Any Valorant player that has dedicated themselves to the ranked grind understands that the ranked system can be very frustrating to deal with. With unpredictable RR gains/losses, diamonds in your gold lobbies, things start to get super confusing. Shouldn’t Riot’s system be refined?

Well the truth is that the matchmaking system is quite intricate, but it’s actually quite consistent, albeit confusing to understand. However, if you take the time to understand the algorithm behind the madness, things get very clear, and will assist you in climbing to those higher ranks.

This article discusses how the matchmaking system works, why your visible rank might have inconsistent changes, and how to use this information to your advantage. By the end of this, expect to become a ranked expert, and improve the way you approach the game.

Clearing Up the Difference Between Visible Rank and MMR

The first concept that is important to understand is that your visible rank, the system we know as RR and the tier of competition you are in (iron, bronze, silver, etc.) is different to your MMR, or matchmaking rank, which is what is used to match players up.

This might be a bit confusing, so let’s try to break down each one a bit further. The purpose of your visible rank is an intuitive, straightforward system that represents how good you are as a player. It enables you to discuss your rank in conversation and enables you to set goals to reach a certain desired rank.

So what is your MMR? If you don’t care for the intricate details, your MMR is essentially a number that Riot’s matchmaking algorithm uses to create “fair” matches when you queue into a game. The algorithm attempts to match players with as similar MMR as possible, to ensure all players have an experience where they can contribute their fair share towards the match. This is the reason why you might see a vast range of ranks in a single lobby, since you aren’t matched up based on your visible rank.

For those of you that are curious on what the MMRsystem actually is, Riot’s own EvrMoar has generously pulled back the curtain on how exactly the system works. The MMR system is essentially a giant ladder of all players’ MMR, a leaderboard of sorts. We will dive into this deeper later on in the article.

To summarize what we have so far, your visible rank is an indicator of your skill, while your MMR is your “true” mathematical skill, calculated by Riot’s algorithm and used to make fair matches, pitting players with similar MMR against each other. You probably have a lot of questions like “why do we need two systems?” or “how are they related?”. To understand this, we need to look at how both systems change as you play games.

Expanding the Idea of MMR

Elaborating on the MMR system, your MMR is the algorithm’s way of determining how good of a player you are. There are two subdivisions that comprise your overall MMR: your Encounter MMR, and Win/Loss MMR.

Your Encounter MMR is essentially the aspect of MMR that represents how well you are expected to perform against other players. This system consists of many factors, including things like ability usage and duel win rate. The intricate details are too complicated to be released by Riot, so we are left with the basic understanding that there’s a certain amount of ability impact, damage, and duels you win that the algorithm expects you to win.

Your Win/Loss MMR is more straightforward and is strictly based on the outcome of your games: winning games increases this value, losing games decreases this value.

The ratio of importance of these subdivisions of MMR depends on your rank. At lower ranks, Encounter MMR will be more important, as the system wants to reward players with better mechanical/instantaneous decision making, as the skill disparity is usually very wide. At higher ranks, Win/Loss MMR will begin to take over, as the average mechanical skill of players become mostly consistent, and thus the most consistent factor in winning games is your macro game sense, and intangible qualities such as communication and team coordination.

Note for Immortal+ players: At that level of rank, Encounter MMR is essentially negligible. Thus, it’s important to prioritize winning, rather than risky plays that may yield eliminations.

How Your Visual Rank and MMR Changes As You Play

Most players should be familiar with how visual rank changes. When you win games, you gain RR. If you lose, you lose RR. Occasionally, you will get a performance bonus that grants you some bonus RR (this will make sense later). However, sometimes you might notice that the amount of RR you gain is not consistent. Some games might yield upward of +16 RR, while some games might lose you -20 RR.

This could easily frustrate many players who don’t really know why this is happening to them. After all, a fair system should have you gain as much as you lose right? Well, because the aforementioned visible rank and MMR systems are only somewhat correlated, there’s a bit more that goes into calculating how much RR you are losing and gaining.

So how does your MMR change? We mentioned that MMR is a giant ladder, or leaderboard of players ordered by their MMR. We also mentioned that MMR is how the game expects you to perform against other players. These two contribute to how your MMR changes from game to game: if you perform better than the game expects you to, your MMR will increase, and as a result, you will move up the MMR ladder. The reverse happens if you perform worse than the game expects you to.

To give a concrete example, let’s consider a player with MMR X. In his lobby, he will have opponents who have higher MMR, and opponents who have lower MMR.

• The algorithm expects him to do better against lower MMR, and worse against higher MMR
  
• The player will get rewarded heavily for doing better against players with higher MMR, and penalized lightly for doing worse
  
• The player will get rewarded lightly for doing better against players with lower MMR, and penalized heavily for doing worse

Intuitively, this makes sense. You can increase your MMR by “proving” you are better than what the algorithm thinks by exceeding its calculated expectations. On the other hand, if the algorithm finds out you aren’t as good as it thought, it will correct their initial prediction by lowering you back down.

