Clarification: Hello everyone, this post has gotten a lot more attention than I expected.

I originally created this post as a short explanation of the rank reset, as I've seen massive confusion about how they worked. It wasn't meant to be anything elaborate - I threw it together very quickly, knowing that most Reddit posts go unnoticed with less than 20 upvotes anyways. I've been gone for a day of doing productive, non-reddit things, and come back to find that I'm at the center of a "drama" and a debate. This attention is in large part due to u/WorstYear1453's post, https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/sbrab6/response_to_misinformation_about_the_ranked_reset/.

I was never looking for any drama (his words, not mine) or argument about this topic - I just thought to put out some potentially helpful insight into the rank resets. A large part of the community doesn't even acknowledge the existence of MMR, much less understand rank resets, so I put together a short post explaining how it worked to my understanding. After reading a number of nice, encouraging words such as "braindead monkey" and "holy fuck youre actually stupid", the positivity that the Valorant community has become so well-known for, I decided I'd have to add some clarifications and elaboration onto my original post.

Note that I'm not looking for any beef with u/WorstYear1453 or anything of the sort. I respect his well-thought out post, and I appreciate the time and formatting that must have gone into his "response" post. I just felt that some of the fundamental points I brought up went so misconstrued that I'd have to explain myself more clearly - not for his sake, but for mine.

From here on out, all edits will be included in bold. Everything that was present in my original post will remain in regular text. I will not change the original meaning of my post, as I feel that is manipulative and misleading. Rather, I'm just clarifying a couple of outstanding things - such as my word choice, my example, and the other stuff I have been so lovingly called "laughably stupid" over.

The post begins below.

Note that I use the phrase "hard reset" throughout the post. I am well aware of the difference between a "true hard reset" and the reset that Valorant does at the end of Episodes. Eggwick mentioned the idea of a true "hard reset" in his video as well, and explained why it's most likely not realistic for Riot to do such a thing. I used the term "Hard reset" here since it was what the community has come to call this end-of-episode rank reset. When Episode 4 dropped, every single post I came across on this sub referenced the "Hard reset" in some way. There wasn't a suitable alternative either - the term "Soft reset" has come to be generally known as the rank atrophy at the end of each act. I didn't feel the need to coin some new terminology to be used for this kind of reset. I used the term most commonly accepted, and thus, most suitable for a Reddit post such as this one - my apologies if it caused any confusion. I am sorry.

There's an insane amount of misinformation about the hard reset, which is something the community does not understand at large. In general, people just don't understand how the reset and matchmaking works. The Youtuber Eggwick does a good job at looking over the issue in his video The Problem with Rank Resets. I'll expand on his points and point out the issue and massive kickback against this inherently flawed system.

I apologize if I have caused Eggwick any trouble. That being said, I greatly respect his content, and it is worth giving his video a watch, if you have just 4 minutes to spare. That video is linked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDkMKZGE2XQ. I have read his comments on both this post and the response post (both of which were largely identical, save formatting). One of his main issues is the usage of the word "hard reset", which I have explained above. He also brought up two other very good points, which I will address later in the post.

Here's why hard resets suck:

If you did not know, after every episode there is a massive "ranked reset" across all Valorant ranks. What happens is no matter how well you do during your placements, players are consistiently placed 2-3 ranks below their previous rank. Demotes happen accross entire ranks, not just tiers. Not demote as in "diamond 3 to diamond 1", demote as in "diamond to gold 1". Here's the fundamental issue with that: Your physical badge rank goes down, but your mmr does not. Since mmr is the factor that decides the skill level of the opponents you are playing with, the result is a huge skill disparity between your games.

I feel there is no issues here. I described the situation perfectly as it is - your rank goes down (sometimes significantly), while your MMR does not. MMR is mainly what is used to place you into your ranked competitive games, so while your badge rank goes down, the difficulty of your games remain identical.

I have also recieved comments claiming that the example I gave was "too harsh" and "literal hyperbole"?? Given community feedback from literally dozens of posts, I feel like the example is perfectly reasonable. The example used implied Diamond, to a drop to Gold. A derank from Diamond to Gold would be the equivalent of two deranks (in terms of divisions, not tiers). Two deranks (in division) is perfectly reasonable - there are more than enough people who have had the same experience. Whether it be dropping from Immortal to Plat, Diamond to Gold, Platinum to Silver, or even Gold to Bronze, these are all the equivalent of dropping two ranks - albeit at different sections of the Valorant ranked tree. There are a lot of people who have had a similar level of rank atrophy. This isn't even something you can chalk up to "losing all your placement games", since it is understandable to lose sometimes. Winning all your placement games every time isn't something that just "should happen". After all, for every placement game won, 5 other people had to lose.

