what does valorant NEED?

#1

Hobbit

i've been an active val player since the end of 2021. it was my first tac fps, and since i was into hero shooters, i gave a shot.

i love the game, the mechanics, and the roster of characters, but most importantly, i loved the esport.

after 4 full years of grinding the game, yesterday, i uninstalled the game after going 13/17 w sova on haven, after that match i realized that any passion i had for the game was gone, and i was just playing for the sake of it, and i wasn't playing my style/how i wanted to play.

so this got me thinking: what does valorant need to be the perfect game in your eyes?

here's my list:
- try to reduce rng as much as possible: remove random gun spray, MAKE run and gun not viable at all.

- add lock-in delay: people are going to play whatever they want regardless, yes, but this way, you reduce the amount of instalockers by A LOT, and you give people a chance to actually discuss what they want to play

- add map picks and ban: it's BAFFLING to me that riot, in 2025, has not added a map pick ban system to their game. people dodge the game because they have to play abyss or a map they don't like, so let them ban it! why the hell are we supposed to play what riot wants us to play and not what we want to play? this also connects to my lock-in delay point, you give people a chance to discuss/choose what they want to play and HOW they want to play. if 2 parties disagree on what map to play, there's ALWAYS a common ground.

- start to add agent bans: ever since clove released, this has been the comp i've played with and against 70% of my games: jett, reyna/oso, chamber, clove. the games feel repetitive, boring, and frankly annoying because everyone baits (but ik that's not necessarily riot's fault).

- add incentives: this has been said a million times. if you don't give incentives to the players to grind, NO ONE will grind, only streamers. why should i try hard when the only thing i will get is the same immortal gun buddy every act? they could give you skins, money, anything new. you don't want to give incentives? fine, let FACEIT run servers just like CS2 or any other comp game.

- add mobile phone identifier: i put this on almost on the bottom because it's really simple. if you add this, and you get punished by the game, you get punished everywhere, this way people take accountability for being toxic/throwing games.

- rework the elo system: i put this on the bottom because i don't really know how to explain it, but Keeoh actually explains the elo system very well. the current elo system basically makes sure you lose or you win depending on your current elo (or sumn like that).

release valorant 2 atp type post!! but i feel like not really many ppl on the community (at least in vlr) talk enough about this

#2

Loud_Neymar

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It needs hookers and cocaine

#4

Hobbit

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++1

#20

Raftlot

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Holy shit name checks out

#35

31Raven

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(its lit!)

#3

beayuh

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keeoh watcher opinion pushed aside

#5

simbhdri

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his takes abt the game r rlly valid tho

#7

temi

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That just makes it CS… I like cs but rng separates the games and I like it
No…. It’d just be adding delay for no reason… also it’s ranked… from immo above u can discuss comps but below that some people don’t know why some comps work and coordinated team play isn’t really a thing… u get small moments but nothing that justifies not playing comfort picks
Map picks and bans would just lead to another cs scenario where most pugs are inferno, mirage and d2.. you rarely ever see nuke
Agent bans won’t make people bait less

The rest I don’t really care

#11

Hobbit

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who said it had to be like CS? CS has a lot more run and gun that Valorant (a lot more), just give each weapon a unique weapon spray pattern, make it have skill. and I'm really not buying the RNG makes valorant special thing in 2025, it's a competitive game, even Overwatch has less RNG than Val, and OW is chaotic as fuck. Valorant doesn't have to be CS, it has to be unique, and most importantly take skill. the game is already the same layout as CS, i don't see how making the skill cealing higher is bad
most games you will have a player that locks in last second anyway, it doesn't add "delay for no reason". immo above u can discuss comps? give me your lobbies bro, because out of every 10 games, in maybe 2 my team actually discusses the comp they want to play. and let's not forget that immo+ plus are still the 1% of the whole playerbase, so if this change actually benefits low elo players to get more fair comps, why not add it?
i'd rather play the same 3 maps over and over if that means that people actually want to play it, in no other game i've been dodged 4 times on a row because people don't want to play corrode or abyss. CS actually does a good job at this, because they remove the least played map, unlike Val, who adds the maps that people hate the most and remove the ones that people love the most, Riot doesn't listen to the community or understands what the community wants. So let people pick what map they want to play, if they feel more comfortable and will perform better, so be it
this point was more referring to the possibility of adding this on the future. i feel like the number of agents in val is on a weird spot rn, there's A LOT of agents, but not enough to ban like League. but there's def a lot to at least ban one per map. and my baiting point wasn't actually a point, it's not really related to the agent conversation, and i even stated that ik this isn't something that Riot can fix directly, i just stated as something that happens

