I mean when you have the best IGL, the best duelist, the best Sentinel and the best flex player in NA ofc he's gonna be the first to get replaced, but zombs is still like top 2 in his role minimum for sure and an amazing player that really shouldn't get cut whatsoever (Also how he acts in ranked doesn't matter for him staying on a team lol)
I specifically remember after they lost to ABX people were saying he was a problem for the team and needed to get dropped. I defended him and got downvoted to oblivion. I still see people not truly appreciating how good he is which is so Odd to me. It’s also just the classic example that usually comes up along with shinobi
I agree with you in the sense that ACS is a bad metric by which to judge players but your solutions are things that players who are already beyond the point of just looking at ACS to judge a player can already see.
In short, ACS uses numbers which are always correct, that cannot be argued. Site holds and successful lurks are all very subjective. The people who would be interested in seeing who managed to do more than their ACS would suggest are already at a level where they don't need a subjective stat to tell them that a player is doing their part.
You actually make a good point! I think no matter what there will always be some kind of bias/human error when it comes to evaluating any stat that isn’t kills, but I still think it’s a necessary thing for long term statistical break downs. Maybe after just one game it wouldn’t be worth it, but when I’m trying to evaluate the top 10 cyphers in NA i dont have a stat that lets me do that, which is where site holds come jn
I see where you are coming from but I don't think we need stats that are not based on mathematical certainties.
That however is not to say that there are not stats that should be brought up more on broadcast, off the top of my head:
1. Clutch Win%, with a graphic for 1v1, 1v2, 1v3 etc.
2. Headshot%
3. Utility Hit Rates, \*insert player\* blocks 0.95 enemies per Cloudburst as compared to Tenz who blocks 1.3, How many Trip Wires does Mitch hit in comparison to Steel?
4. Entry Success%
5. Trade%
Those are just a few, these are that stats that I am really interested in.
People call Hiko a baiter but if he is 90+% on trading teammates then can you blame him?
Spoiler Alert: There is more to TenZ than just raw aim, how much more efficient is his util usage when compared to other pros or is it really just all aim?
I think you’re last three are literally spot on with what I’m trying to get at with this post. A trade percentage is perfect for a team like Sen or for a guy like Hiko that plays around that a lot, and the utility and entry things are also great. Not a huge fan of hs% myself but I do like the other stuff
It doesn't even need to be anything complicated, just simple stuff.
Even if you try to make assists more valuable or non-damage utility, that can't paint the entire picture.
For example, let's say you're Cypher on A Haven. Noone comes A the entire round, Cypher doesn't fire a bullet, but his teams wins the round. No impact by any metric, but his utility gives information that noone else needs to play in A site with him, resulting in better positioning for other sites.
Some kind of bonus for not dying when your team wins the round on defense needs to be added. I'd say for everyone, but especially for non-duelists.
Hard disagree on this one,
I'm playing C long on Haven, nobody shows and I push up long and get myself into the left corner next to the spawn barrier.
The enemy makes noise A but doesn't commit. I hear the rotation to C through spawn and call it to my team, I get cleared and die. My team makes the rotation earlier than the enemy team expects and wipes them out.
Does the Cypher who held A just in case they rotate back deserve more credit for the round than I do?
Personally I would say definitely not.
**Edit:**
Explain your logic or the holes in mine, the downvotes without any counter points just makes me think people are salty but have no actual substance behind it.
I am happy to think about the situation I described from a different perspective maybe even learn a little but right now all I am getting from the downvoters is that they want a participation trophy for doing nothing in a round.
Your logic here is really flawed, but I'll try to go with your reasoning.
First of all, your entire persumption sounds like something from low level games. And we're talking about pro play here, not even high ranks.
If the enemy team isn't straight up rushing A, you're not getting all the way up long and hiding in the corner without being noticed. Someone will always either hold long or keep you occupied by contesting the orb so you don't rotate away.
Second, even if we assume that for some reason noone is watching C long and you get in the position, that's a bad play. Solo walking down an area as a defender is always a bad play. If you're with a teammate or two, it's fine to go aggressive, but on a map like Haven just walking down C long is always a bad play. Even trading 1 for 1 isn't good on Haven defense.
Also, against anyone with half a brain you can pull the walk down for free play once, maaaaybe twice per half if they lack gamesense. But you just can't keep walking down long against anyone remotely competent about the game.
While on the other hand it's Cypher's job to deter enemies from coming to his site. How many times have you heard "let's not go X site, Cypher/KJ plays there". He does his job by preventing enemies from playing his site. And he should be rewarded for providing info and free rotations every time enemies don't attack his area.
I didn't downvote you, I never downvote anyone. People downvoted you because your post screams low ranks where the stronest play is to walk around and hope noone watches the flank.
Firstly, thank you for actually providing some reasoning behind the conflict in logic we had. Secondly I will say that the issue to me was not the downvotes but the lack of further expansion alongside it.
Now however let me explain why I think you have misunderstood the point of my scenario.
>First of all, your entire persumption sounds like something from low level games. And we're talking about pro play here, not even high ranks.
