Some Propositions for Changing the Surrender Vote System
“Why does it need to be changed?” You ask.
Well, I’ll start by saying that I do not plan to talk about the vote availability time, how many votes are needed to pass, or the “/remake” vote mechanics. What I’m going to talk about has to do with giving the player additional meaningful choices and clarity for using the surrender vote system and with eliminating vote bias and inaccuracy when it matters most. When I talk about “vote inaccuracy,” in this post, I am referring to how accurately each player’s individual vote reflects the player’s individual opinions about the current state of the game and whether or not they want to surrender.
Before I begin, I’ll provide a little context for my idea: While browsing YouTube videos, I came across the following TED-Ed video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heCSbA8w57A
(specifically, the graphic that plays from 00:38 - 00:53)
While the video is rather interesting and informative to think about, there was a specific point that I latched onto. Throughout the video I was thinking about League’s system for surrender votes, and I think I have a different system that would help eliminate parts of this "paradox" as well as improve the effectiveness of the system in providing a team of players with a way to preemptively end the game without contributing the internal, emotional conflict.
Additionally, in my own studies of psychology, I learned about a social-psychological phenomenon having to do with the influence of the socially popular opinion on the private opinion of individuals within the society (whether the individuals’ opinions are aligned or not). Specifically known as “Groupthink”, this can more generally be referred to as "Conformity."
Currently, I can see three main problems with the surrender vote system.
(1): Surrender votes can only be started by a "Yes" vote.
The first problem I see with the surrender vote system is that a surrender vote can only be started by a "Yes" vote. For those that do not know, there are two commands you can use from the in-game chat for interfacing with the surrender vote: "/ff" (votes yes) and "/noff" (votes no); however, only "/ff" can start a surrender vote and only if a surrender vote is not currently active. This seems like the logical choice, because why would you start a surrender vote if you don't want to surrender? However (and I can only speak from my own, personal experience here), I have run into situations where I realized that my team should consider surrendering, but I personally did not want to surrender. At such times, I would've liked to have been able to start a surrender vote, but having the initial vote (my vote) as "no." Instead, I've been forced to not start the vote and risk that no one else realize we should at least consider surrendering.
(2): Being able to see the current state of the surrender vote creates voter-bias.
The second problem (that I've seen) is related to the links above. The first example in the video I linked briefly showed a graphic where a single party- which had not joined the unanimous decision- decided to join it, simply based on the fact that it was the unanimous decision. This can be seen as an example of the social-psychological phenomenon of conformity. This problem arises in league from the fact that, when a surrender vote is active, anyone on the team can see how many votes are for or against surrendering. Meaning that these results are displayed to members of the team who have not yet voted. This allows the possibility for this conformity effect to influence the vote of individuals on the team, and it is bias to happen more often for players who are inputting higher-than-average game commands when the vote appears (i.e. fighting, farming, contesting an objective etc.), because these are the players that are more likely to be the last participants in the surrender vote. This such influence by the "current majority vote" will contaminate how accurately the votes as a whole reflect the individual opinions of the team members who voted (thus is why- in most public voting systems, the current count of all votes is hidden from the voters themselves until at least they have voted. i.e. StrawPoll; however, StrawPoll does allow people to see the results before voting, if they choose to). Therefore, I propose that the current status of the surrender vote be hidden from each player until they, themselves, have voted. This would avoid most if not all of the previously mentioned sources of voter bias.
These are two rather simple changes that would work to increase the accuracy of surrender votes and provide players with better communication ability— allowing clearer communication and implicit portrayal of individual opinions about the state of the game.
…but I said three, didn’t I. My third point is minor and possibly not related, but I wanted to bring it up for discussion.
(3): The surrender vote pop-up box can be distracting or obstructive.
The possibility exists that teammates can be distracted by a surrender vote, when it appears. The popup is rather large on the in-game GUI and has coloration and behavior which catches the eye. This means that team members who start a surrender vote can unknowingly (or purposefully) distract the other players on their team; which can cause fights to turn around and critical moments in the game to be missed (like smiting baron/dragon ASAP). It also enables players to passive-aggressively express their discontent with the state of the game; if such a player tried to startle/choke a teammate by creating the surrender vote at an inconvenient time for that player. That is not to say that such behavior is common or intuitive, but that it is an easily-accessed possibility.
I would propose that, when a surrender vote is started, the popup box for the vote does not appear for each player (other than the person who started the vote) until they are "out of combat” or dead (There is already an in-game variable to keep track of "out of combat" so I feel like it would not be too groundbreaking to implement this change). This creates another problem, however: That a vote can be stalled or missed if the vote timer expires before all members have had a chance to see it, and it could cause players to see the vote with less-than-adequate time remaining to respond to the vote. Having inadequate time means the vote timer would likely have to be extended (meaning the "cooldown" for surrender votes (when they fail) might have to be changed). This new vote timer length can be based on statistics from within the game and from collective statistics for all games played (i.e. "average time spent 'in-combat' ").
Having this delay on the vote appearing for each player also helps the player out with organizing their priorities; making sure the player is most likely to be in a relatively safe location and not focused on another task before the surrender vote requests the full attention of the player. However, the player would still be able to use the “/ff” and “/noff” commands to participate in the vote even when it is being hidden from view, and this would cause the vote status to appear for that player, regardless of if they are in combat. This delay is not present for the person who started the vote so that they can see that the game is appropriately responsive to their action to start the surrender vote.
Tl;dr: I propose that surrender votes should be allowed to start with a “No” vote, that the current state of the vote should be concealed from the player until they have voted, and that surrender votes should not appear for a player until they are out of combat or dead.
Those were my thoughts about it, at least.
- Draco Icarus
Context: “choke” as in performance choking Notes: 1: I realize this would make double explosions harder in certain situations. 2: I also realize players who have voted would be able to “spoil” the current status of the vote for those who have not.
The most recent changes are in bold:
Edit 1: added missing punctuation and time stamps for the point in the video that I referenced Edit 2: added specification to header for argument 3