#14

temi

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Adding spray patterns makes it cs and it becomes a battle of who can spray better… u would never see the vandal in pro play…
In cs besides Niko, ropz or the occasional last bullet situations every gun fight is a spray… while there’s more to it I prefer the tapping more bursting oriented nature of val fights
Comps in ranked doesn’t mean much… u have to shoot better than ur opponents… there’s a few exceptions but they are a tiny drop in the ocean and adding the delay doesn’t stop insta locking
Cs removes the least played competitive maps (not mm or faceit) but pro play

#17

Hobbit

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people would still play for the tap, because it's more viable compared to cs. the thing is that there's already a lot of spray oriented fights in valorant (mostly close range fights). i don't know if this would make much more of a difference in the way that the game is played, but it would def make it a lot more fair. i'm just stating an extreme, if riot made the gun spray less random, i would still be happy with that change, but i do think that there's too many situations where people who don't deserve to get away with something... get away with it
i'm not yay, neither are you, i am mechanically better than most people on my lobbies, but rarely i will smurf everyone for long periods of time. and it's especially hard if my comps doesn't have any map info/control agents (like kj, sova, fade, breach, etc.). you CAN get away a lot of times if you have good enough mechanics, but if you are going against a fade, breach, clove, raze, and phoenix, no matter how good you are, the utility dump will be too hard, especially if the enemy team is just a bit coordinated. if you play equal lobbies, comps DO matter. it IS a fps at the end of the day, but it's a tactical fps for a reason, tactics matter
according to this reddit post:

anubis was the 2nd least popular in premier, only behind train, which was just added into the game (at the time of the post). i imagine it's a mixed bag of how much the mm and pro play community play it

https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/1m1fnt9/anubis_was_the_2nd_least_popular_and_most_tsided

#26

temi

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And if u scrolled down a bit u would have seen
https://imgur.com/Qd37SBa
While train was the least it was barely 6 months into the pool… I should also have specified t1 level
U rarely get comps like that in ranked tho… that’s a perfect scenario some1 is gonna lock reyna or and chamber guaranteed especially now that the trips global… also u can bait the util out… take map control somewhere else
People will still get lucky… no matter what the change is but not changing anything is still fine… and it will make a massive difference… most fights past 20m u don’t see many players spray because tapping and bursting is more accurate; if the recoil was the same everytime the only time u’d see tapping and bursting is fights on c long haven or pearl b

#39

Hobbit

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agree to disagree

u have valid points/views, i just don't share your opinion

#47

temi

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Fair.

#8

vibemerchant_25

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Map and agent bans imo would ruin the game. It's a hot take but I think being forced to play all the maps is what makes the game fun. Plus agent bans would actually kill the game, not only is there not enough agents to actually make the system work we would end up with nothing apart from meta picks. If I wanna play iso or some other bumfuck agent I should be able to. Idk why people think just cause they play ranked everyone must only play what they think is meta or they are throwing and don't deserve to play.

