Riot Games’ devs have provided extensive information on the League of Legends ranked MMR (Matchmaking Rating) system
Riot EvrMoar, Valorant’s senior competitive designer, shared important information in a recent Twitter thread. Riot Auberaun shared the post, highlighting how relevant it is to League of Legends and urged the community to research it to fully understand Riot Games’ MMR system.
The developer, according to the discussion, does not make an off-visible rank, but rather MMR (Matchmaking Rating). It features a performance range referred to by the game’s creators.
So, while one player may be just out of placements and another may be 40 games in, if they have MMR overlapping, they will be put together.
He went on to clarify that the team understands the difficulties of finding a happy medium and that they only want fair matches amongst players with greater MMR ranges. This is owing to less games played and those who have played a considerable amount of games.
In order to fix this, Riot Games must avoid making it too easy for users to visually rank, as this will permit boosting. If this happens, a high-ranking player may end up jumping on a lower-ranking profile and quickly reaching the top ranks.
He further noted that if these accounts were truly graded and their places were accurate, they would not be in these lower rankings but would be incredibly far off in competence. As a result, ranking manipulation occurs 99% of the time.
Riot Auberaun added to the thread that League of Legends matching was based on both visual rank and MMR. Riot Games always made sure that MMRs were fair as a top priority, and the developers used visual rank as an extra filter to find players. This was true until the MMR was changed for Season 13.
However, there were new players, smurfs, who joined later in the season that had similar MMR but shared the trait of having a lower visual rank than they should have. The main problem was a lack of games played.
He finished by adding that the longer line times resulted in a terrible experience when they were all mixed together. This is why Riot Games aimed to make it simpler for League of Legends players to begin their ranked trip, even if they missed the first climb of the year.
Overall, Riot Games’ willingness to share more detailed information is definitely welcomed, especially given they promised to be more open at the start of League of Legends Season 13 after receiving harsh criticism from the community. This overview of this season’s ranked MMR system should assist players better comprehend the game and its structure.