This might be a hot take but I think all agents need to be unlocked by default for everyone.

For people saying it hinders smurfs, it actually doesn't since they usually only pick 1/2 agents to shit on low tier players which they get within first few games. Actually it encourages smurfing as I have observed a increase in smurfs whenever a new agent drops and people just want to play with the new agent so they create a new account.

Just because LoL does it/ it is harder to unlock the champions in LoL doesn't make Valorant system good for the players.

For people saying it is super duper easy to unlock agents in Valorant, then why keep them locked in the first place.

Valorant can rather only focus on monetizing cosmetics. I also don't understand why people would support this system or defend riot when they are actively locking things away from players only for their benefit without considering player's interest. There must be better ways to streamline new player experience to not overwhelm them other than locking agents.