Who was the 'genius' behind Concede?!
PoNeH
Join Date: 2006-12-01 Member: 58801Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2006-12-01 Member: 58801Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
Seriously. Why would you assist players in quitting. I don't think I have EVER truly finished a game since the Concede option was implemented. I also lost count of how many times Aliens quit with 2 hives, just because, for the last 3 minutes, things haven't been going their way. All it takes is 1-2 proficient players to join a losing team to change things around. Or, I don't know, a base-rush to work?
Conceding is the stupidest idea ever! People already have the ability to F4 back into the Ready Room if their panties are in a bunch... why make it even easier for them to quit?
Conceding is the stupidest idea ever! People already have the ability to F4 back into the Ready Room if their panties are in a bunch... why make it even easier for them to quit?
Comments
Together with a few other people that didn't like to play those last-man-standings for the 100st time.
F4 doesn't help anymore to speed up the loss of a team, because of auto team balance.
The problem is not the option to concede. If there were no such option I would simply change server. The problem is, that a winning team snowballs into an unbeatable team and comebacks are very scarce. On top of this, it isn't fun to play out an already lost game when you have done this already many times.
I do however agree that the concede option needs tweaking to disallow conceding unless there is a serious resource disadvantage and the team only has a single tech point. I do not deny that too many people concede too early, but the RTS portion of this game practically screams for a concede option.
Also, what is it with these forums? It seems like people love to complain about anything and everything in this game.
In many games and sports, giving up against unbeatable odds is good sportsmanship. Prolonging just for the sake of prolonging, on the other hand, is terrible sportsmanship. NS2 is one of these games.
edit: Also, without conceding, the only option to vote with your feet would be to go to the ready room, which is a terrible alternative. Not only does it prevent you from playing, it will most likely destroy your team's capability of making a comeback at all (not taking into account auto-team balance, which in itself is a terrible idea, since a player rage quitting is punishing the opposite team, which doesn't make sense). Better to make your voice heard through vote concede and continue playing. If a majority of your team agrees, then good, the game is over. If not, you've just voiced your opinion without ruining everyone else's game.
If you don't realize the value of the concede, you will after you've fought in your 100th hopeless game.
I actually agree with this. We were on 1 hive and 4 nodes as aliens and didn't instantly take a second hive. This guys starts calling for concede, some people do and others f4 while I'm saying over the mic "This is an even match hold out while we have nodes and push tech points." Thankfully the concede vote failed, 3 min later we started hive 2, 10 minutes later we won.
People should not be calling a game when you have 3+ nodes. That's enough to crawl up in tech and push out but people feel if it's not a roflstomp it's gonna be a loss. One suggestion I head was that after 5 minutes the margin for a concede vote is determined by percentage of res nodes controlled, minimum 40% or something like that. Just something in place that prevents a few people on the team deciding the game is lost because a single harvester goes down.
if you don't want the RTS elements, then maybe try combat mod or something? once each round reaches a certain point it becomes IMPOSSIBLE, and then everyone would benefit from a new round.
Company of Heroes is though, but there you have arty, bombs deforming terrain and structures that actually take damage and go boom. Then again I only play against CPU because people tend to quit if the lose :P
Your Opinion On Concede
Allow Server Owners To Disable Vote Concede
Potential Concede Tweaks
How To Make Concede Better
Also, this thread about base recycling touches on most of the same concepts that are involved in debates about concede, and in fact concede does come up a few times in the thread:
Marine Base Recycling
Let me know if you think of anything new to say about concede that hasn't already been discussed to death in the previous threads.
If you want to take something out of this thread, take this ^
The next time comm tells you to get that RT when aliens are stuck in 1 hive, tell your team to ignore that and just finish them.
Not only does it end the game faster, it also gives the aliens a chance if they pull something off.
Honestly, if Marines are turtling in their base, it really doesn't take that long to save up for higher lifeforms and wipe them out (especially when you have the entire map harvesting for you). Similarly, if there is only one hive remaining, it takes no more than a couple of minutes before Marines can take it out.
Concede has just given the term "Rage Quitting" a whole different meaning.
If anything, they really need to revamp how Concede works.
I also happen to love turtling as a marine >_>
If you want to stop concede then you need to make comebacks viable. Losing control of a techpoint (with hive or command chair) shouldn't make people say "gg". Yet they often do since they know the chance of a comeback is slim to none. *THAT* is why people concede.
People aren't conceding for the hell of it. People aren't conceding because they suddenly got bored. People are conceding because they are in a no-win situation. I don't know about you, but standing around to be someone's target dummy is not my idea of fun.
To fix this, one of two things needs to happen.
