I have played a lot of ranked systems in my gaming life. League of Legends', World of Warcraft Arena, Legends of Runeterra, Overwatch, Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

While it's still very early on in the lifespan of Valorant Ranked, it's beaten the experiences of all of the above games for me.

Games are incredibly balanced, it always feels like the outcome of every round comes down to how well I perform individually. There aren't a lot of "raid bosses" or complete beginners on either team, and when I see someone with a certain rank, it feels like it gives me a very accurate idea of what kind of play I can expect of them.

And then finally, it feels like ranked really factors in how good you actually are. Overwatch's win and loss streaks, queue times, role based shenanigans. Counter Strike's essentially irrelevant and untransparent matchmaking that doesn't tell you whether you gained or lost MMR, League's accurate, but incredibly slow to progress through ranked system, or WoW's pretty good albeit it fairly anticlimatic ranked system. It really feels like Valorant ranked looked at what went wrong in the past with ranked systems and just fixed all of it.

Is it perfect? No. I still would love to see my friends ranks in the friends list. The rank up visuals are not really super hype, and after you hit Radiant ranked essentially turns into a slot machine that can't make you a profit.

But this? https://i.imgur.com/rU64nyw.png

The fact that I can lose 3 games right after placements, and only win one, and still have an overall MMR increase, feels incredibly motivating. Any other game would have punished me for playing with friends of a different skill level, or for playing on an off day. But ranked hasn't felt this good in a long while, and I really want to thank the devs. I hope they can keep this up!