In Act 1 we only had 2% of the players in Iron 1 we have 14% now. The primary reason is alt accounts to play with friends. This wasn't the case previously as anyone could play with anyone else at another rank.

Another reason is a lot of good players are hardstuck so the competition has increased a lot Iron is now literally a rank where you could find anyone from iron 1 to gold stuck in that rank.

I don't even know what is Valorant's deal at least in Iron and Bronze 1 wins or losses shouldn't even matter. In almost all games after 2 matches you get promoted to a higher rank Val's the only game which has a completely screwed up ranking. A Radiant Youtuber took 3 games to reach Iron 2 thats some screwed up thing.

To atleast stop this problem allow lower rank players to play with higher rank players but now the ranks should be based on individual performance more than a win. The ranks could also only increase by half of what they should if played within 3 ranks of each other.

The Smurfs should directly be detected through individual performance, I had a team who wanted to smurf so bad that they were giving up rounds to lose some points so as to not rank up.