Have you ever lost a ranked match in "Rainbow Six Siege" just in time and wondered why your MMR was less than your last win? Unfortunately, the finer details of the "Siege" ranking process are missing from the game itself, but a new post by Ubisoft is a helpful guide to understanding how the game tracks your skills over time.

The new post is actually an updated version of a similar guide written in 2016, taking into account features added to the game over the past four years, such as MMR rollbacks and Unranked playlists. I think the most relevant information is the explanation of the factors that determine MMR scores. For example, did you know that "individual scores do not matter at all"? Even if you have a great game with 18 kills and 2 deaths, Siege's algorithm doesn't care.

It sounds paradoxical that it doesn't take into account your personal impact on a match, but according to Ubi, the system takes into account immeasurable factors that have a huge impact on Siege's matches. Such as a teammate who has a few kills but makes a great call that saves lives. The idea is that if you play well and become an asset to the team, you will naturally win more matches in the long run." Basically, Ubisoft places the same emphasis on the intangibles of Siege - vision, planning, and communication - as it does on marksmanship.

No matter what, you always lose MMR if you lose and gain if you win. Nevertheless, the algorithm also pays attention to the rank disparity between the two teams. If your team's average is much higher than the opposing team's, losing will have a greater impact, and winning will have little or no effect. The system also becomes more difficult to rank up or down later in the season as it becomes more "savvy" to your skill level as time goes on. In other words, it becomes more difficult to move up or down in rank later in the season. Once the game is convinced that you are roughly a gold level player, it will try to keep you in that range.

Siege's system is more sophisticated than I previously thought, but there are still some aspects of it that I don't quite understand. Anecdotally, it is odd that incredibly close matches with similarly skilled players affect my MMR enough to move me up or down the ranks; Valorant does not have a clear MMR number like Siege does, but I have noticed that matches decided in a single round rarely count. I noticed that it doesn't. To me, that is a fair judgment that my rank is probably where it should be.

Also, it would be great if Siege tracked more parameters related to individual skill. A high kill/death ratio isn't everything, but if you also prove you are a team player through assist points and gadget bonuses, do you really deserve the same penalty as a random teammate?

This post also mentions an extra fact that I probably knew at some point and then forgot about, such as unranked sharing quick match MMR instead of ranked match MMR. BTW, you have two different MMRs. If you have any unanswered questions, read the whole thing.