The VALORANT shop, at its face value as of today, seems like a redundant part of the skin purchasing system. For those unfamiliar with how the VALORANT shop works, it is the "store" tab on your main menu once you boot VALORANT. The store features 4 skins daily that can be purchased - no more, no less. These 4 skins that can be purchased rotate daily (every 24 hours, around 7PM EST). Also featured in the shop are any new bundles that the Riot team releases (for example, at the moment the BlastX bundle is featured on the store page).

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Now, why is this system flawed? Well, it's actually quite simple to explain.

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At the time of writing (latest skin bundle release is BlastX), there are a total of 179 different skins (default not included), which consists of:

- 12 Classic skins

- 6 Shorty skins

- 9 Frenzy skins

- 10 Ghost skins

- 13 Sheriff skins

- 8 Stinger skins

- 13 Spectre skins

- 7 Bucky skins

- 10 Judge skins

- 6 Bulldog skins

- 9 Guardian skins

- 14 skins each for the Phantom and Vandal

- 7 Marshal skins

- 9 Operator skins

- 7 Ares skins

- 5 Odin skins

- and finally, 20 Knife skins.

Now, in the beginning during Act I, the store's random skin purchase system worked well. Since the skin pool was much smaller than it is now, those 4 skins rotating daily would be able to provide a chance to buy any of the skins in the skins pool relatively quickly (smaller skin pool means less skins to rotate through, meaning less days spent waiting for a particular skins that you wanted). However, now we have almost 180 different skins ingame, and there's no other way to buy skins outside of the store (excluding the Night Market). Imagine in League of Legends, instead of being able to make a skin purchase with the premium currency through the champions page and purchasing a skin right then and there, you would have to put up with a system like VALORANT's, where there would be anywhere between 10-15 skins rotating daily throughout the shop, and there is no way to bypass/shorten that rotation cycle or buy skins outside of that system.

Imagine having to wait through this in League. A game with over 140 champions, each with multiple skins. People would not be happy to say the least.

The shop in VALORANT is this dilemma but on a smaller issue. We're not able to control what skins we want to purchase with premium currency, and there's no way out. We just have to sit here and wait every day, hoping that one of the 4 skins that pop up is a skin that we're looking for in the 170+ skin pool. This type of system would be understandable if the purchases controlled by this cycle were non-premium, but that's the problem. We're already spending money to buy VP, and now we have to spend more time waiting for skins that we want to buy? It's inefficient for Riot, and it's inefficient for us as well.

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What can we do to solve this issue? There's a quick and elegant solution right in front of our eyes, and it's the Night Market. Here's what I propose:

1. The VALORANT store keeps its current layout (bundle promotion + 4 skins).
2. We are able to buy skins individually from the store, by selecting them via the Collection menu and selecting the skin for the individual guns that you want to buy skins for.
3. The Night Market merges with the store. Instead of having only 4 skins that can be purchased with premium currency daily, the 4 skins that rotate daily function similar to the Night Market. The 4 skins that appear in the new store will be at a slight discount (only a 10-15% discount because this list is changing daily).
4. The bundles stay the same, but what I propose is if there is a period where Riot is not releasing new bundles, then they bring old bundles back with VP subtracted if you've bought individual skins (eg. I have the Elderflame Vandal and I want the bundle, the cost of the Elderflame Vandal will be subtracted in proportion to the cost of the bundle (obviously not all 2125 VP should be subtracted from the bundle cost, so a percentage of that should be subtracted instead).

These changes allow Riot to take more frequent breaks in between creating new bundles and skins, satisfies those who would like to buy their skins whenever they want, and those who want more frequent Night Market rotations. It's a simple, elegant solution that benefits everyone.

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EditL Thanks u/pixel_5 for catching my error. This list of skins includes Agent contract skins and Battlepass skins, which normally do not rotate through the Store. The updated number of skins in the store's skin pool is 134 skins (179 skins - 45 skins, 13 come from the Agent contracts and the rest from the BP)