How To FIX One Of Valorant's BIGGEST PROBLEMS!

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]I have a problem. And no, it is not the today I got a bad haircut. No, today my problem is with Valerant. And I'm going to fix one of Valerant's biggest problems with a radical solution. And you are going to watch and agree. The problem that I am, of course, talking about is the snowball problem because Valerant has a problem where if you win the pistol, you get a free second round.

[00:00:27]And if you win this little bonus round just here, the opponent then eos again, then you often will have some advantages in round five and six. You very quickly can get it up to, you know, a 6 7 8 9 lead like NRG did here against crew. And that is not that uncommon to see, particularly starting a map up, you know, something like 6n. And the thing is, not only are snowballs kind of problematic in the sense that they often make games feel over before they've even started, another major problem with snowballs is that they don't often feel that welld deserved. You don't even need to do that much necessarily to even start the snowball and carry on the snowball. Let me explain. So, it starts, of course, with winning a pistol round.

[00:01:10]The thing is, though, pistols are a little bit random, right? And you can see this in terms of how pro teams, you know, do in pistols as well. For instance, NRG's pistol win rate at champs was really bad, but this year it's very good, right? And as far as I'm aware, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I'm aware, there is no pro team that over a consistent long period of time with a big sample size has been able to consistently win pistols, you know, throughout a very long period of time. I am not aware of it. And often the most successful teams are ones that can win in spite of not winning the pistols, like paper or NRG at champs. And pistols are very important as you can see down here at the bottom because winning both pistols and both second rounds which often come for free means that you have a roughly 80% chance of winning the game or at least that was true in VCT 2025. So that's the pistols and obviously if you win the pistol you get a free second round a lot of the time. So you two up great, right? The thing is that next problem is the bonus round because a bonus round often if you know what you're doing in Valent isn't a bonus round. Sorry little CS heads, but this from NRG. This is round number three in their game against G2 after they've won a pistol. This is not a bonus round.

[00:02:20]This is just a full buy round with the way that Valerant works, with the way the light shields work as well. This is basically a 50/50 round. That's all it is. So essentially at this point, they've won a somewhat random pistol.

[00:02:33]And now you're going into, if you know how to manage the economy, into another 50/50 coin flip round. And if you win that one, then the snowball really has started to gain some momentum. And to show that this can happen to anyone, I'm just going to show you Global Esports versus Paper Rex. Okay, so we start off obviously in the pistol round and global win this pistol on a scent. And again, this is just to illustrate to you that, you know, it isn't that hard to start a snowball, right? You win the pistol.

[00:03:00]Global are going to convert the second round. Nothing unusual there, right? But the thing is because of the way the economy works, global come into this round with a very good buy, right?

[00:03:10]Looking very good. And also because of the way the alt economy works, often what you will get is particularly in like we are now, you know, where we're seeing quite a bit of Phoenix. This is definitely not unheard of. You will potentially have an alt online very very early like Glo Global do in this round.

[00:03:27]And so what do they do? Well, it's very simple. They're going to use their Phoenix alt and guess what? They're going to win this round, right? Yeah, they're in a 6v5 with a very powerful alt right off the bat. Look, there it is. Gets a kill. They then are able to turn that kill into a plant and they manage to win the round with three people alive as well. So, you know, a very nice start for Global. Obviously, after they've won the bonus, Alex is upset. What does that mean? Well, it means the Paper X are now on an eco. So, all you have to do is convert against an Eco. You now got a full buy. Global do manage to just about convert this Eco and go up 4-nil. So, wonderful, right?

[00:04:00]It's now 4-0. We're off to a great start. Of course, at this point, you know, Global have a lot of money. Paper X, you know, now are in the bin. They're on the struggle bus over here. You know, we're nice and healthy. We potentially have a buy behind. But the thing is, as well, often what you will see is the teams that winning, like in this instance, get another big alt online before their opponents are able to get an alt online, right? Or a big alt online. And that's because again, the teams that are winning, so at this point, we've had two big als and then the next full by round, we got a KO alt, right? So, what happens in this one?