#13

Hobbit

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i understand the agent bans thing, i do think it's too soon for that, but i was thinking to implement that more in the future when we have a lot more of agents

being forced to play all the maps is what makes the game fun

sure... i thought this too until a year ago, but i don't think it's fair for players to get stuck on a map they don't want to play. if it was like a CS Nuke situation, where the map is incredibly good, but people just prefer other maps over it, I would get, but this isn't the case for most Val maps.

most maps feel completely unbalanced or completely unplayable if you don't use certain comps, and asking for comp flexibility in ranked is hard.

most people hate icebox, pearl, or abyss, and they're still on the map pool (except icebox, but it has been part of the active map pool for years.

i love split but no one plays it accordingly, and most people in ranked that i get don't really seem to want to play it either.

so please tell me, what other solution is there to this? if we can't punish the bad maps for being bad, and reward the good maps for being good, what other options do we have? ik that making EVERY map good would be ideal (if that was the case, i would agree that no map ban is needed), but riot has just been making worse and worse maps. nobody likes abyss, or corrode, so what do we do?

#15

vibemerchant_25

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i like abyss a lot idk what to say to that. I think you need to realize not everyone plays the game at the highest level and while the game should definitely be optimized for the best of the best I don't think it should be at the cost of fun. I like abyss cause you can fall off and do fun shit. I'm sure there's probably a good reason why it's bad. I like corrode cause the crystals make cool sounds when you shoot them. I don't think everyone plays the game to min max the shit out of everything. Granted if I am in the minority then I get it but I don't think we know that as a fact.

#18

Hobbit

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i know exactly where you're coming from

that's exactly why i think that map ban would benefit both high and low elo players. abyss isn't balanced or fair enough for high elo players? let them ban it

this is also a tactic to force Riot into making their maps better, it's a direct form of punishing them for bad map designs. i get it's fun and exciting not knowing what map you will play next, but oh boy i want to dodge corrode every time i get it

make the maps more balanced, or make the fun maps like abyss worth to play in

it's a win-win for high and low elo players imo, because they have different ways of playing and like to play different maps

#31

vibemerchant_25

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You are working under the assumption that low elo players play for fun and high elo players play for skill but there are sweats who think they are the best and their team is the problem in low elo. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to never be able to queue for a map cause a youtuber put abyss or corrode in F tier in a tierlist and now the entire community thinks that it's a bad map despite not being good enough to notice the imbalance.

#10

SkyXD

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then it’s not valorant anymore. the rng and whiffs are part of the game we know and love if not it’s just cs
people would just instalock after the delay esp in lower ranks
if you can’t/dw to play a map then too bad deal with it lmfao, also the less popular maps would be out every game it’d just be lotus haven ascent every game or whatever
don’t turn this into brawl stars pls. sure it might be repetitive or whatever but everyone plays differently. if you add bans then the most picked agents are just gonna be banned every map. games gone
the incentive is the dopamine kick you get from tapping people. no one’s asking you to play. if you don’t want to play because no incentive no one’s forcing you to lmao
ok this i agree i hate smurfs
how would you rework it

#12

Hobbit

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most of your points defending the game are: this is valorant's identity and deal with it

since when is that... good? imagine if riot, instead of nerfing chamber, they said: deal with it lol, it's part of the game now

valorant is valorant, i can agree, but pretending the the game doesn't have room for the improvement is disingenuous

it doesn't HAVE to be CS, or any other game. i'm not asking to make the game ultra hardcore realistic CS style, i'm just asking to make it skillful, since when, is that a bad thing?

you can have a unique spray pattern for each weapon and still don't make it CS. you want to keep run and gun? sure, but don't make it random, because it's not roblox, or tf2, it's a competitive game

if a map is bad, or not liked by the community (in the case of corrode or abyss), why make people play it? i legit don't understand this, if no one likes the map, why force your playerbase to play it??

