We had a discussion on the VainSocial Discord server (shameless advertisement: https://discord.gg/TFURa7H), wondering whether 5v5 matches are surrendered more often — and how many times.
So we took a look at data from the API and created this chart:
This is from 9 000 matches in 2.12. When analyzing, remember that one team is the winner of the game, so only half as many players surrender as there are matches ending in surrender
What do you think are the reasons that the surrender rates are like this?
In my personal experience, surrenders happen almost immediately following:
Teammate (or two) deserts match
Enemy team causes ace
Enemy team captures Blackclaw
I’ve found if there’s a large amount of “ALLY HERO KILLED” within a certain timeframe, people are likely to surrender after the tilt of their death is followed by watching their teammates get snowballed.
This is strange. To me, it seems like it is more possible to make a comeback in 5v5 than in 3v3 if you play your cards right.
Maybe in the future, this will change. Right now, most players (especially in lower tiers) aren’t accustomed to the tactics in 5v5.
This is my feeling (and experience) as well, though I have no data to back it up. @shutterfly, o data guru, do you think there’s a way to pick out a comeback from the match telemetry?
It’s casual so surrenders are going to be high. Also, there is a large disparity in skill tier, ability, and knowledge. There are also some games where the jungler just gets so far ahead that it’s gg. Full CP Koshkas diving under turret with an Ardan to Vanguard is tough. The 12 min surrender is really nice. Taka and Flicker are head aches when people don’t understand vision yet.
Watching some streamers and in playing 5v5, it seems like in its current state, comebacks seem harder to achieve in 5v5.
The vain crystal regens very slowly, and as soon as one of three armouries are destroyed, enemies can attack the vain crystal (unlike before where all turrets had to be destroyed, giving more time to comeback).
When turrets are destroyed, there’s no acceleration of respawn timers like in 3v3, giving another hindrance to having a comeback.
Another issue is vision; the long cooldowns on the scout cams leaves your base more susceptible to backdoors since supports can no longer spam mines. But with this last point, I think as players start to play more and strategize better this can be solved with better vision control.
Probably it would be best to use something like if significantly behind at some point in the game where significantly behind is quantified in either kills, golds or structures.
I would say coming back from a 10000 gold loss would qualify as a comeback.
Likewise if you are 10 kills behind the enemy
Likewise if you are 5 Structures behind the enemy.
Hmm.
I actually deel like it’s much easier to know when to give up in 5v5. Games are often pretty one sided, and although comebacks are possible, getting caught out is exponentially easier in 5v5, so it’s also much more demanding positioning-wise to get said comeback. So if the enemy got blackclaw and two of your laners died trying to contest it, people generally know to just surrender and get the loss over with.
My opinion on why surrender rates are higher in lower tiers is lack of experience with moba’s in general + dieing alot (losing hope) + lack of defensive strategic knowledge.
The typical player likes to win/ get kills / not die. When they feel that they aren’t achieving that (which is surprisingly easy to do), they decide to surrender. It’s a combination of factors together, but the most overlooked factor is human emotion.
We make decisions based on emotion, every moment of our lives. So even when deep down we know it could be a winnable situation, the fact that it feels like a loss, we give up too soon.
This obviously gets lower the more experience we gain and understand that winning is actually possible (which is why surrender rates taper down the higher the tier).
This logic can be applied with many situations… emotional intelligence is, imo, the no.1 driving force in good decision making.
I’ve plotted AFK and surrender rates for a small (~8 000) sample of recent 2.12 matches. Note that AFK is “An ally has deserted” regardless of whether they joined back.