[00:04:32]Well, guess what? Global, they're going to come to a they're going to kowalt, they get a soveralt as well in this round. They win the round, right? Very, very simple stuff. Win the round. Okay, so now you've won that one as well. So, now we come to the next round. And guess what? Paper X back on an equal. Global have another alt, by the way. They now have another Phoenix alt as well. And guess what? They're going to win this one also, right? And the thing is, I would argue what Global have done so far in this game is not that impressive, right? Essentially, all they've done is manage their alt economy pretty well, right? That's all they had to do. All they had to do was win a pistol, manage their alt economy well, right? Coming into round three, they had a phoenix al.

[00:05:22]And then by round six, they had another phoenix all. So, if you just manage your alt economy well, win a pistol, and then manage to win a bonus, it isn't that hard to snowball even against a team like Paper X who are better than global esports. And so, this I think is one of the big problems in Valerant. Not only does it happen in pro games, but this I'm sure has happened to you potentially in your ranked games as well, where just messing up that bonus round, you know, very quickly cascades into a large large deficit that it feels very difficult to come back from. And so, hopefully we can agree that snowballing is a problem in Valerant. And hopefully we can agree that it would be nice if there was some better solution for Valerant, right? And so now I'm going to suggest to you a pretty radical solution, one that probably some of you will not like. And that solution can be found in team deathmatch. Now you might be thinking, what on earth is TMV talking about solution in team deathmatch? Well, if you think about how team deathmatch works in terms of the stages, you start off with, you know, one of the pistols and then stage two will start and you can get one of a stinger, Aries or Sheriff. Then stage three where you get these different options. Then stage four with a vandal or a phantom. And basically my solution revolves around turning the early game economy into team deathmatch. And so what that looks like is this that everyone gets the same win loss bonus amount for the first four rounds. Doesn't matter if you won or lost the round, you get the same amount.

[00:06:47]And there's no gaining of alto orbs until round four. So you can't get alto orbs. It doesn't matter, right? It's just grayed out. You can't get them just yet. Right. So, what what that would mean is something like the pistol round is the same. Right. In round two, everyone gets roughly again the exact numbers. Don't worry about too much the exact numbers. I'm not riot. I don't have, you know, the means to test all of this and find out what the precise best numbers would be. But round two, everyone gets roughly 2,300 credits.

[00:07:14]Right? So, right now, as it is, the winners get 3,000, the losers get 1,900.

[00:07:18]We're coming somewhere in the middle roughly 2,300. Right? What that would mean is you could buy, you know, a stinger or whatever. Obviously, if you've already bought a sheriff from the round before and you won the round and you survived with your sheriff, then you might just keep the sheriff, right? And you might just buy false shields and util and save some of that money. But the idea is, you know, most people are probably going to have stingers, maybe some marshalss in there, you know, some specters, maybe, right? Then round three after that one, everyone gets 2,800.

[00:07:42]Obviously, at this point, you're looking at like, you know, maybe getting bulldogs, maybe someone has a guardian, right? At this point, maybe some money has started to be saved up a little bit as well. So, you know, maybe guardian lights plus util is a possible buy. And then round four, everyone gets 3,300.

[00:07:56]And again, you know, some money probably will have been gained or saved from getting kills or planting or whatever, right? And so, at this point, 3,300 the is the bare minimum to get, you know, a rifle and light shield. So, everyone on round four gets 3,300. And then you just play the game normally from then on.

