Many League of Legends players have experienced a game where things are going wrong from the first minute. An early surrender vote will quickly follow for most of these games, but sometimes, one unfortunate player can hold the lobby hostage for longer by refusing to agree.
In Patch 13.7, however, the days of one person holding games hostage are finally coming to an end across all game modes from regular draft pick to ranked play. Developers have removed the requirement for a unanimous vote for early surrenders, giving teams a chance to leave matches that are destined for a Defeat screen.
“We’ve tested lower surrender timers in normals for several patches now, and the impacts have met our expectations: slightly increased surrender frequency leading to slightly lower average game times,” Riot said in the patch notes. “We believe this change is right to allow teams more agency in choosing which matches to play out.”
Game developer David “Phreak” Turley also revealed that a failed four-to-one surrender vote in ranked would lead to a loss in around 97 percent of these instances. As a result, this change was made to help improve the game experience, even though it might cause a small decrease in the win rate of many players who constantly want to play out games until the Nexus explodes.
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Riot will, however, be monitoring the numbers in upcoming patches to see how these new changes affect win rates and surrender rates, especially in the early stages of a match. Theoretically, players could be incentivized to give up a lot more easily in games that don’t get off to a good start in order to start a fresh match, instead of playing harder from a deficit.
These changes are scheduled to hit ranked queues on Friday, April 7.
