Cover-Credits:
- Valorant players are unhappy with the ranked system with players unable to climb despite positive winrates.
- You can potentially lose 20 points and gain just 10 despite having the same combat score.
- Riot will be addressing the ranked system's issues with the Episode 2 update.
Elo hell is a term that gets thrown around quite often by players within game communities. Valorant’s ranking system is no stranger to criticism, with players asking for numerous changes throughout the months since its release. Its MMR system is still not easy to understand, with many hidden factors affecting how much you gain or lose per match. A common criticism is that support players do not have high average combat scores, which seemingly affects how much MMR you get after each win. Earlier today, Redditor u/luishacm posted a breakdown of matches and how it affects a lot of players.
Players Deranking Despite Positive Winrates
The Redditor posted his results using Ranked Point checker to determine the exact score from 0 to 100 that a player he was coaching won and lost across matches. In one of the matches, the player in question earned 10 MMR, which means he would need to win 10 matches to get the 100 MMR needed to qualify to the next rank. However, when the player lost a match, 20 points were deducted, which negates the progress made with two wins.
While this might not be too surprising to see in many games as in-game performance does factor in how much MMR you gain or lose. But his appropriate rank shows up as Diamond 2, which means that the player should have an easier time climbing up. The Ranked Point checker determines whether a player is in the right elo or not and the player in question was, in fact, playing at a lower ELO than what he should be in. With a punishing system like this, players need to win significantly more matches than they lose to climb ranks.
How Should Riot Address Its Ranked System Problems
By punishing players and costing them up to two wins worth of progress for losing one match, it demotivates them and hurts incentive to climb up in ranks. In theory, a player may get better but will still face an uphill battle trying to get out of ranks. Players should not lose ranks while maintaining a positive win rate, which is the contention point of the post.
One of the easiest ways to solve the issue is to have less disparity between the number of points awarded for wins and the number of points deducted for losses. The game has numerous changes headed to the ranked system in the next major patch scheduled to go live in 2 weeks and may address some of these underlying issues in Episode 2.