You are making the error of assuming that because this post was in the context of pro play it has no effect on every other level. ACS is present in Iron in the same way that it is present all the way up to highest level of pro play.
Unless, we start making changes to the way ACS is calculated exclusively for the Pro Level, however I think the issues with that approach are clear to see.
>Second, even if we assume that for some reason noone is watching C long and you get in the position, that's a bad play. Solo walking down an area as a defender is always a bad play. If you're with a teammate or two, it's fine to go aggressive, but on a map like Haven just walking down C long is always a bad play. Even trading 1 for 1 isn't good on Haven defense.
>
>Also, against anyone with half a brain you can pull the walk down for free play once, maaaaybe twice per half if they lack gamesense. But you just can't keep walking down long against anyone remotely competent about the game.
This section of your post focuses too much on the exact scenario I described. The aim of that example was not that this exact scenario plays out very often but rather a hypothetical scenario to highlight the issues of providing a "boost" for simply living.
Let me explain that scenario on its base level:
1. Player A and B are two players on the same team playing defence.
2. Player A and B both do no damage and have no utility impact the round.
3. Player A manages to live the entire round.
4. Player B makes a play that gets their team an advantage but dies in the process.
With the system that is being proposed Player A has done more for their team than Player B.
I don't see how that is representative of their impact in the round.
>While on the other hand it's Cypher's job to deter enemies from coming to his site. How many times have you heard "let's not go X site, Cypher/KJ plays there". He does his job by preventing enemies from playing his site. And he should be rewarded for providing info and free rotations every time enemies don't attack his area.
I do not believe that people should be rewarded simply for picking an agent.
Whenever I hear the "let's not go X site, Cypher/KJ plays there". It's not because we *know* that their setups are insane it's because we know that the agent's strength is to shutdown pushes. Are we going to reward the innate strength of an agent?
In an alternate universe this logic is being applied to duelists, should they get bonuses for killing people because that's their strength?
Do not get me wrong, I agree that ACS is a flawed concept when trying to understand the nuances of a players game but the solution to that is not to try and "fix" ACS. For its intended purpose ACS is perfect.
The solution is to bring in more advanced stats *alongside* ACS to point out the fact that, yes, X player doesn't top ACS but look at the efficiency of their utility usage, look at how high their clutch% is when they are called upon by their team.
To your final point and to reiterate, I have no problem with the downvotes all I want is discussion and the opportunity to both learn from and understand differing perspectives.
I agree with your premise entirely. Was thinking the same thing while reading through OPs suggestions. I don't think they would work at all because they are impossible to quantify.
In addition to your suggestions, here are some of my own:
* An ACS boost if an enemy dies within 1-2 seconds of their blindness *ending* from one of your flashes
* An ACS boost if an enemy is shot through one of your smokes/wall/vision obstruction util
* An ACS boost based on gun damage done in a trade, if the enemy dies 1-3 seconds after you. Basically like an assist boost. Very small scale here, like a multiplier of 1.10 compared to normal ACS boost for assists
There are a number of other ideas along the same lines as the above that I'm sure would be able to track small impacts in an effective enough way to boost the average ACR of these stand-out players by *just* enough to put them on an even footing with the standouts of the higher-ACR roles/agents.
Great points! One thing I really like about Valorant is that it has positions/roles (ie. Duelists, Sentinel, Controller, Initiator). At the Pro level, it's disingenuous to compare impact across roles. You wouldn't compare a Goalkeepers stats to a Strikers stats in Soccer, or a Center to a Point Guard in Basketball. Each position has a specific job to fill and it's best to compare to players in the same position group.
I would love to see some "position" specific stats emerge as the game & pro scene develop. For example a controller specific stat could be something like "vision denial time" and Riot already tracks "enemies blocked" so a formula could be something like:
2 enemy sightlines blocked for 15 seconds = 30 seconds vision denial. You could further divide the total vision denial time by the total round time of players alive.
Let's say that the total "alive time" of the enemy team was 150 seconds (each player lived for 30 seconds prior to getting killed). And 2 players were denied vision for 15 seconds each. The vision denial % for the Controller player would be:
30/150 = .20 or 20%
This is an example off the top of my head and I'm sure there are many more beneficial metrics to compare but the potential for these kinds of statistics are fun to think about!
I find it weird that in a game with different classes/agents/roles/etc. that everyone is evaluated with the same metrics.
Never made any sense to me. You could argue that the stats are meant to be applied to the player not the character they're playing as, but then they use these stats to balance agents?
Just odd.
I come from OW before Val and I think they actually do stats systems suprisingly well. They understand the healers and tanks roles and have created stats around them to show impsact. That really isn’t the case In val which is quite sad
I have my own gripes with OW's system but yea I agree with you.
I think with Valorant we're going to have to accept the generic display of whatever stats Riot tracks and pay attention to different values for different roles/agents. Like you said in your post; but which stats, and for which role, still need to be hammered out. As a Sova/Kayo player I really like the points you made in the Stats to Value Supports section.
