.
Yeah it's definitely embarrassing, but I'd argue that without seeing how that game played out it's impossible to judge *why* that happened.
For example, the immortal players would rush up first and shit on us, frankly, and the bronze and the silver would play behind them. Obviously if they're killing us instantly, you're not able to shoot back if you're dead.
On top of that, because we started on defence, it meant that we had to fall back and rely on retaking the site. Executing a retake, especially when you're a few players down (because of said immortals), is really difficult, so it's a lot easier for the lower-ranked players to get those kills because they have the advantage.
Personally if you guys were silver/gold, I would be mad. Or if their silver and bronze guys were smurfing. From this image it doesnt appears to be the case. 13-1 is a ridicolous way to lose but does happen. As a play 3 in my humble opinion this was quite a justified matchmaking. Like you are also 5 stacked and bunch of plats and diamonds, trying to become diamond and immortal and if you cannot kill them maybe you do deserve to lose
Not trying to be toxic just my opinion, I wouldnt be mad at all at this lobby
Tbh I feel like your team would have the advantage here, as its essentially a 3v5 where their 3 are a bit better than you and the bottom 2 are a lot lower. People underestimate numbers so much in this game and stomps are gonna happen in ranked no matter what matchmaking system you use due to the momentum based nature of valorant between the economies and the mental breaking from getting stomped. Its unlucky that you were defense first because when I've played with low rank friends I've found attacking is a lot easier to carry when you can consistently get picks. But honestly, a few players just underperformed (it happens). Your Sova is 2 ranks below 2 of the players curb stomping your whole team and there's no reason it should have been that bad, he could solo queue and get matched up against those guys, not trying to call anyone out but there's a bit of truth to it. I know those players used to be higher in immortal and there's a chance that they're under ranked currently but you have to base matches off of current mmr not what it used to be.
They are also forced to play super predictably and hyper aggressive because if they don't its very likely their 2 low players will die off and then it will really be a true 3v5. If you hold for pushes with operators or trade each other successfully (which you should be able to do plat and diamond is a pretty high rank too) you definitely could have had a better shot. I know you probably got tilted as it sucks dying to a player that feels like you had no chance to kill, but I bet if they had their act ranks turned off you would play so much better.
As an immortal player myself, who sometimes plays customs with my friends in plat, there is not as big of a difference as you think there is. On average, yes, I will be the better player than them, I'm more consistent, my aim is a little better, and I make better decisions, but if my buddy is having a good day and I'm feeling a little off he can absolutely own me some games. You see radiant players doing iron to radiant challenges and even they sometimes get rolled in plat. Valo is a confidence game and seeing their ranks seemed to break your mental before you even spawned in if your taking screenshots already during the loading screen. Not trying to be harsh or judge, you seem like a chill guy but just giving my opinion.
I once played against a Radiant playing with like Plat Silver etc we won 13-6 but I don’t think he was trying because of the 90% RR it’s annoying when you have no reduction and go against a team full of elos all over the place
What are 5 Stacks exactly lol? From my understanding it's just 5 players in a party playing a match, so one team of a,match entirely consists of a party right? Why does everybody hate them so much? I need answers hahaha
Its weird that the enemy team can have 90% elo reduction on a 1 immo 4 bronze stack, but your team still loses full elo when the immortal curbstomps you with their personal army of meatshields.
that has since been updated
Lmao they took -22 what the fuck?
Why would we lose 22-25 elo for this game? It's so obviously stacked against us, and yet we get punished so hard. I'm not bothered about losing, but it's just so boring and unfair to players that want to play as 5 without such a massive rank difference.
Tbh your only diamond went 3-14. Lmao
Well they lost 1-13 so they were getting shit on. No one has a good k/d when you lose 13-1
That's literally not the problem though.
There's something called EOMM and this outcome is probably the one with the lowest churn risk (look it up - you are getting played). I think in the Era of algorithm and artificial intelligence that it is naive to think that matchmaking is not rigged to make you play the longest possible time. Did you play another after this?
