Like most of Riot Games titles, VALORANT is a tactical hero shooter that really caters to competitive gamers.
VALORANT usually doesn’t reveal players’ progress with exact numbers as that can really demotivate players, according to Riot Games. Instead, they use stars in their performance history to let players know that they are actually doing something right.
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Stars in VALORANT’s performance history explained:
Basically there are two types of stars: silver and gold that can appear in a player’s performance history that assures players that they are actually performing well. And each of these stars has a different meaning to them.
“A silver star means you exceeded expectations and a gold star means you’ve really punched above your weight. Pat on the back not included“, Ian Fielding who is the Senior Producer at Riot Games on the meaning behind the stars in VALORANT’s performance history.
Therefore, if a player performs better than what Riot’s matchmaking expects, they will earn a badge. “That is, if you were regularly beating someone in combat and/or closely competing with someone of a higher rank than you, expect to have that acknowledged via a star“, Riot games on the significance of the stars in VALORANT.
Do only frags matter in VALORANT?
Since VALORANT is team focused tactical shooter, individual plays shouldn’t be the main focus. However, most players in the VALORANT community think that only frags matter when it comes to ranking in VALORANT.
According to Riot Games, while frags play an important role in VALORANT when it comes to measuring individual player performances, it is not the end all be all measurement that they use to rank players.
“Your combat score is not just based on kills, although that is a big factor in the score. We also look at damage inflicted, meaning that assists where you help kill an enemy are taken into account, as well as utility that does damage“, Ian Fielding who is the Senior Producer at Riot Games on how their ranking system works in VALORANT.
Apparently assists and other damaging utilities also play a major role while measuring a player’s performance in the game. Additionally, Riot Games is also planning on incorporating non-damaging assists in a player’s combat score as well in the future.
“Regarding competitive, while your combat score indicates how well you performed in core combat during the game, it’s not 1:1 with the performance calculations we use for your rank updates. Rank updates leverage some, not only, of these data points“, Riot Games on why combat score in rank is not exactly the same as unrated game modes.
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Therefore, Riot Games uses a slightly different methodology to measure a player’s combat score in a ranked match. And as it turns out, winning plays a major role in ranking up in VALORANT not just getting the most amount of kills in a single match.
