LoL and the surrender button.

[LostCrusader]

I'm pretty guilty of calling for surrenders early, but I base those on having someone quit/drop or the team having an awful composition. I have been amazed at how many games this season have involved teams that think no tanks are needed and everyone can be an assassin.

But as was said earlier in the thread, crazy come backs can make for great stories.

 

[sagitel]

The surrender button encourages the 'No fun if you don't win' mentality, which is fundamentally wrong.

Exactly, what's the point in playing if you can't handle a legitimate, on-field defeat?

If a hockey team is down by 15 goals after two periods, they don't get to just concede and not play the final one.

its not like hockey at all. in hockey you have an audience that expects you to play. in hockey you have a time limit to do whatever you want in that time. in hockey if they have more goals than you they wont get better at scoring goals. its just not like that.

about surrendering. a legitimate on-field defeat? i have had games where 3-4 of our team left. and while the other team was too stupid to get me it was a dragging stalemate. i was hugging the inhib turrets. they couldn't do anything, i couldn't do anything. so the surrender IS a good thing at thise times.

 

[Vegosiux]

about surrendering. a legitimate on-field defeat? i have had games where 3-4 of our team left. and while the other team was too stupid to get me it was a dragging stalemate. i was hugging the inhib turrets. they couldn't do anything, i couldn't do anything. so the surrender IS a good thing at thise times.

Actually, a draw would be a good thing at those times. I mean, you haven't even lost, but they failed to win too.

 

[oliver.begg]

about surrendering. a legitimate on-field defeat? i have had games where 3-4 of our team left. and while the other team was too stupid to get me it was a dragging stalemate. i was hugging the inhib turrets. they couldn't do anything, i couldn't do anything. so the surrender IS a good thing at thise times.

Actually, a draw would be a good thing at those times. I mean, you haven't even lost, but they failed to win too.

except in a feild sport the teams are still even, their is no increasing snowball effect.

if a team in DOTA manages to feed 20 kills the other side is completly fucked. some heroes may be so much weaker that the entire team can be cleaned by one enemy hero.

thats the reason you need the surrender button so people don't waste the time just padding time played.

the game inherently makes the teams imbalanced as time progresses if one side starts winning

 

[kingthrall]

Surrendering is always an option, for LOL it really matters since the game is generic and stale and has to do with experience and no luck.

I myself refuse to surrender in any game, it makes it more challenging trying to do twice the amount of work in combat ect ect than it is tail-coating in a group. This is how good players are made and separates the men from the boys.

 

[Vegosiux]

except in a feild sport the teams are still even, their is no increasing snowball effect.

if a team in DOTA manages to feed 20 kills the other side is completly fucked. some heroes may be so much weaker that the entire team can be cleaned by one enemy hero.

thats the reason you need the surrender button so people don't waste the time just padding time played.

the game inherently makes the teams imbalanced as time progresses if one side starts winning

As I said; if the opponent team fails to convert a significant advantage into a victory, how in blue blazes can they feel entitled to me conceding the game for their benefit?

If I'm looking at a loss the next time they launch a group assault on my base, sure, a surrender is viable, but that only saves what, 5 minutes? But if they're struggling to actually win, and if my team can keep the five of them at the inhibitor turret with 3 people, I'm not surrendering, even if they're 20 kills ahead, I'll direct the remaining 2 people to cause some mayhem towards their base.

 

[AuronFtw]

You're right, you don't just quit a sport because sports generally have audiences with expectations.

Bingo.

Unless the match is being spectated, surrender/forfeit is a part of sports. It's understood that (non-spectated) sports take secondary precedence to work or everyday emergencies.

I'd say computer games should be even more so. So I'm all for the "surrender" option. It's better that then having to make people manually unplug their computers to quit the game. Sure there are people who will abuse it, but the benefits outweigh the downsides.

I disagree wholeheartedly, actually. Take, for example, SC and SC2; leaving aside the arguments of skill req being higher than most mobas, the highest-level tournaments almost always end with a GG and the losing player quitting out when he feels the match is totally unwinnable. When he's down 80 supply, 25 drones, and is running on 2 bases with only 1 mining, he's "lost the game." Nothing he can do will make a difference; he can't expand, he can't build another base. He has already lost, but the video game's "rules" for losing require that every building and building-producing-unit be destroyed.