the less popular maps would be out every game it’d just be lotus haven ascent every game or whatever

that's EXACTLY the point. if your community doesn't want to play a map, there HAS to be a reason for it. i get not wanting to remove a map because it's new, but if a map has been on the pool forever, and people still don't like it, it CAN'T be nothing

the incentive is the dopamine kick you get from tapping people. no one’s asking you to play. if you don’t want to play because no incentive no one’s forcing you to lmao

sure, keep the game the same. and this point is not even for me, it's for the playerbase, because the numbers are on an all-time low, and people are leaving the game more than ever. i'm not just saying something i would like to add, i'm saying the reason why people are leaving the game, people don't have motivation, they see a new game, they leave

any other point i just can't argue, it really depends on your point of view like the agent bans, i agree it's too soon, but it should be implemented on the future when we have like 50+ agents or so

how would you rework it

as i said i'm not really informed on how it works on paper, but losers/winners queue is real, and most the games you lose (assuming you play your role well) are out of your hands. valorant makes sure that you aren't above 60% wr or sumn like that

#16

Acethyr

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i agree with everything besides the lock-in delay thing. it really just inconveniences people imo. if someone was going to instalock, they're likely gonna try locking that agent later anyways regardless of what you say. idk about you but id rather just have my reyna instalock on reyna as opposed to him trying to play any other agent where he has no clue what he's doing. they can add it if they want, but imo its not really gonna do anything.

i think they should make it so you can pick the maps before you even queue, like, make every single map theyve made available and allow the player to pick as many maps as they wanna play. but make it so you still have to pick at least 7 so that people don't one trick a map and the amt of maps doesnt go below what it already was. this would allow people to play every single map in the game if they want, or just not play maps they don't wanna play.

also to the people trying to say that a map ban system would be bad because it would make it so only a few maps are played, yeah? what's the issue? it's a game and people would have more fun playing it if they got to play the maps the like more. what's the issue with less maps being played?

#23

xSaneZ

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What would be better is to do something similar to league where each person picks after another (order is randomly decided at start)

Each pick is given a specific time to lock it in and after, the picks (from both sides) are shown to all - this opens the window to counterpicks from the next people picking.

Not only does this mean only 20% of the time you get to instalock, but that instalock can actually get countered which incentives NOT to one-trick (but still gives you the freedom to if you really wanted). I think this is better than agent bans which would diminish a lot of the meta comps that we have on different maps

Now the only problem is counterpicks aren't a very real thing in Valorant, which is why if they do make this change they should start to rework some agents or add new ones that actively counter others and that'd actually add a lot of depth to valorant that I think we're missing. It also means we won't just get the classic ranked agents Reyna, Jett, Clove, Chamber every game if they're just going to keep getting countered - maybe an anti-heal, targetted suppress (to prevent tp/dash), etc.

#25

Acethyr

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i feel like if that's the path you want the game to take that's fair but, i really don't like the idea of limiting what people can play. i personally would hate it if im just not getting to consistently play what i want. one tricking isn't really a big deal imo because that's the person's choice. if you wanna do that then have fun. limiting people and what they can play just takes the fun outta the game imo. but yeah objectively speaking it's probably better for gameplay quality. not for me though, doesn't sound fun at all.

#36

xSaneZ

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Tbh it doesn't really limit what people play at all, in League for example (where this exact system is in place, and even includes character bans) one-tricking is not just effective, but encouraged & still extremely common. All it does is involve the concept of matchups, you can still play whatever you like but there will be matchups that are harder to play against, this means it's useful to be flexible in SOME cases and you might have an actual desire to play something else. Overwatch is another example, Genji was so counterable for the longest time yet one-tricks that were good enough could still make it work - also emphasises skill expression which is something Valorant is missing.