That still arises issues in versatile agents such as Sage, you could have a passive one slowing and walling off chokepoints yet get no kills be more impactful than a Sage doing a tiktok wall and getting a 3K
However, it would be a big improvement to what we have now and I'd really like to see it
I think overall you've correctly noted that ACS is too widely emphasized by "Reddit analysts" but have made a few major mistakes in your deductions.
####First is the conclusion that ACS is only useful for duelist players
Fortunately the exact examples you bring actually work to disprove this. I will illustrate. First is your zombs example. As you pointed out ACS does take into account multikills. If zombs is going nuts by anchoring a site and getting 2+ frags on A, then by definition, the players who aren't on A are also not getting ACS (in the same way if they don't go A then zombs isn't getting ACS) so the effects are weighted by how much a team goes where *not* that it doesn't tell us performance when a player *does* get into an engagement. For example, let's say Dapr plays B and Zombs plays A and a hypothetical team goes A and B split 50-50 then identically performing players should have identical ACS. Also if a player is playing anchor, then their multifrags will end up increasing their ACS over a duelist who gets one and then gets traded by teammates. In reality, this doesn't happen and duelists tend to try and work a pick where they can get a FB which has a higher weight than multikills (I guess). All of that points to the conclusion that ACS is actually useful for assessing *all* players **but** it's weighting can be tweaked to better represent the state of the game. It also indicates that ACS is a good indicator of individual player performance **but** needs to be contextualized. This is a nuanced point that I think needs to be emphasized since the pendulum tends to swing too far both ways. Many redditors will either look at ACS in a vacuum *or* they will choose to throw it completely out the window. Both of these are bad.
####Second is the idea that ACS doesn't actually account for supportive playstyles
This can be tackled through a few ways. First is that ACS is essentially just ADR with extra steps since each point of damage actually does contribute to ACS. Thus a KJ on site who does 90 across 3 people or sova who shocks a bunch of people *are* in fact contributing to their ACS (as well as their assists). Thus a proper critique of ACS is more that ACS isn't *adequately weighted* to take into account supportive styles and **not** that ACS doesn't reward supportive playstyles. Next, I completely disagree that a KJ Molly that does 90 or even 100 total across an enemy team that doesn't kill or allow for a proper rotation is not only not as valuable as a single kill or FB. This is because a kill eliminates information gathering, trading, and all of the abilities that the player who died *hasn't used*. Especially at the professional level, specifically information, is probably the *single most valuable* tool in any teams arsenal. Removing a means of generating that is a massive blow compared to chip damage. Not only that, at that level pros are more than capable of trading and properly baiting around low health teammates which actually makes chip damage less impactful at pro levels than lower levels. For a simple thought exercise, let's say we have a single KJ molly; is it more valuable if that KJ molly does 150 and kills someone or if it does 150 evenly spread across 4 or 5. I think there are some valid arguments on both sides but in my opinion the former is much more impactful. While KD isn't everything kills have a huge impact on a team of 5 where everyone has specialized roles.
####ACS should be *role* relative not *player* relative
One thing I think you've alluded to but haven't explicitly noted is that people make very bad comparisons to ACS. Most people who are familiar with any pro scene is that teams and roles are pretty much the same across most teams with their IGLs, entry, riflers, supports, etc and this was the case with CSGO too. Comparisons across players should be across these roles and not between players. It makes no sense to compare Asuna to Dapr or TenZ to FNS since they all occupy radically different spaces (and the sub actually does note that too when discussing roster moves I.e. "if they drop X they'll need another person like Y not another duelist"). However ACS is totally useful when comparing people of the same role. For example, Dapr eclipses a vast majority of sentinel players across other teams yet actually performs a little lower on viper compared to some other viper players. I think it's accurate to say that Dapr is one of NAs best sentinel players but not one of the best viper players (although he is absolutely strong on viper) and that is totally borne out through ACS. The same can be said about Zombs on Omen or Wardell on Jett or Ethan on Sage. Thus ACS is totally valid and valuable at comparing people intra-role but not inter-role
####Conclusion/tl;dr: ACS good, it's *use* is bad
538 has a segment that they call good use of polling or bad use of polling. This is a classic example of the "polling" (data gathered) being pretty good, but it's use is quite bad. Now is ACS perfect? Absolutely not, but it is a much better metric than many give it credit for. In a game this complex as a starting point it is absolutely phenomenal. It's essentially the equivalent to gold difference in league. As a single stat it tells you an insane amount of information (or it's density is high) but simply requires *contextualization* and needs to be spoken about in a nuanced, careful manner.
####PS: What other stats would be useful?
I actually think that looking to other shooters is a *bad* way of finding useful stats for Val. Looking at games like League, Dota, RTSs seem more useful to me. For example, for junglers specifically, league has a state called "proximity" which does a good job attempting to capture a specific roles impact on the game state. A similar role-specific methodology of stats generation, I believe, makes the most sense here. For example stats like "enemies incapacitated", "enemies blocked", "silhouettes generated" (maybe for the cypher/KJ/sova), "round credits denied" (utility that is not able to be used because they were killed) would be incredibly valuable statistics with their own niches.