Is that... really what you want to see? When I watch sports (esports included), I watch to be intrigued. It has to be exciting. When both players are still in the match, doing drops into each other's bases, expanding if possible, queuing upgrades and hiding buildings and hoping they don't get scouted/scanned too early, and marching huge armies out leading to nail-biting confrontations, the match is still great fun. When it's 40 minutes in, and one guy has 2 bases left and his army has been decimated, do we really need to watch the last 10 minutes while the obvious winner amasses a force for the inevitable a-move to wipe out every last building? Is that really "exciting" gameplay? No, it's fucking boring. The match is over. The guy has no chance. So he says gg and leaves the match, officially giving the other guy a win (because, in reality, he had already won minus 10 minutes of boring base clearing).

Almost the only time you'll see a pro-game SC match go *all the way* to base clearing is when the loser is in a rut and wants time to clear his head; he'll often take off his headset and take his hands off his keyboard and just ponder for several minutes. But even this is rare. It's considered bad manners to force your opponent to clear every building you have when the match has effectively ended 10 minutes ago; it's needless busywork, not fun for either the players or the observers.

The same is true of league and dota. There comes a time when a match *is* simply unwinnable, and forcing the players to play that last 15-30 minutes and forcing the observers to watch an uninteresting floor-sweep while one team pushes forward, takes out towers one by one with no real resistance, re-killing any enemy as soon as they spawn, etc is just nuts. It's boring.

Some players are cowards and give up too early. Some players are dipshits and don't give up at all, either for retarded misguided notions of honor or simply out of spite (there's no difference in reality, it's just a needless wait for everyone involved). But it doesn't matter; some people being stupid doesn't lessen the necessity or the utility of a forfeit button.

A PvP game without the ability for the losing team to lose gracefully and admit defeat without boring the audience for 30 minutes of one-sided play is a PvP game lacking in core functionality.

 

[Ascend]

Lets say:

Each game of League takes 45 minutes approx. and your team has one third of the enemies kills and you tried taking baron but they warded and stole it after stomping on your team while 3 of the members on your team are pushing blame around and none of the champions on your team are named Fizz ,Vayne or Teemo. Would you seriously want the game to drag on to the 45 minute stomping or just end it at 25 minute humiliation? Not much you can learn from 3 assholes pushing the blame around and getting instagibbed while wasting your time.

While I can recognize the ability to turn around games in DotA 2 ,there are just some games that when I was losing (because I'm bad at DotA 2) that made me want to just leave because of how I was unable to surrender.Sure, in DotA 2 you can learn item builds and tactics while you are losing but those are a dime a dozen on the internet and getting instagibbed to do so seems like a needlessly painful task.

 

[skywolfblue]

You're right, you don't just quit a sport because sports generally have audiences with expectations.

Bingo.

Unless the match is being spectated, surrender/forfeit is a part of sports. It's understood that (non-spectated) sports take secondary precedence to work or everyday emergencies.

I'd say computer games should be even more so. So I'm all for the "surrender" option. It's better that then having to make people manually unplug their computers to quit the game. Sure there are people who will abuse it, but the benefits outweigh the downsides.

I disagree wholeheartedly, actually. Take, for example, SC and SC2; leaving aside the arguments of skill req being higher than most mobas, the highest-level tournaments almost always end with a GG and the losing player quitting out when he feels the match is totally unwinnable. When he's down 80 supply, 25 drones, and is running on 2 bases with only 1 mining, he's "lost the game." Nothing he can do will make a difference; he can't expand, he can't build another base. He has already lost, but the video game's "rules" for losing require that every building and building-producing-unit be destroyed.

Is that... really what you want to see? When I watch sports (esports included), I watch to be intrigued. It has to be exciting. When both players are still in the match, doing drops into each other's bases, expanding if possible, queuing upgrades and hiding buildings and hoping they don't get scouted/scanned too early, and marching huge armies out leading to nail-biting confrontations, the match is still great fun. When it's 40 minutes in, and one guy has 2 bases left and his army has been decimated, do we really need to watch the last 10 minutes while the obvious winner amasses a force for the inevitable a-move to wipe out every last building? Is that really "exciting" gameplay? No, it's fucking boring. The match is over. The guy has no chance. So he says gg and leaves the match, officially giving the other guy a win (because, in reality, he had already won minus 10 minutes of boring base clearing).