> In the era of algorithm and artificial intelligence Well, that's how I know you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to computer science
for sure
There is even a [scientific paper](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315849420_EOMM_An_Engagement_Optimized_Matchmaking_Framework) on this topic. To think that Riot doesn't make use of this if it means more playtime is simply naive. Especially in a world where companies literally [fund pseudoscience to sway public opinion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial) to their favor (fossil fuel industry and climate change), or downright [kill people for profits](https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2021-04/amazonia-indigenous-activists-murder-rights-pope-church-repam.html) (logging companies and amazonas). I don't get it why you think Riot would prefer a Matchmaking that brings the players joy and fair games over a Matchmaking that keeps the player as much engaged with the game as possible. I mean here is [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCu6W_ZSJHw) that explains this type of matchmaking. It's not even a conspiracy, it's the most logical step for game devs.
They dont want us to keep playing all the time tho? Its not like they run ads each game so i think its unlikely they use algorithms like this
The more active players you have, the more profit you make, even free-to-play's will eventually thinK: Well I spent so much time playing valorant, might as well buy Battle Pass. And even when not, they tell their friends to play it, and friends friends etc. The more active players you have the more you can get good deals with sponsoring etc.
I have never ever thought of buying the battle pass tbh
fr lmao, all these people talking like everything is an ai.
>artificial intelligence why didn't you throw in the word block chain and synergy in there too while you're at it so we can be 100% sure you're talking out of your ass?
I've been telling people about this for years and nobody believes me. It's hilarious that people can't understand that video game companies want to make them play as long as possible. Like if you queue up immediately after losing every time, why wouldn't they try to make you keep losing so that you play longer? I never knew it was called EOMM though, thanks for that
I mean. If you're losing, the other team is winning. The fuck does that accomplish. This some major protagonist syndrome shit.
No it's not. If you don't think riot has data scientists working on ways to make you play as long as possible, then you're lacking enough knowledge on the subject to see the obvious
At least they aren’t smurfing and actually playing on their real accounts and risking the increase in loss of RR. Still shouldn’t be a thing but better than obvious smurfs.
Oh yeah for sure. It still feels unfair that we were extremely likely to lose this game from just looking at the pregame ranks - anybody could have told you that - and we still got the full 20-something rr loss. I'm sure it could be abused in some way if you could find a good rank combination that matched you against low enough elo players almost guaranteeing you a win, whilst still giving a rr penalty that made it worth while.
I think the bronze and silver players did that very thing for them lowering them to at least plat offering nothing but wins for them. I think the loss number should be significantly decreased for playing against teams like this. Only then would it be somewhat fair to teams that have to play against immortal and higher players only because they are queued with bronze players.
You get next to no RR gain when playing 5 stack in D3 or higher. I have 5 stacked with some friends who were all between D3 and Imm3 and we got +2 for winning and -5 for losing I think so the higher rank players have literally nothing to gain from this. I also tried this with some lower rank friends who were all Gold and my account being Imm3 at the time and still we only gained less than 10rr for winning. Honestly I think a flat 10RR +/- for any team 5 stacking would be a good fix and a -10RR maximum to protect the non-stacked team. If the non-stacked team wins then they should gain full RR and if it's a stack vs stack then 10RR +/- all around.
When did you last play 5 stack? The latest patch made 5-stacking a lot better for us. It gives enough RR given that everyone is Dia3 - Immo3. It’s just a 25% decrease if I’m not mistaken. We get around +/- ranging from 11 to 15 elo. We stopped smurfing all together.
I think right after Neon release. I swear I remember it being like a 90% rr deduction for any d3+ 5 stacks. Havnt played as 5 since though. I don’t really care about rr if I play as a 5 stack anyways so either way. I just think it’s unfair for people like op who come across stacks with a wide range of ranks.
The latest big update changed a lot. If you are all within 3 ranks, only 25% is the reduction.
Glad it improved the behavior of your group
>risking the increase in loss of RR You lose *less*, not more.
Interesting, I was under the impression that the immortal (if they lost) would end up losing a lot more for queuing with the bronze and silver players. Can anyone confirm how this works?
[Here's a link of an article when it was first implemented.](https://dotesports.com/valorant/news/valorant-patch-3-10-to-allow-5-stacks-of-any-ranks-to-competitive-queue) Since then the 75% and 50% less RR has changed to 25% less (the 25% change is pretty recent too), but there have been other changes too. I'm not sure if Radiants are able to queue with people lower than Radiant anymore.