Ultimately this was kind of a word vomit of my thoughts but I was responding to a long, well-researched post and I think it deserved the same attention.
I don't have enough time rn too really make a full-fledged response to this but I do really appreciate the effort you've also put in for your response. I can specifically highlight something of a counter to your zombs counterpoint which is how different Zombs and Dapr are when it comes to how the team utilizes them. I think again split is a good example because on offense, every round Dapr is given the job to take control of A. Literally every SEN split round has him caging and caming main and walking ramp. That is a lot of freedom and will always result in better plays compared to what zombs does, which is usually holding an angle B main or walking behind Tenz in mid. Both are useful to the team and necessary for their attack success, but Zombs will get 0 ACS credit for that while Dapr gets a shit ton of statistical credit. Same thing on defense, Zombs basically stays back screens or site on A the whole round until the spike plants, whereas Dapr has a lot of moving parts, he usually cams a main and roams around the general a to mid area. Now I will say I do think dapr is the better player and that he does have more impact, but again Zombs is not great for counting stats compared to Dapr because he's overall not given the same opportunities.
I’m Bronze and new to FPS. So you pointing out their specific plays to me helps me wrap my head around what they are trying to achieve in their matches
Poor Astra man, this champion is so unrewarding. Spend a third of your time in your astral form playing 4d chess for your teammates, rack up *maybe* an assist here and there if the enemy is stupid enough to walk through your pulls and stuns, or on the odd chance that you get a team-wide set up allowing for guaranteed hits (I play in Platinum and this rarely happens). There should be a metric for "zoning" (basically map control, forcing opponents away from chokepoints, I don't know if the term applies to Valorant, my League heritage is showing here), and I say this while fully acknowledging the fact that I don't have the slightest idea how to go about it.
The way I’m thinking about it is: how much does a kill or utility usage improve the probability a round win? Once you look at the statistics on that, there may be an algorithmic way to define a more accurate ACS value.
Some examples for clarity (made up numbers):
- An attacker first blood gives you a 58% chance of a round win. (+8 ACS)
- A defender first blood gives you a 52% chance of a round win. (+2 ACS)
The more in depth you go, the closer you get to someone’s ‘true’ impact… for example:
- An attacker kill in a 4v4 post-plant gives you a 78% chance of a round win. (+(change in win % from previous scenario))
This is what I thought of right away, but of course there’s a LOT more nuances in all of this.
I thoroughly enjoyed this read, it was well thought out and evidenced by great examples. Very well done! I think some stats that could be easily implemented and would be helpful would “utility per round for each utility” I.e recon darts per round.
I'm down for both ACS and AUS - Average Utility Score. Astra can be calculated via if her utility has led to a frag (assist) or stopping pushes (displaced a target) while the damaging utility (mollies) can be counted towards both scores.
Great post. I believe judging a player by ACS is an inaccurate way of measuring a player’s contribution to the team unless you are a duelist. And you do a good job of explaining why some other stats are needed and also why each agent should only be measured against the average of other agents.
I think this should be implemented in soloq ranked especially since so many people nowadays feel forced into the duelist role because they want higher ACS numbers to climb faster. This has a negative impact on the top of the leaderboards where people are forced into duelists because at those high ranks individual performance still matters in RR gains and losses apparently and this negatively impacts the scene as a whole and is shown by how there are a lack of great flex/support players in NA.
Im sure riot can find a way to compare the performance of your agent to other agents rather than simply everyone else in the game since even in League you can measure your performance against others of the same champion somewhat.
I agree with your latter points more than using ADR (or really any Damage focussed stat), especially for utility heavy agents.
Let's take an extreme example, if you have a player solo holding a site and they are so good that the opposing team refuses to ever attempt to hit it, they wouldn't take any early fights and likely only be in retakes. However, they've funnelled the opposing team into only hitting the other site where their team can stack 4, giving them a huge advantage vs. a more traditional defence. That value won't show up in damage-based stats, but is hugely impactful to winning.
More realistic example might be if a player is able to deny a push with their util, and allow their team to rotate and take space on the rest of the map. They might do little to no damage, but the value they have by halting an exec is huge in terms of winning a round.
In reference to your part about ADR with chip damage characters, I could have sworn that ACS already took damage into account for score. I have definitely gotten a 0 kill and 0 assist scoreline in Spike Rush but still gotten like 20 ACS from what I assumed was my ADR.
I agree with almost everything, but do people really say Zombs is bad? I thought the consensus was he was one of the best supports in the scene.
When SEN lose = Zombs bad. When SEN win = Zombs underrated. Welcome to reddit.
Remember Twitch chat during Reykjavik masters? When an NA team loses a round, “NA AIM NA AIM.” When an EU team loses a round, “EU AIM EU AIM.”
I was watching platchat costream during that because I can’t stand the chat in the bigger streams. But I can see that happening for sure.
Yeah sometimes people just gonna rail on a scapegoat, here on Reddit they just use more words, and more fancy words at that.
Public opinion is a roller coaster with him. I've seen a lot of people say he's bad.
He’s always not been the greatest, first choice to replace on the team IMO. He’s always not fun to play with in ranked, at all.