Almost the only time you'll see a pro-game SC match go *all the way* to base clearing is when the loser is in a rut and wants time to clear his head; he'll often take off his headset and take his hands off his keyboard and just ponder for several minutes. But even this is rare. It's considered bad manners to force your opponent to clear every building you have when the match has effectively ended 10 minutes ago; it's needless busywork, not fun for either the players or the observers.

The same is true of league and dota. There comes a time when a match *is* simply unwinnable, and forcing the players to play that last 15-30 minutes and forcing the observers to watch an uninteresting floor-sweep while one team pushes forward, takes out towers one by one with no real resistance, re-killing any enemy as soon as they spawn, etc is just nuts. It's boring.

Some players are cowards and give up too early. Some players are dipshits and don't give up at all, either for retarded misguided notions of honor or simply out of spite (there's no difference in reality, it's just a needless wait for everyone involved). But it doesn't matter; some people being stupid doesn't lessen the necessity or the utility of a forfeit button.

A PvP game without the ability for the losing team to lose gracefully and admit defeat without boring the audience for 30 minutes of one-sided play is a PvP game lacking in core functionality.

Well, I was speaking more to why conventional sports don't have surrender, rather then trying to say that all spectated e-sports shouldn't have surrender.

So I'd actually agree with you.

Mainly because, the ability to psych another player into surrendering early when they could have won is a glorious thing. Like the famous match where IdrA rage quits due to HuK making a bunch of hallucinated void rays, hilarious and priceless!

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

As much as we'd all love to go super saiyan and spirit bomb the enemy, 99/100 that just doesn't happen.

But that 1/100 game is the one you'll remember most fondly forever.

Worth 99 defeats for the joy of a glorious comeback.

I don't agree even slightly. The logic that I ought to spend unnecessary time suffering and not having fun just because, some tiny percent of the time, it pays off is foolish.

I've seen some amazing comebacks but there simply comes a time in a game like LoL where victory is effectively impossible. If you're 20 or 30 minutes in, the other team has take a few towers and the dragon a few times, and they're up by 20 kills you simply can't salvage that game. The advantage they have built is so significant that it would take a long series of boneheaded moves just to be outright competitive.

Sure, with certain team compositions and the right circumstances you might pull it out of the fire. Sometimes you simply have a composition well suited to team fights but is fairly weak in the laning phase - if the other team dumped everything into the hopes of crushing you in 20 minutes it might be worth hanging around for that first team fight just to see if you have a shot at winning.

I'm not the sort of player who assumes that because my lane went poorly that we should just call the game quits. Hell, most of the time when the surrender option comes up I decline just because I can still envision an scenario where we can win. But that doesn't mean I'll willingly stick around in a game that was decided long before it ends.

 

[DazZ.]

As much as we'd all love to go super saiyan and spirit bomb the enemy, 99/100 that just doesn't happen.

But that 1/100 game is the one you'll remember most fondly forever.

Worth 99 defeats for the joy of a glorious comeback.

I don't agree even slightly.

If it's going that badly, it'll be over quickly anyway, and at least the other team will have fun. It's also unsatisfying when the enemy surrenders just before you storm the base to victory.

 

[sagitel]

about surrendering. a legitimate on-field defeat? i have had games where 3-4 of our team left. and while the other team was too stupid to get me it was a dragging stalemate. i was hugging the inhib turrets. they couldn't do anything, i couldn't do anything. so the surrender IS a good thing at these times.

Actually, a draw would be a good thing at those times. I mean, you haven't even lost, but they failed to win too.

well actually i have been at the other side. and i can tell you when this happens the enemy team wont push to win. they just go and mess around. killing dragon and baron. killing anyone coming out of the turret's line of safety. and they wont come to finish the game. in this time a draw is stupid because the other team wont accept and if the surrender option is not there the game might go for another 15 minutes. and i tell you its not fun to be under the turret killing minions for 15 minutes

 

[Lovely Mixture]

For regular games. Not sure, the option is nice for extenuating circumstances. If people really want to leave they'll quit anyway, so it doesn't really make a difference.