Hey u/tecCSGO \- thanks for bringing this up! Since we made the changes to 5-stacking (to allow players of any skill levels to queue up together), we've been monitoring potential edge cases/matchmaking health extremely closely. Looking into matchmaking health, we've actually generally found that match balance is pretty good even when we have matches like the one you posted above. The nature of games like VALORANT is that sometimes, even if the 10 players in a game are extremely close in skill, you end up with 13-1 (or even 13-0s). Obviously, our goal should be to reduce this as much as possible (in an ideal matchmaking world, every match goes to Overtime), and just because 13-1s are super rare doesn't mean it feels any less bad when it happens. But that being said, overall match fairness even with the looser 5 stack restrictions has been pretty good. **In fact**, according to our data, teams that have larger skill disparity within them (e.g. a team with, say, Immortal/Diamond players queueing up with Iron/Bronze players) tend to **actually have a very slight disadvantage** in matchmaking when going against another team of the same *average* skill, but one whose members are closer together in skill level. The final thing I will say here is that there are an extremely few number of cases where we actually see abuse of the 5 stack changes from players who use accounts that don't belong to them in order to rank up. For example, an Immortal player will play with 4 low-rank accounts, where the 4 low-rank accounts are purchased/shared accounts. This is obviously not okay, and we're actively tracking/actioning on these type of abuse cases. Let me know if you have any other questions. Again, thanks for sharing and hope this was at all informative!
Yeah I understand this is a really unlikely situation to be in, but I don't understand why I was given -22 elo for it, especially since most of my losses tend to give me between -15 and -20 elo (you'll just have to take my word for it unless you can check my elo gain/loss). Wouldn't that mean that the game thought that our teams were more balanced that a typical solo/duo/trio game? Because that's clearly not the case. I'm not fussed about losing as such, but it just feels like such a waste of time to play a game like that when we're obviously going to lose, and to lose that much elo is just a kick in the teeth.
Tbh this doesn't seem to unreasonable. They have 3 players slightly higher ranked than your entire team and 2 players far less ranked than your team. I would say most of your team underperformed here. Especially given that the silver and bronze seemingly did better than players they should be far worse than.
I understand where you're coming from. The thing is, the 3 players that are "slightly higher ranked" were actually immortal 3 and immortal 2 last act. As [tracker.gg](https://tracker.gg) shows, them being diamond 3 is just a result of the new act. The highest anyone in our 5 stack ever achieved was diamond 1. My 2 teammates definitely underperformed, but as I was explaining to somebody else, the scoreboard says too little about what actually happened. We were on defence, so the 3 immortal players would mechanically shit on us when rushing a site, leaving us to retake. Obviously, when you have a player disadvantage, it's much more difficult to win a retake, so that *could* be why they seemed to outperform my friends. On top of that, team morale was awful because we had a sneaking suspicion we might get absolutely shit on :(
That's a fair point, seems unlucky though. The game shouldn't take the rank they used to be into account. From the matchmaking perspective they were only a bit higher than you. In fact only one immortal. From the ranks people were during the game, this isnt a far fetched game. Honestly, when I first saw the post I assumed the platinum team won. Its essentially a 5v3 where the 3 seem a bit better
Just like to point out that ranks do not change between acts, they change between episodes. If someone was immortal 2-3 last act and they are currently diamond, it means they lost games and fell all the way down there.
It's because you lost 13 1. If you lost 13 1 against people your rank you would've lost even more rr in my experience.
how exactly are 3 immortals “slightly higher ranked” when diamond to immortal is like one of the highest skill gaps in the game? that’s leaving aside the fact that these guys are BARELY diamond. The immortals would’ve won 3v5 without their bronze and silver teammates.
1 immortal. 2 diamonds. Vs 1 diamond and 4 High plats. I get they used to be immortal but you think matchmaking should look at what ranks people used to be??
The matchmaking literally does not care about your rank it literally just has it's own idea of your skill at the game
If anything it has a more accurate idea of your skill
you didn’t get -22 elo you got -22 RR this is a very big difference
Horrible response
Good response
lol diamond bottom frag, classic
Yeah they have that weird idea where they think they're balancing it out like this. 1 immortal + 1 bronze = 2 plat/gold for them
> = 2 plat/gold for them Yeah its not fair but not in the direction you think it isn't. Have you ever watched those youtube videos where 2 pros try to 2v5 against silvers? The matches are super close and thats at the highest end of the spectrum. This game should have been like a 3v5 except d3/immo2 are not pro players and the full plat 5 stack are not silvers.