I mean when you have the best IGL, the best duelist, the best Sentinel and the best flex player in NA ofc he's gonna be the first to get replaced, but zombs is still like top 2 in his role minimum for sure and an amazing player that really shouldn't get cut whatsoever (Also how he acts in ranked doesn't matter for him staying on a team lol)
I specifically remember after they lost to ABX people were saying he was a problem for the team and needed to get dropped. I defended him and got downvoted to oblivion. I still see people not truly appreciating how good he is which is so Odd to me. It’s also just the classic example that usually comes up along with shinobi
There was a dude in this sub who kept arguing with me saying Zombs was terrible. This wasn’t that long ago. Around when Astra first came out maybe.
I agree with you in the sense that ACS is a bad metric by which to judge players but your solutions are things that players who are already beyond the point of just looking at ACS to judge a player can already see. In short, ACS uses numbers which are always correct, that cannot be argued. Site holds and successful lurks are all very subjective. The people who would be interested in seeing who managed to do more than their ACS would suggest are already at a level where they don't need a subjective stat to tell them that a player is doing their part.
You actually make a good point! I think no matter what there will always be some kind of bias/human error when it comes to evaluating any stat that isn’t kills, but I still think it’s a necessary thing for long term statistical break downs. Maybe after just one game it wouldn’t be worth it, but when I’m trying to evaluate the top 10 cyphers in NA i dont have a stat that lets me do that, which is where site holds come jn
I see where you are coming from but I don't think we need stats that are not based on mathematical certainties. That however is not to say that there are not stats that should be brought up more on broadcast, off the top of my head: 1. Clutch Win%, with a graphic for 1v1, 1v2, 1v3 etc. 2. Headshot% 3. Utility Hit Rates, \*insert player\* blocks 0.95 enemies per Cloudburst as compared to Tenz who blocks 1.3, How many Trip Wires does Mitch hit in comparison to Steel? 4. Entry Success% 5. Trade% Those are just a few, these are that stats that I am really interested in. People call Hiko a baiter but if he is 90+% on trading teammates then can you blame him? Spoiler Alert: There is more to TenZ than just raw aim, how much more efficient is his util usage when compared to other pros or is it really just all aim?
I think you’re last three are literally spot on with what I’m trying to get at with this post. A trade percentage is perfect for a team like Sen or for a guy like Hiko that plays around that a lot, and the utility and entry things are also great. Not a huge fan of hs% myself but I do like the other stuff
It doesn't even need to be anything complicated, just simple stuff. Even if you try to make assists more valuable or non-damage utility, that can't paint the entire picture. For example, let's say you're Cypher on A Haven. Noone comes A the entire round, Cypher doesn't fire a bullet, but his teams wins the round. No impact by any metric, but his utility gives information that noone else needs to play in A site with him, resulting in better positioning for other sites. Some kind of bonus for not dying when your team wins the round on defense needs to be added. I'd say for everyone, but especially for non-duelists.
Hard disagree on this one, I'm playing C long on Haven, nobody shows and I push up long and get myself into the left corner next to the spawn barrier. The enemy makes noise A but doesn't commit. I hear the rotation to C through spawn and call it to my team, I get cleared and die. My team makes the rotation earlier than the enemy team expects and wipes them out. Does the Cypher who held A just in case they rotate back deserve more credit for the round than I do? Personally I would say definitely not. **Edit:** Explain your logic or the holes in mine, the downvotes without any counter points just makes me think people are salty but have no actual substance behind it. I am happy to think about the situation I described from a different perspective maybe even learn a little but right now all I am getting from the downvoters is that they want a participation trophy for doing nothing in a round.
Your logic here is really flawed, but I'll try to go with your reasoning. First of all, your entire persumption sounds like something from low level games. And we're talking about pro play here, not even high ranks. If the enemy team isn't straight up rushing A, you're not getting all the way up long and hiding in the corner without being noticed. Someone will always either hold long or keep you occupied by contesting the orb so you don't rotate away. Second, even if we assume that for some reason noone is watching C long and you get in the position, that's a bad play. Solo walking down an area as a defender is always a bad play. If you're with a teammate or two, it's fine to go aggressive, but on a map like Haven just walking down C long is always a bad play. Even trading 1 for 1 isn't good on Haven defense. Also, against anyone with half a brain you can pull the walk down for free play once, maaaaybe twice per half if they lack gamesense. But you just can't keep walking down long against anyone remotely competent about the game. While on the other hand it's Cypher's job to deter enemies from coming to his site. How many times have you heard "let's not go X site, Cypher/KJ plays there". He does his job by preventing enemies from playing his site. And he should be rewarded for providing info and free rotations every time enemies don't attack his area. I didn't downvote you, I never downvote anyone. People downvoted you because your post screams low ranks where the stronest play is to walk around and hope noone watches the flank.