-The game could be changed so that there is more forgiveness. This could be by making it harder to take a hive/command chair, but the result ends the game immediately. Or it could be by making it easier to take a hive/command chair, which would have more turnovers and a better chance for a team to make a comeback.
-Alternately, there could be an alternate gameplay mechanism that will end the game quickly once people have decided to concede. Perhaps some kind of 'self-destruct' mechanism that would trigger a countdown timer and a means to end the game within a short (10 minutes or less) period of time.
First of all, before there was concede there was F4. Concede is just a codification of the already existing rage quit. Even if you take away F4, people can still just disconnect from the server. There is no way to remove it from the game. Better to codify it and let players stay in the server.
But that's a reason why concede is inevitable, not why it is good. I promised to tell why it is good, and I will do so now.
You ever play Monopoly? Notice how it is an insanely long game that is incredibly boring? There's a point at which during the game of Monopoly where you already know who is going to win. There is almost 0% chance that any other player will win. Despite this, according to the rules, the game is not over until every player but one is bankrupt. Why sit there for hours on end boring yourselves to death to officially determine what you already know? Just end it immediately.
There are a lot of games that have this problem. In Advance Wars a losing player can build a flood of 'mech units to force the winning player into a quagmire. They have rightfully won, but will be forced to quit or spend hours killing 'mech units to have the game declare them the victor.
There are other games that do not have this problem at all. Tennis is the perfect example. In Tennis, even when it is match point, both players have a chance. One has a much greater chance, but it's not completely locked in. You play for every single point in tennis. No good tennis player gives up early, or has any reason to. As soon as one of the players has a 0% chance to win the match, it is over and a winner is declared. It is perfect and beautiful.
NS and NS2 have the Monopoly problem to a lesser degree. There is a point at which one of the teams has nearly no chance of winning. Everyone knows which team has won. Why sit there for a very long time playing a boring game to find out what you already know? Allowing for concession is a halfway decent way of allowing the match to end so you can start a new one that is fun and competitive.
There are, however, other solutions to this problem. They all involve changing the victory conditions of NS. Right now the victory condition is to either kill all IPs and marines, kill all chairs, or kill all hives. What if another possible condition were created? Here are some suggestions.
If team A has only one tech point, and team B has captured all resource nodes on the map, minus one, then team B wins.
Whenever a team destroys a tech point or resource point belonging to the other team, that translates into victory points. When the gap in victory points between the two teams is greater than some number or ratio, the team with the greater number of victory points wins. You could also award victory points for successfully researching technologies/evolutions.
Try to come up with your own victory conditions. The ideal victory condition will result in every game being fun right until the end. At no time during the game should a player feel like they have no chance to win, such that they would want to quit. Likewise, the game should not end while players do feel they have a chance to make a comeback. It should end like Tennis, at the exact right moment. Without such a condition that determines when the game should end, concede leaves it in the players hands.
And lastly, if you don't like concede, create your own no-concede server. See how that goes.
i've sometimes had 8:1 kdr on the losing side, the rest of my team clueless with 1:5-10 etc.
sorry, but if there's no concede i just hide in a corner afk until the game is over.
reason? i want the game to end quicker, so we can start a new game and possibly have some fun.
That's simply not how strategy games work. Strategy games allow for many different states of play, and making consistently good decisions based on those game states is the core of the game. Doing well early provides an advantage beyond simply having a better score. If capturing the majority of resource nodes didn't put you at an extreme advantage, why would anybody ever bother taking them? Epic comebacks should be possible of course, but they should also be hard earned and rare. That's what makes them epic, after all.
A large part of the commander's job is keeping the team's morale up when things aren't going well. If you outline a solid plan for a comeback (based on the game state you're currently fighting from) most teams will stick with the game.
The one thing I'd change about the "concede" button is that I'd label it "gg" instead.
However, I will say that the implementation of concede could be improved. Many players prefer the psychological reward of ending a match by killing all of their opponent's players or structures. If concede worked like comm recycling (e.g. no upgrades, resources, spawning, buying stuff, etc), I think it would have the same effect (ending a match quickly) without the unsatisfying 'You win' banner.
My personal metric is, "if we have been 'defending' for the last 8 minutes and no one is listening to the commander or the commander is not making any plans, the game is lost. Even with 2 CC/Hives still up."
I often find the commander not making any plans. Drives me nuts. I've started to play a stronger role as a field leader in those cases, but it's hard and I'm not very good at it yet.
I've never been in a game where no one was listening to the commander.
The general acceptance of the concede mechanic (along with the mostly positive attitude of people I play with in NS2) give me a high opinion of the community. There are games with snowballing mechanics like DOTA where the majority of the fanbase yells and screams when you suggest taking away all the time they would get to spend beating up a helpless opponent.