Valorant’s senior competitive designer, Jon ‘EvrMoar’ Walker, has taken to Twitter to announce that the team will be looking into rank distribution over the coming weeks. The news follows complaints from the community about lopsided ranking since the release of Episode 3, Act 1.
Prior to Episode 3’s kick-off, EvrMoar had originally announced that matchmaking accuracy at lower ranks would be much improved, with the hope to mitigate lopsided games where one team would stomp the other. However, players would also have to work a bit harder to climb the Valorant ranks back to their true rank after Rank Rating was also tweaked.
Players have since reported a couple of major issues with Ranked – chiefly that they find themselves playing with and against players of a much higher rank because their ‘hidden’ MMR is greater than their current rank, making climbing a painful task. Additionally, some have said the prevalence of smurfs in low-elo games makes the prospect of pushing to rank up daunting.
EvrMoar’s chief concern is maintaining the skill identity of each rank, ie. players being able to tell the difference between a ‘Silver’ play and a ‘Gold’ play. When a Ranked tier is bloated, EvrMoar says, it loses that identity, probably due to too many players of varying skill existing within it.
To be clear this is a Distribution concern. Which is the % of players in each rank, so if we believe our current % of players in each rank missed their mark that's what would be adjusted from this investigation.
— EvrMoar (@RiotEvrMoar) July 21, 2021
As such, we may soon see further changes to help address the perceived disconnect between hidden MMR and actual rank, perhaps making it easier for more skilled players to quickly ascend to their intended rank.
If you are on the low-elo grind and are looking for that extra edge, then it may be worth switching up your Valorant crosshair, or even add one of the top agents from our Valorant tier list to your pool.