I've seen a lot of posts concerning the surrender timer needing to go up, or go down, or be removed, or be nullified in handicap games, or be reduced in ARAM, or something of the sort. Here's my proposal -- surrender requirements to replace surrender timers.
Instead of having a surrender timer, which allows players to surrender at 20 regardless of current situation, we would have requirements. If these requirements are met, even before 20 minutes, surrender becomes available, but if they aren't met even after 20 minutes, surrender is not available. Some possible requirements (only ONE [1] has to be met):
Key:
SR -- Summoner's Rift
TT -- Twisted Treeline
CS -- Crystal Scar
HA -- Howling Abyss
1 -- AFK condition) [SR, TT, HA, CS] More players on the victorious team have acted in the past 7 minutes than players on the surrendering team.
2 -- Gold condition) [SR, TT, HA, CS] The victorious team has more than double the gold of the surrendering team, AND has more than 20k (15k on CS/TT/HA) total team gold.
3 -- Endgame condition) [SR, TT, HA] All nexus turrets of the surrendering team have been destroyed and all inhibitor turrets of the victorious team are still standing.
4 -- Feeder condition) [SR, TT, HA, CS] One or more players on the surrendering team has one death or more for every 1.5 minutes of game duration (1 per 1.0 minutes on Howling Abyss or Crystal Scar) (requires at least 10 minutes).
5 -- Structure condition) [SR, TT, HA] The surrendering team has less than half the number of standing structures as the victorious team.
6 -- Deficit condition) [CS] The victorious team's nexus has double the remaining health of the surrendering team's nexus.
Explanations for these conditions, and how I arrived at them, should be available.
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The AFK condition is to allow for surrender when down players. The 7 minute timer is to prevent someone from surrendering a game because a player had a connection hiccup.
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The gold condition is for when you just got dominated in laning phase and can't seem to get anything to catch back up. These are the games where the other team was just outright better than you.
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The endgame condition is basically for "our nexus turrets are down, the enemy team is at baron, and we can't contest it or our base will fall". Rarely will surrenders be made on the endgame condition without other conditions also applying.
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The feeder condition is for when you have a troll on your team who is suiciding every time he respawns. These games are nearly impossible to win. The harsh numbers on this condition are to ensure that the feeder is doing so intentionally, because this condition contains an auto-report for intentionally feeding for the player(s) allowing the surrender condition.
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The structure condition is for the games where the enemy team is split pushing constantly and you can't stop it. When they get too far ahead in structures, surrender would become an option.
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The deficit condition is unique to Crystal Scar. This is the equivalent of the structure condition on Summoner's Rift. This basically means that your team isn't going to overcome the deficit before your nexus is destroyed.
I know it's a complex system, and the numbers could be adjusted, but the basic framework is the key here. Surrender timers would be removed, so the pro-surrender crowd is able to surrender unwinnable games early, but the anti-surrender crowd won't have people spamming surrender in winnable games and driving team morale into the ground.
Edit: HUD issues were mentioned. My solution is to add small gold icons that appear near the score when one or more surrender conditions are met. "4v5" would appear if the AFK condition is met. The gold condition icon would be a stack of coins. Endgame condition would be a nexus. Feeder condition would be a steak. Structure condition would be a turret. Dominance condition would be a sword.
This solution makes it easy for players to know that surrender is available without constantly hitting escape to check, without having a giant surrender button staring you in the face. Accessing the surrender button would still be through the escape menu.
To prevent intentional feeding to meet the 4) Feeder Condition, "yes" surrender votes when the feeder condition is met will automatically file a report against any player who fulfills the condition. The added text for the report would read "fulfilled Feeder Condition". Automatic reports would carry the same weight towards building a Tribunal case as the average report.
