I know that a lot of people have probably complained about and proposed many different methods to improve the ranked system in VALORANT. And yes, that's what I'm going to be doing today; proposing a new and improved method of the average combat score in VALORANT.

Keep in mind I am not a high-rank player. I am currently G2 in VALORANT but I have 600+ hours on the game and have a lot of experience. If you spot any mistakes or anything that can be improved make sure to comment! It would be really nice to get your opinions.

Let's start off with

What's wrong with the current VALORANT ranked system?

In my opinion, the RIOT has done an amazing job of figuring out someone's rank and putting them in the right place where they belong. The main framework of the ranking system is amazing, it is very well thought out and works really well.

Where they lack, however, is the Average combat score method. In my opinion, this works alright when someone new starts playing valorant. It's really good to pinpoint which rank someone belongs in. But after that, I think the average combat score just ignores a lot of the fundamental skills in VALORANT.

Most of you guys know where I'm going with this and if you don't, let me give you an example. I have a friend who's has good mechanics, good game sense, and good teamplay. He's Silver 2. I also have another friend who's S2 but about 90% of the time is totally lost. Never comms doesn't know how to play with teammates but has a good history in FPS shooters and has pretty good mechanics. In my opinion, this should not be possible.

Let me explain why I think that. If my friend who's always lost joins a competitive match, even though he won't lose as much RR from losing because of his really good mechanics, he'll still lose a lot of games and his teammates will lose a lot of RR even if they're fulfilling their roles. And even though he wins very few games, when he does, he'll gain an insane amount of RR because he gets a lot of kills. This is horrible because it ruins everyone else's experience in the game and he is not being punished for it. He'll never learn what mistakes he's making and how to improve because he's having fun from getting so many kills every match.

My other friend, however, even if he's playing a support role and fulfilling all his duties, won't be rewarded as much for doing his job. He, instead, will be punished for losing games even if he does what he's supposed to. Every day, he's improving and learning what he could do better next game, but still isn't getting rewarded the way he should be.

Q: So what if you have different abilities? You still got guns!

Some people will comment about "Oh, it doesn't matter what agent you're playing, they all have guns don't they?" To that I completely agree, they all have guns to use. But they overlook abilities. Think about this: With an agent like Reyna (and all other duelists), I have the advantage of getting multi-kills. And multi-skills are highly rewarded in the average combat score system. With Reyna, after I take a duel, I have the ability to deny the trade or heal to near-full HP. But if I were with an agent like Killjoy, I can't deny trades as Reyna can, and I can't heal myself to prepare for the next duel like Reyna would be able to. This isn't just Reyna, with Jett you can deny trades using Tailwind, with Yoru you have his TP, with Phoenix you can heal using his molly and Raze is just... something else entirely... It also makes it easier for certain duelists (and initiators) to get picks using their flashes.

Now we know the problem, how can we solve this?

This is my idea and again, I'm not a high-ranked player. I do not have as much experience as much as you might. But I do have experience in the lower ranks and how the ranking system needs a change. A lot of high-ranked players ignore this because this never happens in their elo or they've never experienced it.

My main solution isn't just something I made up on a Sunday morning after drinking 3 red bulls to try to grind comp. It's been used before in other games (which I'll mention below) and has been proven to work really well.

I think the best thing RIOT can work towards is replacing the average combat score with something like an impact score. What do I mean by this? Well, I think games that have different agents, operators, characters with different abilities should be treated differently. In a game like Counter-Strike, the mechanics part is huge. It is an insane part of the rank. The people with better game sense will get a lot of kills and so will the people with good mechanics. It's balanced out. But it's not always the same in a game like VALORANT.

