Obviously, deathmatch has major, major issues, with one of my major issues being it's "first to 40" nature which causes people to chase for kills instead of warming up, like how many treat deathmatch in other games like CS:GO or OW. Many in the community, myself included, feel like this should be changed. However, if the Valorant team choose to keep this hard-stop on playing deathmatch, they should at least take out the endcard stating if a player has won or lost.

Currently, anyone below first place (2nd-14th) recieves a red "Defeat" endcard, with first place recieving the green "Victory" one. Some say that getting a defeat in a deathmatch doesn't matter, that it doesn't affect them. However, it's important to realize that the psyche is deeper than many anticipate, and information taken in can have a subtle effect on how we act. I would argue that if you use it as a warmup, you see the word defeat and the red imagery and your brain associates what you just accomplished with failure. You basically start out your session with 93% (13/14) chance of getting told, "You suck," which may affect your normal games in a not so obvious way, such as making you slightly less confident in your own skills.

So, I suggest they change the endcard to something like "Game Set" or "Game End" and change the color to green for those in 2nd-14th. In lieu of this, I say that first place should recieve a yellow/gold color endcard at the end of the game, as reward for "winning." This makes deathmatch better associated with warmup and fun rather than a place to sweat out and compete. While it doesn't fix the main problems deathmatch has as a core gamemode, I feel as if something like this is a good "bandaid fix" while the team works on a more sizable update.