DTwo professes his disdain for surrender-ers and explains with math and logic why surrendering never makes sense. And he's completely objective while doing so. No bias here.

Never Surrender!

Right off the bat, I’d like to say that this is a personal pet peeve of mine (DTwo), so if this article seems a bit more…charged than usual, head over to our database page for more level-headed, unbiased articles. If you’ve watched my stream, then you know there’s nothing that infuriates me more than someone pressing the surrender button, especially in the inexplicable case in which our team is actually winning the game. Even more rage-inducing are the times when the rest of my team votes “yes,” sabotaging an exceedingly winnable game. In fact, I’ve probably seen the surrender vote come up in just about every situation – including a troll vote as we aced the enemy team and were advancing on their core. And about 99% of the time, I find myself wondering, “Why?!”

So that’s why I’m here to tell you why you should never, ever surrender. Well, except in very rare occasions. Which I’ll state at the end. But otherwise…NEVER SURRENDER!

It’s Mathematically Illogical

There are no ties in a game of Arena of Valor, meaning the difference between a win and a loss is worth two stars – not counting Brave Points and assuming you’re in a tier where you can lose stars. For example, if you currently have 2 stars, then winning will put you up to 3, while losing will drop you to 1. This makes losing close games all the more excruciating (and winning them exhilarating), but it also underscores the importance of not needlessly throwing away winnable games.

The earliest that a team can surrender is at the six-minute mark, meaning that even if your team immediately decides to surrender at that time, you’ll only save – at most – five minutes. Why five minutes? Well, first of all, if your team was so far behind as to warrant such an early surrender, then it shouldn’t take very long for the enemy team to completely snowball the game into a quick victory. If the enemy team is too incompetent to finish in that amount of time, then your team will have naturally farmed enough gold to be able to mount a comeback – not to mention the fact that their incompetency would provide a comeback window as well.

So, if all you’ll gain by “correctly” surrendering is five minutes, how much will you lose by incorrectly surrendering a game that you would have eventually won? Considering an average game takes around 15 minutes, and adding queue, draft, and waiting screen times, it will take you roughly 35 minutes to recover the two-game swing of surrendering a won game. In order for the 5-minute gain for a “correct” surrender to equal the 35 minute loss from an “incorrect” surrender, you’d have to have a winning percentage of 12.5% in surrendered games – and that’s just to break even! To save even a few minutes, the win rate has to be well below 10%. Don’t even get me started on how much time you’re wasting by trying to surrender a game that’s clearly a 50-50 situation.

It Lowers Morale (And Ruins Team Fights)

When a teammate sees the surrender vote pop up on their screen, it is either dejecting or infuriating or both. It takes a particularly level-headed player to completely shrug off a surrender vote, especially when they previously believed it was a pretty close game. That teammate will also likely call into question whether or not the people trying to surrender will be willing to properly focus on coming back, further ruining team chemistry and trust.

The worst surrender-er, though, is the guy (or girl, but probably a guy) who immediately surrenders after dying during a winnable team fight. Having to stop to make the notification go away while you’re frantically trying to finish off an enemy hero while you’re also losing health fast is just…

It’s a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

By constantly surrendering, players never learn how to play from behind. So when they are forced by their teammates to stay in the game, they engage in behavior that is normal to them, but actively causes their team to lose. For instance, a fight between even numbers of heroes is fine if the game is even or you’re ahead, but a terrible idea if you’re behind unless not taking the fight will lose you the game. A surrender-er, having seldom been in this position, will take the fight regardless. Upon inevitably losing the fight, the surrender-er will throw up their hands, wondering why the team hasn’t just surrendered already, not realizing that they’re the ones causing the team to fall further behind.

Related: Many Surrender-ers Don’t Understand Who’s Even Winning

Aside from being the result of a bad reflex or an overly frustrated player, there are undoubtedly many surrender-ers who simply have no idea that their team isn’t losing (or is just barely losing). Like the player who thinks the kill score atop the screen is the actual score. Or the player who pings the teammate trading a tower for a kill (correctly), wondering why they didn’t join the fight instead of asking why the fight was taken in the first place. Or the player who simply can’t understand that just because they keep dying doesn’t mean their team is losing.

Even at the highest levels of the ladder, there are those who don’t understand that their team has the late-game composition, and that the enemy team is under pressure to finish the game off. Sure, everyone gets that Batman and Rourke fall off in the late game. But when surrender-ers have a team of Lauriel and Alice and Violet and still think the game is over because they suffered a couple deaths? Pish posh.

So When is it Okay to Surrender?

I did promise that I’d mention when it’s okay to surrender, and here it is. The only time you’re ever morally, justifiably, honorably, decently, appropriately, viably allowed to surrender is: when you have an AFK teammate who’s showing no signs of coming back AND you’re down over 3000 gold as a team, or if two or more teammates are AFK and showing no signs of coming back (and you’re not ahead in the game). These are the only situations in which there is virtually no hope to win – a less than 1% chance. In every other situation, a comeback is either viable or the other team is going to win the game so quickly so as to make surrendering not worth the effort of finding the button.

Wait, that reminds me of one final rant before I’m done:

Don’t Surrender When the Opposing Team is Literally Bearing Down on Your Core

Just…why? Does it give you a swelling of pride knowing that your team was capable of surrendering 1 second before the opposing team finished off the Core? This all-too-common surrender timing has always confused me the most. One of the best ways to come back is to capitalize on the enemy overextending, so even if your entire team is dead, a miracle hold at the base could lead to an incredible comeback victory. And if the most likely outcome – your Core dying in the next 20 seconds – occurs, you’d have only saved 5 or so seconds with a surrender. Congratulations. In fact, this kind of surrender is annoying even when you’re the winning team – give us the satisfaction of finishing the game! Does it feel good to rob us of…

Heavy breathing Okay, okay. I’ll stop now. I hope this at least convinces a few of you. Uh, go look at our hero pages with ability ranges and mechanics and stuff. And thanks for reading. Waves timidly

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