If you perform exceptionally well, you will receive a performance bonus, granting you extra RR, and any gains to your MMR that comes with it. This system also explains why it’s important to try to face the “scary” players in your lobby, as the reward is much higher than the risk. Additionally, it shows that ACS and number of kills doesn’t paint a full picture: someone who got 15 kills against players with better MMR will have benefitted more than a player who got 30 kills against opponents with worse MMR.

Finally, to tie in how visual rank is impacted by your MMR, let’s introduce a new concept called Convergence. To start off, Riot utilizes the data from all the players within a certain rank to find a “target” MMR for each rank. This value can be thought of as the average, but the computation behind this value is likely more complicated. The goal of the Convergence system is to change your MMR such that it will match up with the target MMR for your visual rank.

Generally, if your MMR is higher than the target MMR of your rank, you will gain more RR per win, and lose more RR per loss, gradually “pushing” your visible rank to your MMR. The inverse occurs if your MMR is lower than the target MMR of your rank, and the system will try to “push” you down to where your skill level lies. Once you reach your target rank, you should expect to gain and lose approximately the same amount. Of course, the factors of the algorithm will create some variance, but it should be mostly consistent.

Typical situations where your visible rank is different from your MMR are new acts, new episodes, or new accounts. In these situations, the algorithm will place you on the lower end of possible visible ranks. As you play, Convergence will bring your visible rank up to how good you are, while performing badly will keep you where you were placed. This is also why a double rank-up occurs, coming into play if your MMR is WAY too high for your visible rank.

Another example would be if there was an irregular number of successive wins and losses. Let’s say you are at a relatively low rank, and you are consistently performing well in your games, with unfortunate close losses. Since Encounter MMR is more prominent in lower ranks, your good performance will barely lower your overall MMR. However, since you must lose RR on a loss, your visible rank will keep decreasing, even if your MMR remains constant.

Let’s take an example of both these concepts in action, and how a new player might see their rank change as they play, from Riot:

An example of being placed on the lower end of visible rank

A successful convergence, resulting in equal RR gains and losses

A player has an irregular streak of victories, with poor individual performance

Player improves, eventually raising their MMR to match their visible rank

Note for Immortal+ players: If you’re an Immortal player and find yourself stuck at a certain MMR, even with consistent wins, there’s an explanation to why this is happening. This is explained by bringing back the MMR ladder/leaderboard. In lower ELO, there are more people to surpass every time you increase your MMR. However, since the concentration of higher ranked players is much less dense, the same amount of MMR gained might only put you above a couple players. Thus, to truly increase your MMR, you need to continuously improve your MMR over a long period of time. You might see the top players and professionals gain an incredible amount of RR, which enables them to easily climb back to Radiant every time ranked resets. Their MMR has been built up over many years of consistently climbing. Thus, fresh Immortals might reach a point where they will struggle to increase their visible RR.

Frequently Asked Questions

To wrap things up, we can answer some common misconceptions and myths that circulate around the matchmaking system.

Why does visible rank and MMR have to be separated if MMR is the true representation of skill?

This one can be explained by how ranking systems are understood by players. Your MMR might see large increases/decreases, small increases/decreases, or no change at all, even if you win games, and contribute. For example, if you make a few plays, go even against opponents of similar MMR, and win the game, your MMR would likely change very little, if no changes at all. It wouldn’t make much sense for a player to have their rank stay the same, even after a win with a decent performance. Additionally, these fluctuating numbers will only add more confusion, and it isn't very intuitive to discuss rank.

Is the loser's/winner’s queue a real phenomenon?

Simply put, no. Riot developer EvrMoar has explicitly confirmed that this isn’t an implemented feature in the game. He backed this claim up with game analytics, stating that a prominent reason why players stop playing a game is actually the negative impression from losing consecutively. Thus, a loser’s queue would only be a deficit for Riot and its players.

How do I improve my MMR?

The bottom line is, the better you are as a player, the higher your MMR is. You can definitely be a bit unlucky and stay stuck at a certain visual rank. However, if you continuously improve your MMR, Convergence will eventually bring you up overtime. Focus on all your skills: mechanical skills to win more fights, ability game sense to find more impact, and communication to bring your team together.

Conclusion

Needless to say, Valorant’s matchmaking system is pretty complicated. If you’ve been able to read through this article, congratulations! You are now a certified expert on the ins-and-outs of how MMR works, and why rank can often seem unfair and unpredictable. With this new information, you won’t get a headache over trying to figure out how you got +16 RR on a Match MVP and can take on any new challenges in ranked with a sense of clarity and confidence!