I came from Apex Legends (10k+ hours) and in Valorant I see pros and cons regarding matchmaking:
Pros
- rank seems not matter, more some sort of hidden ELO aka you can have really bad Gold teammate in <Silver lobbies or really good Bronze player(s) meaning they communicate, do great teamwork
- overall most games are close, comebacks are possible, games feel "kinda fair"
- given matchmaking is done on "team's average skill" in some game you can enjoy being the man, carrying, in some you can learn, understand where you lack skill in, chill back, anchor sites more
Cons
- same as in Apex hackers and smurfs just ruin the system, I am just sad to see in tracker numbers below 30 when I reach Bronze 3+ time and time again and those people EVERY time are smurfs or carried by one... so f annoying
- in many cases I have seen that 1 good player on the team does not outbalance 1 really bad vs more similarly skilled enemies, that one player who does literary nothing is just such a liability be it information, map control wise not even speaking about mechanics and kills, those games are brutal as you feel like round is almost winnable but at the same time not at all, and those game in many cases end up with like 13:<7 and people get upset, flame etc. because they know hard -RR is coming despite most (all except that one player) did carry their ball / average or above performance
Still for me the sickening part is that if in Apex you can play 70%+ of the ranks with fair bit of confidence that competition is legit and face then basically only hackers from Diamond+ level, then in Valorant I see headshot locking aimbotters with radars already at Bronze / low Silver level which is just sad.
And adding to that (while waiting on my 24h ban) Riot unfortunately treats in a way hackers in a more preferential way t.i. it takes time to ban them, while if I flame on someone like today (level 21 doing 48% HS and 43 kills (2nd place was like 18, average was like 13)) I get instabanned...I feel like if counter to smurfs and hackers would be as quick there would be less incentive to do that -> better matchmaking.