For players of VALORANT that competed in Act I, Act II’s ranking system has raised concerns for players who are “stuck” in their rank. On March 18, VALORANT developers took some questions about VALORANT Ranks and discussed them within their “Ask VALORANT” feature.
VALORANT Match Making Rating (MMR) v. Rank Rating (RR)
VALORANT developers were quick to make a distinction between their MMR system versus their Rank Rating system. For their purposes, MMR is a “giant ladder,” or ranking of every competitive VALORANT player. This system puts your player rank against every other player to fight for their spot. If you win, your rank rises. But this rank raise means that a player has to be moved down in order to make room. With this system, no two players can tie for their MMR. This means players must fight against each other for the higher “spot on the ladder.”
As the developers said in their address, “MMR is a fairly fluid system that can potentially change substantially game to game”. MMR is not something that players can view themselves. It is a tool that VALORANT uses to match players against other players to create matches that are more even. MMR is sustained throughout episode resets in order to keep new episode matches a little more balanced than they would be if player statistics were wiped completely. VALORANT Rank Rating is kept separate from MMR in order to wipe player rank at the end of the Episode, but also allow the early matches after the reset to be as fair as possible.
Convergence
Convergence is the VALORANT developers term for the merging of players MMR and Rank Ratings. The system estimates the player’s rank and purposely places each player on the lower end of the rank estimate, forcing them to grind to the higher rank. The test to beat the system’s placement helps players converge, or match their MMR with their Rank Rating.
This can only be achieved if players begin to win and keep winning their matches. If players break this win streak and start to lose, then their MMR (or placement amongst all of the VALORANT players) will begin to drop, and so will their RR. Players who want to raise their rank need to win their matches more often than everyone else who plays, “When you are at your MMR, we’ve most often seen you with a 50% win rate. Even with a 50% win rate, you could go on a long win streak and promote to a rank above your MMR,” developers said when discussing how players may improve their VALORANT rank.
Competitive Integrity
Every competitive player is playing to raise their VALORANT rank. Everyone wants to be on top, but that is because the rank means something. VALORANT developers are not trying to be sneaky with the way ranking works in the game; they want it to stay competitive. The best players deserve to have the higher rank. Because of this, the large losses of RR that players are complaining about, actually serves a purpose. If players end up a rank above their MMR, the system will try to push them back into a lower rank, resulting in losing more RR than what is gained from a win.
To solve this issue, players need to win more matches than the other players who are around their determined MMR. Competitive playing is not just about the grind, but really it is about who can outplay each other. The players who have more wins in relation to their loses will be the ones on top of the leaderboard.
[Related: VALORANT Updates: Patch 2.05]
Room to Improve
If this isn’t convincing enough to believe in VALORANT’S ranking system, don’t worry. Developers recognize that there is still work to do regarding VALORANT”s ranking system, “That being said, we know it can feel frustrating to lose more RR then you are gaining. We are investigating solutions to prevent your Rank from pulling well ahead of your MMR, as well as trying to figure out if we can make it feel better when it occurs”. At the end of their Ask VALORANT post, developers hinted that changes to the ranking system will most likely occur in future Acts as development continues.
If developers are able to stop their system in creating large discrepancies from the separate player MMR versus RR, then players will have less reason to rage over seemingly random dips in their RR and Act Rank.
For now, though, if you wish to improve your Act Rank, you must hone your skills in order to win consecutive matches. Beat out other players who continue to lose in order to “climb the ladder” of VALORANT’S MMR system.
You can ‘Like’ The Game Haus on Facebook and ‘Follow’ us on Twitter for more sports and esports articles from other great TGH writers along with Rene!
“From Our Haus to Yours”