For VALORANT players frustrated with the seemingly inconsistent ranked system, Riot has some insight.
Senior competitive designer Jon “EvrMoar” Walker discussed VALORANT‘s ranked system in a series of comments today, responding to a now-deleted Reddit post that complained about the tac shooter’s MMR. While some players may be dissatisfied by the competitive ladder, EvrMoar said the devs “don’t make ranked to be a grind, [their] goal is to find your true skill.”
“Our system is never made with the intention to force you to grind,” he said. “The problem is that it’s impossible to know your ranked without you playing a few games. I think asking players to play around 30 ranked games to know their true rank (which is about how many it takes for us to converge you, sometimes faster) is okay.”
The Riot dev continued to explain that, simply put, “if you win more than you lose you will most likely climb.”
For any competitive ladder to work, players need to win to climb while simultaneously pushing their opponents down. VALORANT’s MMR system rewards consistent play and victories, but holds players accountable if they’re not “net positive.” Even though individual performance is a factor in how much Ranked Rating (RR) you gain or lose, the ultimate influence is winning your matches.
EvrMoar admits that there’s a “perception issue” that may cause misunderstandings within the VALORANT community.
“Maybe we need to be better about displaying your win rate in game, why you have the gains/losses you have, and also making it feel better by maybe not being so harsh so quickly when trying to push you down,” he said.
VALORANT Patch 2.04 changed the way placement matches typically work at the start of a new Act. Now, players only have to complete one match to be placed if they were already ranked in the episode. And a player’s rank will no longer be lowered at the start of an Act—soft resets will be held for when the episode changes.
Episode Two, Act Two kicked off yesterday, introducing new controller Astra and a fresh battle pass.
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