[00:08:12]What does this mean? Well, of course, this would mean that round two isn't just a whitewash. You know, I've got no chance with my five classics against, you know, a bunch of guns. That isn't happening anymore. Now, round two is an actual round that is played out and, you know, could go either way. But don't worry if you, you know, win the pistol and then lose the second round, which right now it's also like a terrible thing to have happen. That's fine as well because round three you can buy back up. You know, again, it's going to be an interesting round. And with this kind of strategy, I think you get some interesting things going on. So, I've made a list of what I see as the pros of this system versus some of the cons of this system. Okay, so some of the pros, again, the second round isn't a boring and often foregone conclusion. I know that they, you know, just are leaning on like the old history of CS and all of that. And I know that some of you old CS heads here, you know, watching this video, maybe you won't like this idea, right? I understand that. And you know what? I don't care. I think the second round in Valerant to all games like CS as well, I just think it's bad game design. We're playing a game for fun.

[00:09:20]Why is one of the rounds that I'm playing not fun? Because either it's an easy stomp for me or I have no chance. I don't want to feel like that. Why not just give me a chance of playing the game again in the second round? Another pro is that it will force people to use other guns that they, you know, normally don't. And one of my big complaints is a lot of people say anytime, you know, someone uses a judge or an Odin like, "Oh, these guns, you know, should be nerfed. They should be out of the game.

[00:09:49]I don't want them in the game." Well, they are in the game. If you're right, you spend time making those guns. So, having rounds that are kind of, you know, designed for it like they do in Team Deathmatch, that will force people to get good with those guns and use those guns and use different skills that those guns allow you to use. Also, I think it will just add a lot more strategy into those early round eos. For instance, right now, if you lose pistol, you don't have a str There is no strategy, right? If you lose pistol, particularly on defense side, no one ever forces, so you're not forcing. So, you're just saving and then buying.

[00:10:20]There is no strategy to that. Everyone just does pretty much the same thing, right? With this system, there is strategy to it. You know, maybe some people survive, but now you're all getting the same bonus. Well, if your teammate doesn't want to buy and saves, you know, should you now like try and save and build up some economy, you know, to get a full rifle round in the future, or should you, you know, try and buy and let's just try and win this round, you know, at what point, let's say you bought a stinger in round two, you know, and then you won round two and then you won round three with the stingers. Are you still keeping the stingers? Like, how much of a bonus do you want? Do you want to go for a giga bonus? You know, all of these things. Do you want to save one of those early rounds so that you can get an early OP online? There is strategy to this, you know, and there's a lot of different things you could now do, whereas I would say right now there isn't a lot of things that you really could do. And of course, the main pro in my opinion is that this makes it harder to snowball, right? You're not going to get, you know, oh, you won, you won a random pistol round, good for you. That means you get a free round next one as well.

[00:11:16]Well, no, now you don't. And so, now let's come to the cons. And what do I think are the cons of this system? Well, some people might say that it's slightly unintuitive. Um, but then again, I would argue that the current system is also slightly unintuitive. I think if you've never played attack FPS before and you know, you play a pistol round and then the second round comes around, would it necessarily be intuitive that you have to save? I don't think the current system is that intuitive either. And in fact, you might argue that this this system would be more intuitive because you slowly build up in terms of the type of guns that you get until you get the best guns in the game, right? The other thing is right would need to rebalance the ultimates. Of course, this is something I hadn't mentioned, but you know, obviously you wouldn't want to have no alts for the first three rounds and have a nine cost alt in the game.

[00:12:01]Would that take that much work for Riot?

[00:12:03]Really? Again, I personally don't think so. So, that is my new radical suggestion for how to change Valerant. I think that this would fix the snowball problem and I think Valerant would be a better game with this system in it rather than the current one we've got.

[00:12:19]again the exact numbers of like how much should each team get blah blah blah blah blah that I don't know right you would need to test that obviously I I don't have the means to test that so I don't know but you know roughly having that idea of giving everyone the same amount of money for the first couple rounds in each half I think would be a good idea and lead to a more interesting game and I think personally we are just falling back on the default of what happened you know oh well someone designed it like this in 200 2001 or whatever. So now we're stuck with that system. Why are we stuck with that system? Why can't we just, you know, design the game to be better and not have boring second rounds?