Riot developer addresses Valorant's hidden MMR concern after Episode 2 ranked

Valorant’s ranking system got a massive overhaul with patch 2.00.

Rio Games changed the Valorant Ranking System significantly with the launch of Episode 2. Now, each ranked match shows the points gained or lost instead of simple arrows. However, the new system has some unforeseen consequences.

Riot developer Jon “EvrMoar” Walker even addressed the concerns regarding the new system.

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Valorant hidden MMR system has some unforeseen consequences

.@RiotZiegler Please, if you wanna reset ranks, also reset elo cuz players with high ell won’t find any games and will get stuck plat3 until the end of the seasonMakes no sens to have a elo that has no affiliation with your rank, I actually wanna grind and stream the game pls

— bramz (@bramzFPS) January 13, 2021

The previous patch had introduced the Episode 2 Act 1 and the new duelist from Japan, Yoru.

Fans were not satisfied with the previous rank progression system, which led to the change. Now, the game has a defined points system of 100, which increases or decreases depending on the player's performance. Riot Games also reworked the in-game ranks in Valorant.

Currently, Immortal is a single rank, and the top 500 Immortal players from each region are Radiants. This change comes hand in hand with the newly introduced leaderboard.

However, these tweaks have seen some issues crop up. All the previous Diamond players were demoted to Platinum 3, whereas their MMR remained at the Diamond level. However, previous Platinum players are now at the same rank as Diamond players but have a lower MMR. Hence, they are getting better opportunities to rank up faster and become Radiants.

EvrMoar, who recently made an appearance in the live stream hangout, explained:

“So our previous system was a little more tied to your MMR, almost 1:1. There were some rules that made you deviate, slightly, where your rank wouldn’t be exactly your MMR - But that would self correct pretty quick. So, before, we got a lot of feedback that it felt very “swingy,” and if you had one bad game, it would maybe drop you too quickly. Or if you had one good game, it may affect you too much. In the new system, you can get high MMR and say you belong in that rank, but you prove you belong at that rank by consistently playing at that MMR.”

Regarding the Valorant new system, he explained that it would give players more points for a win, and less for a loss, if their MMR is higher than their current rank.

For example, if gamers are in Gold but their MMR is Plat, they may be playing against Plat players, but as long as they are at least a 50% win rate, they would climb (because they will be getting more for a win and less for a loss).

All in all, the Valorant developers have an open communication channel with the community and will be improving the system in upcoming patches.