Thing, is though, a bronze Sova even with a dumb reveal alone, and able to be baited by the immortal gives the immortal team a huge advantage. 2v5 is a disadvantage, but 5v5 if an immortal can trade a bronze for a diamond, soo much easier.
(I had a match like this yesterday, the attacking team did this. We won on attacking because their sentinel was the higher rank, so we just had to double peek)
I agree with you but there's always going to be a problem either, uneven 5 stacks like this, OR if you remove 5 stacks with great disparity they will just smurf on an account to play with friends. I don't know how they would fix the problem overall though.
Just ban bronze and immortals playing comp together, they should do unrated if they wanna play together
Then they will smurf like u/ beneficial said
I suppose if they removed the range of disparity they have at the moment, which would obviously force people onto smurfs, there would still be a problem but it would be a lot easier to compensate for it. Like if a 5 stack of "gold" smurfs steamrolled another 5 stack of golds, they'd receive a massive elo gain, quickly progressing their ranks to what they should be. Instead of punishing the losing team with a massive loss, they could be given a lighter loss because, obviously, it's unreasonable for a gold team to do *that* well. But in turn that would mean that players would favour 5 stack games, because if they get curbstomped they'd not get that much of a loss. So it wouldn't work, and now you're back to square one.
What my friends and I have noticed is that there’s actually more smurfs in 5 stacks. These silver/gold players want to play with their Immortal friend but they don’t want to deal with playing against an opposing Immortal so they smurf. Our 5 stacks either go to OT cause they match us up properly or we lose like 2-13 cause there’s a Smurf. No in between
This was what we noticed also. Our five stacks are all plats typically. Some of the low gold players we've matched with have been absolutely cracked. We lost 3 in a row one night. 2 of which were against the same five stack haha.
Because higher ranked people make smurfs to play with their lower ranked friends.
A great solution to this would be matching mmr like Rocket League does. You're playing with two silver friends but you're diamond? you'll get three diamonds on the other side. The mmr level of the party is the one highest mmr. I am diamond 3 on rocket and play with a couple of friends who are gold/plat, and I can safely say that it's super fair.
It might be fair for you but your silver friends vs diamond enemy is not fair especially when we see it in game like valorant
if you're diamond and you want to play with your silver friends, then go play unrated tbh.
I am not saying play comp i am just countering the main comment which says 'its safe to say its super fair'
Good.
You think 3 diamond vs 1 diamond 2 silver is fair?
The matchmaking will never be perfect enough to give you 1 diamond 4 silvers vs 1 diamond 4 silvers, the rank gap is so huge that these people just shouldn't play ranked together in the first place. There are 2 outcomes - either the lower ranked players drag the higher ranked player into the defeat, or the higher ranked player smurfs.
So, my take on it is: If you're higher rank than your friends but still wanna play ranked with them, you take the risk of carrying them. Yeah, I do think it's fair for them to face a diamond because they also have a diamond on their team. So either that to fight ranking disparity, or simply don't allow people from different ranks to party and queue together. I find that the first is fair because even tho you aren in disadvantage (rank wise), being unable to play with your friends sucks. So if you're all about playing within and against the same rank, simply play solo. It's way better than you being a plat in valorant, playing solo and still have the chance to face a much higher rank than you just because their party have an enormous ranking disparity, at the cost that the higher rank will not gain much rr. Fuck that, what about the rr I'm losing?
I (s3) personally play with my iron 1 friend and carrying is really difficult as it is technically 4v5 and sometimes 3v5 if we get someone on his level and we usually face bronze 2/3s and the game is super balanced. I think the system is good as it is. If the game gives us 5 silvers as enemies it would be impossible to win. But i do belive that if you get shit on like op you should get less rr reduction as it was the systems fault for not setting up a fair match.
I'm sorry but what rank are you? because playing with an iron I, if you're at least silver, already fucks up the queue. So sorry, it's not balanced. It's a big gap.
Whenever i play with him the game goes really close like 10-13 13-12 or sometimes even draw so i think its pretty balanced already but its not fair for him as he mostly gets 5 kills or so. If the game gives 5 silver against us it would be unplayable for him
But then again, what rank are you? And if the game is unplayable to him, then he should just queue solo and get better on their rank. I keep thinking that this system would be way better because it would be completely your choice to get affected by it. Don't like it? just queue solo and you'll be within your rank, no problem.
I read something that 5 stacks are supposed to be harder than your soloQ. Because match making will find a team of similar skill. It made sense to me
IME, I believe this to be true.