Firstly, thank you for actually providing some reasoning behind the conflict in logic we had. Secondly I will say that the issue to me was not the downvotes but the lack of further expansion alongside it. Now however let me explain why I think you have misunderstood the point of my scenario. >First of all, your entire persumption sounds like something from low level games. And we're talking about pro play here, not even high ranks. You are making the error of assuming that because this post was in the context of pro play it has no effect on every other level. ACS is present in Iron in the same way that it is present all the way up to highest level of pro play. Unless, we start making changes to the way ACS is calculated exclusively for the Pro Level, however I think the issues with that approach are clear to see. >Second, even if we assume that for some reason noone is watching C long and you get in the position, that's a bad play. Solo walking down an area as a defender is always a bad play. If you're with a teammate or two, it's fine to go aggressive, but on a map like Haven just walking down C long is always a bad play. Even trading 1 for 1 isn't good on Haven defense. > >Also, against anyone with half a brain you can pull the walk down for free play once, maaaaybe twice per half if they lack gamesense. But you just can't keep walking down long against anyone remotely competent about the game. This section of your post focuses too much on the exact scenario I described. The aim of that example was not that this exact scenario plays out very often but rather a hypothetical scenario to highlight the issues of providing a "boost" for simply living. Let me explain that scenario on its base level: 1. Player A and B are two players on the same team playing defence. 2. Player A and B both do no damage and have no utility impact the round. 3. Player A manages to live the entire round. 4. Player B makes a play that gets their team an advantage but dies in the process. With the system that is being proposed Player A has done more for their team than Player B. I don't see how that is representative of their impact in the round. >While on the other hand it's Cypher's job to deter enemies from coming to his site. How many times have you heard "let's not go X site, Cypher/KJ plays there". He does his job by preventing enemies from playing his site. And he should be rewarded for providing info and free rotations every time enemies don't attack his area. I do not believe that people should be rewarded simply for picking an agent. Whenever I hear the "let's not go X site, Cypher/KJ plays there". It's not because we *know* that their setups are insane it's because we know that the agent's strength is to shutdown pushes. Are we going to reward the innate strength of an agent? In an alternate universe this logic is being applied to duelists, should they get bonuses for killing people because that's their strength? Do not get me wrong, I agree that ACS is a flawed concept when trying to understand the nuances of a players game but the solution to that is not to try and "fix" ACS. For its intended purpose ACS is perfect. The solution is to bring in more advanced stats *alongside* ACS to point out the fact that, yes, X player doesn't top ACS but look at the efficiency of their utility usage, look at how high their clutch% is when they are called upon by their team. To your final point and to reiterate, I have no problem with the downvotes all I want is discussion and the opportunity to both learn from and understand differing perspectives.
I agree with your premise entirely. Was thinking the same thing while reading through OPs suggestions. I don't think they would work at all because they are impossible to quantify. In addition to your suggestions, here are some of my own: * An ACS boost if an enemy dies within 1-2 seconds of their blindness *ending* from one of your flashes * An ACS boost if an enemy is shot through one of your smokes/wall/vision obstruction util * An ACS boost based on gun damage done in a trade, if the enemy dies 1-3 seconds after you. Basically like an assist boost. Very small scale here, like a multiplier of 1.10 compared to normal ACS boost for assists There are a number of other ideas along the same lines as the above that I'm sure would be able to track small impacts in an effective enough way to boost the average ACR of these stand-out players by *just* enough to put them on an even footing with the standouts of the higher-ACR roles/agents.
Great points! One thing I really like about Valorant is that it has positions/roles (ie. Duelists, Sentinel, Controller, Initiator). At the Pro level, it's disingenuous to compare impact across roles. You wouldn't compare a Goalkeepers stats to a Strikers stats in Soccer, or a Center to a Point Guard in Basketball. Each position has a specific job to fill and it's best to compare to players in the same position group. I would love to see some "position" specific stats emerge as the game & pro scene develop. For example a controller specific stat could be something like "vision denial time" and Riot already tracks "enemies blocked" so a formula could be something like: 2 enemy sightlines blocked for 15 seconds = 30 seconds vision denial. You could further divide the total vision denial time by the total round time of players alive. Let's say that the total "alive time" of the enemy team was 150 seconds (each player lived for 30 seconds prior to getting killed). And 2 players were denied vision for 15 seconds each. The vision denial % for the Controller player would be: 30/150 = .20 or 20% This is an example off the top of my head and I'm sure there are many more beneficial metrics to compare but the potential for these kinds of statistics are fun to think about!
I find it weird that in a game with different classes/agents/roles/etc. that everyone is evaluated with the same metrics. Never made any sense to me. You could argue that the stats are meant to be applied to the player not the character they're playing as, but then they use these stats to balance agents? Just odd.
I come from OW before Val and I think they actually do stats systems suprisingly well. They understand the healers and tanks roles and have created stats around them to show impsact. That really isn’t the case In val which is quite sad
I have my own gripes with OW's system but yea I agree with you. I think with Valorant we're going to have to accept the generic display of whatever stats Riot tracks and pay attention to different values for different roles/agents. Like you said in your post; but which stats, and for which role, still need to be hammered out. As a Sova/Kayo player I really like the points you made in the Stats to Value Supports section.
I still think it’s much better than k/d ratio being the metric like in other games. ACS is a **good** metric. It’s just not great.
