Our ranked system starts from the classic Elo rating and is rebuilt for 5v5. Three things decide how much you win or lose.
Winning or losing is always the biggest factor. Win and you gain Elo, lose and you drop it.
A landslide moves far more Elo than a close game. The more rounds between the teams, the bigger the swing.
Your team's Elo is shared out by how you played compared with what's expected at your rating.
Every match has a k-factor, the size of the pot the two teams play for. When the rounds are close, the pot is small, so a narrow loss costs very little. When one team runs away with it, the pot grows and the winners take much more off the losers.
Across 4,284 ranked matches, a win by 1–2 rounds earned an average of +2.8 Elo, while a win by 13 or more earned +9.5 Elo.
Winners above the line, losers below
Rounds between the two teams
Before each match the system looks at every ranked player and works out where you sit in the pool. From that it sets an expected combat score for you: the share of your team's output someone at your rating should produce. Higher rated players are expected to carry more; newer players less.
After the match your real combat score is compared with that expectation, and your team's Elo is divided up to match. Outperform and you win more or lose less than your teammates. Underperform and you win less or lose more.
On average the top fragger on a winning team earned +6.1 Elo against +4.7 Elo for the bottom fragger, and on a losing team the top fragger dropped only -3.7 Elo against -4.8 Elo.
Winners above the line, losers below
Sets how much more a high rated player is expected to frag than a low rated one. The higher it is, the more the top players are expected to carry the team, and the less is asked of players lower down.
Sets how far above or below your expected score you need to be to change your outcome completely. If it were 200, beating your expected score by 200 would mean losing no Elo in a loss, and falling 200 short would mean gaining nothing from a win.
