Changes Valorant MUST make for a better future

Kill Snowball:
Every bum team wins pistol into bonus and we have soooo many boring stomps. Ult orb snowball. Huge Money stack. Opponents auto lose if they lost one gun round after a 4-0 because they gotta eco. So many games this year are stomps because teams perfected this.

Reintroduce tactical complexity into the game:
The game has been dumbed down so much and lost so much tactical nuance. It has been dumbed down to fast plays on both sides. No push and pull. Just clearing shit manually and getting shot in the face by an OP. It makes the game feel so flat and often random. London is already an improvement over Santiago and the stage 2 patch also heading in the right direction. Some comforting signs here.

Stop drastic meta changes in the middle of a season:
You cannot build storylines to get invested in as a fan because teams flip flop from world beaters to dogshit on a patch by patch basis (Nongshim, BBL, GM8, TH, FS). Legacy teams like FNC, G2, T1 sturggle to stay on top of the meta, they only stabilize somewhat, whereas random teams get blessed by luck getting a meta perfectly suited for them that is MASSIVELY different to metas before and after that so it feels meaningless and random (santiago). Reason for all this is Riot dropping terrible patches that have to be cleaned up over the course of the year. GET BETTER.

Im sure there are more reasons let me know. Maybe i will edit later to add.

bump since people calmed down now

agree with all of this. Many different factors that make this esport feel so random.

I really like the meta changes one. Absolutely ridiculous that nongshit take home a trophy just because neon is ridiculously good

i hard agree, well said

problem with your third point is that it effects casual play too, no one wants to play a game thats stuck in one meta for an entire year, imagine if we had tejo postplant meta for the entirity of 2025. its not even that much better for pro play anyway cause then people would just say, "oh X team don't deserve their trophy cause they just abused the meta that year." i do think that they shouldn't have meta shifts right before a tournament, like in toronto where the teams who perfected tejo meta qualified, only for tejo to get killed and leave every team besides fnc and prx stranded.

anyway about your the snowball thing, i agree. i think a good idea would be to have the ult orb spawns change based on who's in the lead. if both teams are within 2/3 rounds of eachother then they spawn normally, if attacker team has a lead of 4+ rounds then orbs spawn closer to defender spawn, and if attacker team is down by 4+ rounds then orbs spawn closer to attacker spawn. ults can already act as a comeback mechanic, but at the moment they can be just as much of a snowball mechanic, and i think this change would make them lean more towards a comeback mechanic.

all correct

i only agree with the last suggestion, pistol round snowballing may not be that fun to watch (round 2 is an awful round to watch generally) but encourages teams to focus on their pistol rounds more (which are a skill in itself to win) and rewards smart play around prioritising ult orbs for certain players. i think the tactical depth is higher than ever, even though the game has less util that just means util has to be used more efficiently and wisely instead of just braindead spam on chokes. i will agree though i preferred the old meta. last point is just right tho

I agree W post

I will chime in, but I am a cs frog, just opinion from the side. 12 team formats are dogshit. There is just no adequate way to make them interesting. swiss stage with just 8 teams feels meh. Expand to 16 teams for masters and 24 for champs. Champs gets longer, and yes it's just a cs/lol format, but it works. top 8 seeds (#1 and #2 of each region) go straight to the main stage. Teams #9-#24 battle it out in the first stage. until 3 wins or 3 losses. They advance and you just have the regular main stage masters format. more games, more fun, fair, lower chance of a fluke. Also, but I don't think riot will like this idea, for champs 2028 (if this system were to be implemented in 2027), the placement on last champs dictates how many invites your region has. If in the top 8 there are 3 pacific teams, 2 Amer, 1 Chinese, 2 EU you get less invites. Therefore then, for 2028 the number of invites would change from 6-6-6-6 to 7-6-5-6.

Said this last week and got clowned, people are catching on. Pistols should also be made less important, make the economy like cs so that the losing team can still force and get a good buy vs good buy.

W takes

less CS lite maps and better casters that’s it for me

I think the introduction of the outlaw really ruined the game. Cause before that you could thrifty a lot more if you hit your shots effectively stopping the snowball but now you can just get 1 shotted across the map so there's really no point in buying sherif or trying to thrifty.

ChatGPT wrote this post

I remember watching a map from this tournament and one team saved 5 or 6 times in one half. Half of the rounds were eco, thats boring as shit