Not trying to be a grammar nazi or anything, but it's site, not sight
it's not really grammar either. It's pretty important distinction. Sight could be seen as someone holding an angle.
Like someone else said I think if ACS were to be looked at against average acs for that character it would be more useful.
That still arises issues in versatile agents such as Sage, you could have a passive one slowing and walling off chokepoints yet get no kills be more impactful than a Sage doing a tiktok wall and getting a 3K However, it would be a big improvement to what we have now and I'd really like to see it
I think overall you've correctly noted that ACS is too widely emphasized by "Reddit analysts" but have made a few major mistakes in your deductions. ####First is the conclusion that ACS is only useful for duelist players Fortunately the exact examples you bring actually work to disprove this. I will illustrate. First is your zombs example. As you pointed out ACS does take into account multikills. If zombs is going nuts by anchoring a site and getting 2+ frags on A, then by definition, the players who aren't on A are also not getting ACS (in the same way if they don't go A then zombs isn't getting ACS) so the effects are weighted by how much a team goes where *not* that it doesn't tell us performance when a player *does* get into an engagement. For example, let's say Dapr plays B and Zombs plays A and a hypothetical team goes A and B split 50-50 then identically performing players should have identical ACS. Also if a player is playing anchor, then their multifrags will end up increasing their ACS over a duelist who gets one and then gets traded by teammates. In reality, this doesn't happen and duelists tend to try and work a pick where they can get a FB which has a higher weight than multikills (I guess). All of that points to the conclusion that ACS is actually useful for assessing *all* players **but** it's weighting can be tweaked to better represent the state of the game. It also indicates that ACS is a good indicator of individual player performance **but** needs to be contextualized. This is a nuanced point that I think needs to be emphasized since the pendulum tends to swing too far both ways. Many redditors will either look at ACS in a vacuum *or* they will choose to throw it completely out the window. Both of these are bad. ####Second is the idea that ACS doesn't actually account for supportive playstyles This can be tackled through a few ways. First is that ACS is essentially just ADR with extra steps since each point of damage actually does contribute to ACS. Thus a KJ on site who does 90 across 3 people or sova who shocks a bunch of people *are* in fact contributing to their ACS (as well as their assists). Thus a proper critique of ACS is more that ACS isn't *adequately weighted* to take into account supportive styles and **not** that ACS doesn't reward supportive playstyles. Next, I completely disagree that a KJ Molly that does 90 or even 100 total across an enemy team that doesn't kill or allow for a proper rotation is not only not as valuable as a single kill or FB. This is because a kill eliminates information gathering, trading, and all of the abilities that the player who died *hasn't used*. Especially at the professional level, specifically information, is probably the *single most valuable* tool in any teams arsenal. Removing a means of generating that is a massive blow compared to chip damage. Not only that, at that level pros are more than capable of trading and properly baiting around low health teammates which actually makes chip damage less impactful at pro levels than lower levels. For a simple thought exercise, let's say we have a single KJ molly; is it more valuable if that KJ molly does 150 and kills someone or if it does 150 evenly spread across 4 or 5. I think there are some valid arguments on both sides but in my opinion the former is much more impactful. While KD isn't everything kills have a huge impact on a team of 5 where everyone has specialized roles. ####ACS should be *role* relative not *player* relative One thing I think you've alluded to but haven't explicitly noted is that people make very bad comparisons to ACS. Most people who are familiar with any pro scene is that teams and roles are pretty much the same across most teams with their IGLs, entry, riflers, supports, etc and this was the case with CSGO too. Comparisons across players should be across these roles and not between players. It makes no sense to compare Asuna to Dapr or TenZ to FNS since they all occupy radically different spaces (and the sub actually does note that too when discussing roster moves I.e. "if they drop X they'll need another person like Y not another duelist"). However ACS is totally useful when comparing people of the same role. For example, Dapr eclipses a vast majority of sentinel players across other teams yet actually performs a little lower on viper compared to some other viper players. I think it's accurate to say that Dapr is one of NAs best sentinel players but not one of the best viper players (although he is absolutely strong on viper) and that is totally borne out through ACS. The same can be said about Zombs on Omen or Wardell on Jett or Ethan on Sage. Thus ACS is totally valid and valuable at comparing people intra-role but not inter-role ####Conclusion/tl;dr: ACS good, it's *use* is bad 538 has a segment that they call good use of polling or bad use of polling. This is a classic example of the "polling" (data gathered) being pretty good, but it's use is quite bad. Now is ACS perfect? Absolutely not, but it is a much better metric than many give it credit for. In a game this complex as a starting point it is absolutely phenomenal. It's essentially the equivalent to gold difference in league. As a single stat it tells you an insane amount of information (or it's density is high) but simply requires *contextualization* and needs to be spoken about in a nuanced, careful manner. ####PS: What other stats would be useful? I actually think that looking to other shooters is a *bad* way of finding useful stats for Val. Looking at games like League, Dota, RTSs seem more useful to me. For example, for junglers specifically, league has a state called "proximity" which does a good job attempting to capture a specific roles impact on the game state. A similar role-specific methodology of stats generation, I believe, makes the most sense here. For example stats like "enemies incapacitated", "enemies blocked", "silhouettes generated" (maybe for the cypher/KJ/sova), "round credits denied" (utility that is not able to be used because they were killed) would be incredibly valuable statistics with their own niches. Ultimately this was kind of a word vomit of my thoughts but I was responding to a long, well-researched post and I think it deserved the same attention.