Like I said, because it has different agents with unique abilities, each ability can contribute to the outcome of a round or even a whole game. Just like in Rainbow Six Siege, UBISOFT has a scoring system that rewards each player based both on kills, how they get a kill (headshots give you extra score), assists, and how the ability impacts the round. An example here would be Jäger's ADS. He gets no score for putting down his ADS but he does get a score when it destroys a throwable that is in radius. This shows that his ability impacted the round. And I also love how enemies who shoot the ADS receive an extra bonus score. This rewards players when they predict and counter an ability that's set up (eg. destroying a killjoy turret, molly, etc).

I think that clutches should heavily impact the score system. Because a 1v3 clutch is really hard to pull off and if someone is able to do this they should get highly rewarded for that. Like u/FoldyFlap explained, you should gain more ACS from a round where your team has fewer members alive (ex. clutch situation) only if your team wins the round. For example: in a 2v4 if you get 3 kills and lose, that means the enemy team did their part and got the trades and won. But if you win that 2v4, you should be rewarded more ACS because it was harder to win against an enemy who had man advantage.

I understand how hard this might be to implement in a game like VALORANT. I think one of the hardest abilities to implement in this scoring system are smokes. It's really hard to calculate if you for example blocked an enemy Jett that is Oping or if you blocked chokepoints that actually help your duelists get on site and clear space. I also understand that when it is first released (if it ever is, which I hope they at least attempt to work on!) that there'll have to be a lot of fine-tuning to get the right score values from each ability and play. But I think the devs at RIOT are really smart and it's definitely possible.

Q: Too hard to implement!

Just like u/Choyoru mentioned, this system would be almost impossible to fully implement in a fast passed and complicated game like VALORANT. I completely agree with him there. What I think they should try to do is work on it with only a handful at first. Maybe aim towards at least 1 ability per agent. An example would be to maybe make it so the damage a Killjoy turret does gives you more ACS/Impact score than you would get from dealing damage using guns; to show that her turret impacted the round heavily. As he pointed out, ACS is already a really good system. But in my opinion, it doesn't capture the full effort someone is putting out to help their team.

I highly recommend reading his comment as he goes in-depth about all the problems RIOT would have to face to implement something like this.

As u/zero_ronin explained, the game already has stats like these. If you, for example, play Omen, you can see your combat report and it'll show how many enemies you blocked using your smoke, how many kills you got after your ULT, and how many enemies you displaced using your paranoia. It wouldn't be too hard to implement a system that these abilities at least influence the score a little.

Q: ACS doesn't even matter! Performance bonuses only give you 1-3 RR every game!

Well, you're right. You only get 1-3 RR bonus per game but as u/LovelyResearcher pointed out, over the course of 25 games those 3RR can add up to ~75 RR! That is almost a whole rank ahead! This is a huge problem because this rewards duelists who can get many kills over the course of a game. Even if they were just lurking the whole game, getting 2-3 picks and not helping his/her team get on site.

ACS does matter. It heavily shifts your RR earned and MMR gained/lost. If the ranking system sees you're doing at the top of the leaderboard every game it's gonna more harshly shift your MMR higher because it thinks you're better than everyone else. I know this because I gain way more RR when I play an agent like Reyna vs when I play support like Killjoy because of all the multi-frags I can get even if the won/lost rounds are the same. As u/Sushimo pointed out, ACS highly favours first blood. And that's usually the duelists because of their ability to flash the enemy holding an angle and getting that pick. And because of their ability to deny trades, this also allows them the ability to get multi-kills which is highly rewarded by the ACS system. And as u/LovelyResearcher said, agents like Omen, Sage, and a few others are being punished because they rarely do damage with their abilities. Where raze is being rewarded from just pressing "E" or "Q" and throwing her util and getting an instant 150 ACS in that round.

TL;DR:

~~Change the average combat score system to an impact score system to better represent how much impact each player is making using their abilities/mechanics every round.~~ Rework the average combat score system so that abilities(when they impact the round) influence it, instead of just first blood and multi-kills where generally duelists have an advantage. I highly recommend reading the solution bit so you get examples and better understand what I mean by this.

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Let me know what you think down below, I'm really interested in all your opinions! :D