Also, this wouldn't be emphasised for every character. For example, Sova is an agent that is not overly OP, nor is he purely a ranked agent - he does not need a hard counter because he's fairly standard. My main issues are when in ranked people are only picking Reyna, Chamber, Clove for most games. It just makes the game so stale and repetitive

Also the whole team can still hover their agents, a lot of my ranked games we manage to come to a consensus on who plays what without instalocks. And as for your argument, people are already limited by what they play just cause of the meta - Harbor, Tejo etc. are so bad rn. All I'm suggesting is dependant nerfs, rather than universal nerfs - there will be some agents that are good 'blindpicks', and some that are not

#38

Acethyr

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idk man, again if that's what you want then all the power to you. i'm not obsessed with emphasis on expressing their skill in any way beyond mechanics. i feel like most people just log on to shoot and theyre more comfortable doing that on some agents. for example, i absolutely despise reyna players and i do wish the agent gets deleted just because i find reyna mains icky. but i still want those people to be able to play the agent they enjoy playing on.

forcing everyone to play the standard you want the game to be at doesn't feel fair imo. you should have the freedom to pick whatever you want whenever you want as opposed to potentially being stuck behind in queue. maybe that's because when i log on i care more about actually enjoying my game as opposed to wanting everything to be perfectly set up for a win, but yeah that's just my take on it.

and yeah most people decide on what comp they want pregame anyways. if someone wants to instalock so be it.

#19

1d

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holy paragraphs I aint reading allat

#21

xSaneZ

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For me there's just not enough skill expression in the game, that's honestly the worst part. There are too many easy characters to pick up, look at other ability focused games and how lots of characters need thousands of hours to truly master.

Almost all the util in the game is extremely simple to deploy, Tejo was a very good example of this, literally just point and click on the map for huge value.

A slightly related problem that stems off this is the pro scene, it's like anyone can be at the top. Whereas in a game like overwatch it'd be easy to pick someone to support in the long term and they'd still be highly valuable like 3 years later. E.g. guxue, because they just aren't replaceable for their level of skill

Whereas in Valorant there's not enough incentive to support an individual player, there's less uniqueness. No wonder people swap the team they support every few seconds just depending on who's winning. (Ik there are unique teams like PRX etc. but I mean generally)

#22

renkobento

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riot knows the game has been in a terrible state for years, they aint doin nothin cuz skins be sellin like hotcakes either way

#24

9D2eGB253Ls5

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i ain’t reading all that

#27

Alova02

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I feel like Map bans and agents ban are just not the way to go, especially in lower ELOs if you think about it. With map bans people would play maps they are comfortable playing, and 95% of the time that's gonna be stuff like haven, ascent and lotus for some, legacy maps that people been playing for ages. Any new maps that come out would not be played at all in lower elos cuz many people in this ranks are playing for fun, they dont really care about a new maps and would intentionally dodge new maps because they dont care and dont want to learn any new maps, creating a situation such as in CS where the only relevant maps in comp is the same 3 map rotation at most. Map bans also hurt people that like new maps like corrode ( me ) and abyss ( also me and my team ), as the chance we get to play them in competitive would be near zero cause the enemies are gonna ban maps they aren't used to, or play as much in their entire valorant lifespan, especially in ASC and IMMO where im playing around. And if we do get to play this maps, its simply because its also the enemy best or favourite maps to play, causing the pool of data / matches to be much more skewed towards 1 team best map vs another team best map scenarios. Hell in tournaments, we barely get a chance to play sunset and corrode since its an insta ban for basically all the teams, so even if its our best map / most creative map we cant do much with it and lose abit of the spark and fun that comes with learning and performing on a new map, since people dont like changes...

#42

Hobbit

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but wouldn't that just make the skill ceiling higher?

this game is already too new player friendly, most characters are easy to pickup, the map layouts are simple and easy to understand yet take time to learn

the map ban is more focused on punishing the unbalanced and unenjoyable maps, to reward the balanced and fun maps

and riot doesn't treat their map pool with a lot of respect, they change it randomly one season to another

they removed lotus (my favorite map) to add PEARL. people have been complaining about the pearl map design for years, and it hasn't changed one bit, people don't really complain about map designs anymore because they just deal with it and know that riot won't do anything about it

on an ideal world, we wouldn't need map bans, because every map is balanced, fun, and equitable, but that sadly isn't the case :(