Let's say you are a plat player, who got demoted to silver 3. Your games will all be in silver lobbies - but everyone will be playing at a plat level. That's where the issue comes in. Your games did not get any easier, despite dropping several ranks - in fact, the difficulty of the games remains exactly the same. You are playing in a silver lobby, but it is not played at a silver level. Rather, it is played at a platinum level. All the toxic keyboard warriors who say "it's easier in a lower rank, just climb out" are completely wrong - the games don't get "significantly easier" just because you are in a lower rank. This is another reason why Valorant's ranking system sucks too. While intuitively, it seems like "wow I'm in a lower rank, that means the enemies are worse and the game should be easier", this is the opposite of reality. The games are the same difficulty, literally the only difference is the badge rank. This could even fuel performance deterioration as you take fights you would be comfortable taking at the rank you are playing in, but not at your peak. Unbeknowest to you, you are playing against people with the same skill level, who have also been dropped to the same low rank. To unknowing players, this is also terrible for mental. For example, a diamond player may be wondering why he/she is getting absolutely destroyed in a low gold lobby, especially given that through his/her entire valorant career, he has never seen gold players as good as the "gold" players he is playing against in that particular lobby.

The rank resets suck because that even under a badge of a lower rank (and thus lower skill and easier games), this is not the case. You are in a lower rank, but playing at the exact same difficulty, which just feels objectively worse.

This is my biggest gripe with rank resets, and something that should be appropriately looked at under a human and emotional lens. If you are playing at the same difficulty, under the badge of a percieved lower rank, feels objectively worse no matter how you slice it. This can be already said for players who derank, but it is particularly more demoralizing for people who are in the rank they belong, while facing deranked and higher skilled players. There are countless accounts of silvers or maybe golds being placed in silver, and having to face games against enemies who are playing at a platinum level, who have been dropped to silver. More often than not, these games result in absolute steamrolls, and introduce this percieved fluctuation between game by game where the outcome relies solely on how lucky you were when your teammates were drawn out of the bag. Also, having to play at the same level with the same mental strain, for a percieved lower (and unimportant) rankup feels terrible. No matter what, at the end of the day, playing at a platinum level to climb out of silver just doesn't feel rewarding, satisfying, or "easy". The example I give below (and included in my original post) perhaps illustrates this concept best:

Winning a close clutch game to achieve your career-best and break out of platinum and into diamond feels amazing. Playing the exact same game with the exact same intensity, just to rank up from silver 3 to gold, does not feel the same. Especially if your best is multiple tiers above gold.

On the topic of increased RR gains:

I have also seen some comments claiming that it should be "free" and "insanely easy" to climb back, due to the increased RR gain after the reset. Here, I am referring to winning more RR / losing less RR for wins and losses, respectively. This happens because your rank drops, but your MMR does not. Thus, since your MMR is higher than what is "average" for the rank you are in, you gain more RR for wins and lose less RR for losses. From here on out, I will be referring to this phenomenon as "boosted RR gains". I originally did not include these boosted RR gains for deranked players, as I felt it was another detail not befitting a short post meant solely to explain the mechanics of the reset, such as this one. However, I had no idea this post would come under so much attention and scrutiny, so it is only fair to address this particular point in my post. I have seen lots of talk in the community that the state of boosted RR gains is only temporary and very easy to lose if you happen to go on a losing streak. I have seen multiple posts of people going on a losing streak, and losing their phase of boosted RR gains, essentially putting them on equal RR gain/loss at the lower rank. There are even comments on this thread detailing the same experience. Unfortunately this is something that people are much less vocal about, which means that this occurance is probably much more likely than anyone would think. Compared to the derank as a whole, this is a more nuanced detail that would be near impossible to notice and articulate without understanding of MMR and how it affects your RR gain/loss. The episode derank was all-encompassing and had an easy knee-jerk reaction. This is why you saw so many posts about the derank when the new Episode dropped. However, the fragility of this "RR gain loss buff" is something that is harder to pick up on, and most people will not really talk much about it, even if they are experiencing it. People losing this aforementioned "boosted RR gains" phase is something that is common and widespread, even if not talked about as much as it should. There are people claiming that these boosted RR gains are some sort of "silver bullet" that all but guarentees easy rankups back to your original rank, while this is not necessarily the case.

Closing Thoughts

As an added footnote, consider that I constructed this post with context of the entire community, not myself. I'm not here to bitch and whine about my own derank. After seeing that it happened to everyone, I accepted my circumstances and didn't feel the need to immediately run and create a forum post shitting on Riot for their decisions. I created this post after seeing a lot of people's complaints about the issue, and the overall lack of understanding about how the reset even worked in the first place. After reading dozens of posts and watching videos, I saw people commenting that ranks were dropped arbritrarily and your status after the "hard reset" was completely random. On the other end of the spectrum, I had people claiming that climbing after the derank "should be the easiest thing in the world" and if you didn't climb out immediately you're "bottom fragging every game because you're garbage". I made this post in the voice of the community and how they felt about the reset.