LoL's community (like many) is known for having tons of assholes, trolls, and idiots. Sometimes you want to leave and still have the option to play further (for those who don't know, quitting a game gives you penalty).

For bot games. Why not? It's training.

 

[Gatx]

It's my understanding that in RTS and MOBA games, surrendering is a demonstration of good sportsmanship. Unlike a fighting game where a last minute comeback is always possible because no matter how badly you're losing since your character performs the same, as you lose in a MOBA, the other team keeps getting stronger, and in an RTS the resources on a map are finite. So if you see a situation where it's impossible or even just very, very unlikely, surrendering rather than dragging it out and wasting both your and the opponents' time is a "gentlemanly" thing to do.

 

[drivebymessiah]

The basis of MOBA games is a mismatch that will exist in spite of the skill and effort of any one player. This characteristic, to my thinking, is the reason for their popularity and existence. The human being's high level of response to random reward schedules as opposed to fixed rewards is why this gets such a high response.

Back when I was playing Warcraft 3 prior to the the momentum of DotA allstars the most common game-type was the basic, ladder style competition of Warcraft 3, the RTS. In that game, the bulk of which being played as 1v1 and 2v2, each player had a very direct reward of winning and losing based on individual skill and effort. Once DotA allstars came on the scene, players flocked to it for the chance of going 20 kills and 2 deaths with little to no opposition and the fact they only had to micromanage one powerful hero. Sure, the very unskilled DotA player probably won't stomp an entire match very often but it has a chance of happening in a DotA match much more so than it did a Warcraft 3 ladder match.

The surrender option exists to save players on a disadvantaged team from the very design of a MOBA game. Dota 2 opted to not allow players to quit under any circumstances; instead adopting the maxim, "Stay right there and take the punishment for the next half hour so that someone else can have a good time. Eventually the roulette wheel will land on you." MOBA games are far less balanced than other game types that don't have a buildup of stats and items making one opponent greatly advantaged. I would much prefer to seek the matches that exist in that narrow grouping of "even match-ups" and have the opportunity to opt out of those matches that clearly aren't that.

On another note, as someone who has played a fair bit of LoL, I have to ask how often are these surrenders occurring? After reaching max level and mixing in some ranked play with standard games: the number of games ending in early surrender have been, for me, around 1 in 8. Large mismatches and surrenders occur more often when I queue with less skilled acquaintances. I regret the implications I am about to make, but I have to ask: are your friends making a legitimate effort in these games?

Quitting is a time honored staple of pragmatism. Here's a very good song about this idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK71zjFc_yw

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Just finished a match in DOTA2 that would not have happened with a surrender vote.

I failed in my lane. Gave first blood, then got zoned out... as a Nightstalker = I'm useless. Then they fed on me thanks to global initiation (Spirit Breaker and good rotation from their team). Lost all outer towers and mid rax. Team was in a down phase, flaming started.

Then we won a teamfight thanks to good use of ultimates. Then we did it again, I was the only one to die. And again. And again... and then we pushed in mid and won the game. And ym contribition was being a glorified ward and drums.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/631913116777694365/39D641A4B66BC4F82114B90024A08DC1846B4AAD/

I was on Radiant, the morale was down at minute 20. Still managed a turnaround.

This is the argument against surrender, and I appreciate it. I've only played ~180 or so games of DOTA, but I've had a half dozen or more stirring come from behind victories that would've never happened had there been a surrender option. And I've played a lot of close or decent games that probably would've been abandoned 2 minutes in when someone gave first blood, or a particularly sore player died early.

That said, there's a middle ground that needs to be found, because the number of games that are settled early and then drag out for another 30-40 minutes is WAY too high. Losing in a MOBA tends to be a snowball affair, and the misery just piles up. The other team prances around jungling, killing Rosh or graveyard camping and does anything but push the game to a fast conclusion, because winning is fun and they want to prolong their enjoyment.

I'm not sure how you'd accomplish it. Perhaps a 5 person vote to surrender where everyone has to turn their bloody key or something, and it's only available once a certain number of towers are down.