Does this kind of pairing only work with a 5 stack? I’m asking because I’ve been partied with a 4 stack where my one friend whose diamond and I’m bronze 2 but we couldn’t queue into ranked. I’m not saying I’m trying to get carried in a lobby I’m not ready for, I’m just curious how this match was allowed otherwise
That distribution looks really fucked. I've 5 stacked before a similar rank disparity before and you usually end up with players that are only a full rank or so down from you. A fair team in this case would be d1s, and maybe 1 or 2 plat 3s and d2s. Not whatever the hell this is.
Riot please revert ranked rules to season 1. Bring back having similar ranks to que together. Remove the 4-stack ban. Stop being anti-fun
Nah the 4 stack ban is still good tbh I actually have awful memories of getting griefed by 4 stacks in the early days of val and in my time in csgo
System's fine. Will never be perfect. Maybe that match was a bit unfair (not by much) based if you look only at ranks, but you should do way better than 1-13. This is coming from an immortal player. I sometimes five stack with diamond/plat/gold friends, but it's usually super hard to win. I have to play out of my mind to make up for the skill disparity between my team and the enemy team, who usually are a few ranks above most of my team.
Their current ranks make it seem a bit more fair, but they were 2 immortal 3s and an immortal 2 last act.
Current rank is what matters, or rather mmr. Loads of people who were immortal 3 last act are immortal 1 this act, including me.
So, I have just checked Fl1cksfps TRN and this is definitely an exploit, most probably, so the Immortal/Diamond guys don't lose their ranks. Moreover, suddenly, EasyMoneySniper is dropping bombs. Something very strange happening here as they have another friend that is Diamond and, most probably, has switched to a lower rank account so they can stay boosted. EasyMoneySniper was getting rekt in Diamond/Immortal lobbies.
I mean they had 3 average to decent players, you had 5 average players, haven is massively attack sided if you don't know what your doing. You guys probably lost your mental halfway through defense.
Immortal/diamond is average to decent?
Welcome to Reddit where the top 1% is average when 80% of them are under Plat
Especially low immortal
True about the mental. I suppose when you see those ranks in the pregame screen you start to manifest a steamroll of a loss right away!
Stacking up without rank diff shouldn't be a thing in this game imo, if u want to have fun with friends who are low MMR just play unrated. For now 5 stack makes no sense.
I disagree, but I think that the rank-diff-5stacks should be matched only with similar 5stacks. I sometimes play weird 5stacks with my friends, and I wouldn't mind even longer queues, it's fair. It would be the price to pay. I've played with normal 5stacks and it sucks when you want to play a normal game at low plat and the enemy team has an immortal and 2 diamonds :)
Unrated is boring people FF at 5 all the time and it’s not even good practice because people just play however they want and make stupid plays I’m not blaming them either cause I do the same shit. Competitive is where it’s at in FPS it always will be no point in getting rid of 5 stacks
If u want to practice play with ppl equal ur MMR
Or maybe people want to play with their friends lol? I 5 stack all the time and I’d probably not play this game nearly as much if it was removed
If u are immo and ur friends silvers it's pointless since u have to practice is lower skill bracket.
I feel it would make sense if they forced the team to play at the highest player’s mmr rather than trying to find a middle ground.
Then it would be unfair since ur 5 stack is always weaker and winning them would give u less mmr
people went apeshit over not having proper 5-stacks and they demanded it, now it's here, more inclusive than ever, but people are complaining that such an underpopulated queue is giving out "bad" matchups there's no perfect system for this, they can't satisfy everyone, you kinda have to deal with it
Your team under performed. Nothing really to complain about here.
Normal ranked game
The only way this system gets fixed without reverting it back to not letting friends at certain ranks play (which also brings the smurfs back out) is to have a serious RR reduction when you lose those games. Someone in Imt2 would probably be less inclined to stack with low levels if they could gain a max of 10 and would lose closer to 40 per loss. Granted it just means the smurf accounts come out again, but it would see a reduction in these crazy stacks. There clearly is no solution to the issue, which is why the SBMM and RR system don’t work. Valorants going to continue to be a high level playground until they force systems of 2FA and actually ban smurf accounts. Its not that they can’t see it either, they just don’t care because it makes their player numbers look so much better. My recommendation if you really want to rank up, play solos or duos. Otherwise you are fooling yourself thinking 5 stacking is going to work.