#28

eStos

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wow so much discussion in this thread

#29

Lordsalih

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i didnt read the thread cuz i cant rn but i'll answer the title, we need the new controller that's gonna come to be a good smoker that can rivalize with omen's versatility, and maybe a small buff to other smokers and a small nerf to omen (be careful to not ruin the balance in ranked play and pro play PLEASE RIOT)

#30

Pengu12

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A gun that changes based on ur rank would be so sick, additionally make it better as rank increases(like it only gets animation at diamonds, a finisher at ascendent, topfrag glow at radiant)

#32

ChaosWarden

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Hey, I think it (someone not liking a particular map) depends on their playstyle and the role they play or like to play 'cause as for me, I'm the guy who fills and tries to get the best out of the comp, or I'd say the 4 of my teammates picked, that I don't mind any map 'cause for me, it's fun to play on those map u called shitty. But if a riot wants to do something about those shitty maps, they can try to make a little change every time they move out of them and keep repeating until they get it right or let the community handle it.

#40

Hobbit

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most of these changes are actually focused on making the life of players like you easier

i'm sure you've filled more than one game where it's 2 duelists and a clove by default, so i imagine you fill ini and sentinel most of the time

i'm not saying that these map are shitty, i'm saying these maps (like abyss and corrode) are unbalanced, but that doesn't mean they are terrible to play in

the map ban it's a feature that would focus on the playerbase CHOOSING what they want to play, and reward the better maps for being better

corrode is the biggest defense sided map since early split (and most players i've seen, at least in eu, enjoy attacker side), so most of the time i get corrode, either people dodge, or don't tryhard until it's defense side OR they get defense side in the first half

ofc this is more of a psychological thing, because in this game, you can win with any comp, in any map, in any side, if your team is simply better, but i promise that this change would make every game a ton more balanced and enjoyable long term

#49

ChaosWarden

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I agree with you, but by hypothetically saying riot introduce a map ban, then probably the majority of players will ban breeze, icebox, corrode, abyss and fracture and then let us some players, who like to play them that maybe in the minority, they will get long ass queue time and maybe lose interest. Rather than this I would suggest something like, the maps that are in current map pool should be prioritized acc. to the player themselves and let's say that the least prioritized maps have a very low chance to be played by them.

#33

Epiii__

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Valorant needs Prelude to Chaos 3.0 now

#34

south_america_best_region

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give this man a true

#37

sw4gman

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on map bans, i wish riot would just put all the maps in the ranked queues and just make us select 7 if they wanna keep the whole 7 maps thing or whatever.

on agent bans, i suspect this will be a thing once nearly every role has an alternative. For example, Sova used to not have an alternative but now we have Fade.

#44

Hobbit

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based take on agent bans

just any option that makes the player have a choice of what they want to play

i've missed breeze since it's been gone, and they removed lotus and split, my two favorite maps. and i just can't play them because... riot doesn't want me to xd

#41

FINAL_BOSS

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so basically make it CS

#43

Hobbit

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yk 6 people already told me this

so this is my short answer: it doesn't have to be cs

i don't care what the gun spray pattern is, just make it have skill, don't make it random

this game is already CS, corrode is basically ancient layout, but different

i'm just asking to make the skill ceiling higher, not CS. if anything, i think that making it less of a tac fps and more of a hero shooter would be more fitting, but that's just my take

#45

Marii

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They don’t need lock in delay or whatever they need to make it maximum 2 of each role per team so if there’s already 2 duelist you can’t play a third etc

#46

Hobbit

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you CLEARLY don't know ball

https://www.vlr.gg/348462/funplus-phoenix-vs-team-heretics-champions-tour-2024-masters-shanghai-r3/?game=170782&tab=overview

#48

Marii

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They lost 🙂‍↕️ and loud was shit with triple smokes on bind 🙂‍↕️