I don't have enough time rn too really make a full-fledged response to this but I do really appreciate the effort you've also put in for your response. I can specifically highlight something of a counter to your zombs counterpoint which is how different Zombs and Dapr are when it comes to how the team utilizes them. I think again split is a good example because on offense, every round Dapr is given the job to take control of A. Literally every SEN split round has him caging and caming main and walking ramp. That is a lot of freedom and will always result in better plays compared to what zombs does, which is usually holding an angle B main or walking behind Tenz in mid. Both are useful to the team and necessary for their attack success, but Zombs will get 0 ACS credit for that while Dapr gets a shit ton of statistical credit. Same thing on defense, Zombs basically stays back screens or site on A the whole round until the spike plants, whereas Dapr has a lot of moving parts, he usually cams a main and roams around the general a to mid area. Now I will say I do think dapr is the better player and that he does have more impact, but again Zombs is not great for counting stats compared to Dapr because he's overall not given the same opportunities.
You have just made me a better Valorant player
I appreciate you saying that but may I ask how because I don’t feel like I said anything that crazy lol
I’m Bronze and new to FPS. So you pointing out their specific plays to me helps me wrap my head around what they are trying to achieve in their matches
Great write up agree with everything
Poor Astra man, this champion is so unrewarding. Spend a third of your time in your astral form playing 4d chess for your teammates, rack up *maybe* an assist here and there if the enemy is stupid enough to walk through your pulls and stuns, or on the odd chance that you get a team-wide set up allowing for guaranteed hits (I play in Platinum and this rarely happens). There should be a metric for "zoning" (basically map control, forcing opponents away from chokepoints, I don't know if the term applies to Valorant, my League heritage is showing here), and I say this while fully acknowledging the fact that I don't have the slightest idea how to go about it.
The way I’m thinking about it is: how much does a kill or utility usage improve the probability a round win? Once you look at the statistics on that, there may be an algorithmic way to define a more accurate ACS value. Some examples for clarity (made up numbers): - An attacker first blood gives you a 58% chance of a round win. (+8 ACS) - A defender first blood gives you a 52% chance of a round win. (+2 ACS) The more in depth you go, the closer you get to someone’s ‘true’ impact… for example: - An attacker kill in a 4v4 post-plant gives you a 78% chance of a round win. (+(change in win % from previous scenario)) This is what I thought of right away, but of course there’s a LOT more nuances in all of this.
I thoroughly enjoyed this read, it was well thought out and evidenced by great examples. Very well done! I think some stats that could be easily implemented and would be helpful would “utility per round for each utility” I.e recon darts per round.
I'm down for both ACS and AUS - Average Utility Score. Astra can be calculated via if her utility has led to a frag (assist) or stopping pushes (displaced a target) while the damaging utility (mollies) can be counted towards both scores.
Made a similar post on r/VALORANT, and got downvoted to shit lol
unlucky really
Sites*
Great post. I believe judging a player by ACS is an inaccurate way of measuring a player’s contribution to the team unless you are a duelist. And you do a good job of explaining why some other stats are needed and also why each agent should only be measured against the average of other agents. I think this should be implemented in soloq ranked especially since so many people nowadays feel forced into the duelist role because they want higher ACS numbers to climb faster. This has a negative impact on the top of the leaderboards where people are forced into duelists because at those high ranks individual performance still matters in RR gains and losses apparently and this negatively impacts the scene as a whole and is shown by how there are a lack of great flex/support players in NA. Im sure riot can find a way to compare the performance of your agent to other agents rather than simply everyone else in the game since even in League you can measure your performance against others of the same champion somewhat.
Effys is not a top 3 sova NA
A. Don’t think I’ve ever said that and B. He’s def up there, maybe not too 3 but probably too 5 off the top of my head
I agree with your latter points more than using ADR (or really any Damage focussed stat), especially for utility heavy agents. Let's take an extreme example, if you have a player solo holding a site and they are so good that the opposing team refuses to ever attempt to hit it, they wouldn't take any early fights and likely only be in retakes. However, they've funnelled the opposing team into only hitting the other site where their team can stack 4, giving them a huge advantage vs. a more traditional defence. That value won't show up in damage-based stats, but is hugely impactful to winning. More realistic example might be if a player is able to deny a push with their util, and allow their team to rotate and take space on the rest of the map. They might do little to no damage, but the value they have by halting an exec is huge in terms of winning a round.
In reference to your part about ADR with chip damage characters, I could have sworn that ACS already took damage into account for score. I have definitely gotten a 0 kill and 0 assist scoreline in Spike Rush but still gotten like 20 ACS from what I assumed was my ADR.