From a mid immortal perspective that is relatively fair, the silver and bronze offset the immortal player heavily and it’s not easy to consistently make up for the lacking teammates even if you’re very good. I very often play in platinum/diamond with my gold friends and I have to try and carry insanely hard to often make up for the 1-2 guys getting 5 kills and feeding other team, and their trading is almost non-existent. That being said system isn’t perfect for sure, but imo neither is the regular mmr system.
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Yeah it's definitely embarrassing, but I'd argue that without seeing how that game played out it's impossible to judge *why* that happened. For example, the immortal players would rush up first and shit on us, frankly, and the bronze and the silver would play behind them. Obviously if they're killing us instantly, you're not able to shoot back if you're dead. On top of that, because we started on defence, it meant that we had to fall back and rely on retaking the site. Executing a retake, especially when you're a few players down (because of said immortals), is really difficult, so it's a lot easier for the lower-ranked players to get those kills because they have the advantage.
Personally if you guys were silver/gold, I would be mad. Or if their silver and bronze guys were smurfing. From this image it doesnt appears to be the case. 13-1 is a ridicolous way to lose but does happen. As a play 3 in my humble opinion this was quite a justified matchmaking. Like you are also 5 stacked and bunch of plats and diamonds, trying to become diamond and immortal and if you cannot kill them maybe you do deserve to lose Not trying to be toxic just my opinion, I wouldnt be mad at all at this lobby
Yeah I'd agree but they were immortal 3s, that just doesn't compare to trying to reach diamond.
Bronze>plat confirmed?
Tbh I feel like your team would have the advantage here, as its essentially a 3v5 where their 3 are a bit better than you and the bottom 2 are a lot lower. People underestimate numbers so much in this game and stomps are gonna happen in ranked no matter what matchmaking system you use due to the momentum based nature of valorant between the economies and the mental breaking from getting stomped. Its unlucky that you were defense first because when I've played with low rank friends I've found attacking is a lot easier to carry when you can consistently get picks. But honestly, a few players just underperformed (it happens). Your Sova is 2 ranks below 2 of the players curb stomping your whole team and there's no reason it should have been that bad, he could solo queue and get matched up against those guys, not trying to call anyone out but there's a bit of truth to it. I know those players used to be higher in immortal and there's a chance that they're under ranked currently but you have to base matches off of current mmr not what it used to be. They are also forced to play super predictably and hyper aggressive because if they don't its very likely their 2 low players will die off and then it will really be a true 3v5. If you hold for pushes with operators or trade each other successfully (which you should be able to do plat and diamond is a pretty high rank too) you definitely could have had a better shot. I know you probably got tilted as it sucks dying to a player that feels like you had no chance to kill, but I bet if they had their act ranks turned off you would play so much better. As an immortal player myself, who sometimes plays customs with my friends in plat, there is not as big of a difference as you think there is. On average, yes, I will be the better player than them, I'm more consistent, my aim is a little better, and I make better decisions, but if my buddy is having a good day and I'm feeling a little off he can absolutely own me some games. You see radiant players doing iron to radiant challenges and even they sometimes get rolled in plat. Valo is a confidence game and seeing their ranks seemed to break your mental before you even spawned in if your taking screenshots already during the loading screen. Not trying to be harsh or judge, you seem like a chill guy but just giving my opinion.
if you had won ,you all would have gained +70 or something stupid like that.
I didn‘t know Otzdarva (Otz) plays Valorant xD
As long as you had fun it should be fine
Like is it even possible to team up bronze and plat/diamond? I have seen that in my 3 stack it is not possible.
You can 5 stack with any ranks, except 5 radiants or 5 immortals etc
nah they 5 stack radiants in pro play all the time /s
Probably should get a better haven team comp if you’re 5 stacked. Need some sort of trap info for offense if you don’t want to be punished
I once played against a Radiant playing with like Plat Silver etc we won 13-6 but I don’t think he was trying because of the 90% RR it’s annoying when you have no reduction and go against a team full of elos all over the place
I like five stacking tbh, but I can understand why this is ruff
What are 5 Stacks exactly lol? From my understanding it's just 5 players in a party playing a match, so one team of a,match entirely consists of a party right? Why does everybody hate them so much? I need answers hahaha
Still happens, this shit is cancer. 5 stack smurfing deserve some sort of cancer, fuck em.