[REQUEST Number 324] Remove superfluous time penalty on conceding

AnduinTryggva

It has been explained many times that the most minimal benefit of having a time penalty comes at a huge cost of player satisfaction and is entirely superfluous and useless.

It can be easily circumvented by just relogging. It simply takes longer to get the daily reward.

It is a triple punishment for players of ranked matches (loss of points, loss of match reward, time penalty). For casual play it is still a double punishment.

It forces players to just skip their turn many times to avoid the penalty when the match is already lost at an early stage (which due to the rng and snowball nature of ToT is frequently the case). This is unpleasant for both players anyway. It forces the losing player to stay thru the match and the winning player hardly can feel enjoyment to simply playing out his/her cards in something that turned basically in a solo game.

AnduinTryggva

The developers please care to explain why we have to stick to a match that we have already lost in order to play again?

Why don't we get at least the respect to be explained why this time penalty is maintained?

It has been a design decision by developers to force players to WIN three matches against other players via activity search to get the golden box. As a consequence one has to play A LOT of matches to qualify for this golden box, because statistically one loses at least about 40% of matches if one is really better than most players that one draws.

Sometimes one has a bad spell and has to play four matches to win one.

Knowing that due to the snowball nature and rng which makes up 80% of your win chances it is very often decided in the first three rounds who will win. In order to queue again right after the present match one is now forced to sit through a match that one knows is already lost. Can the developers please understand that this is highly frustrating for players to be forced to stay in a match that basically turned into a solo match for the winning player. I hardly can see how this is even enjoyable by the winning party because the only solution to accelerate is to skip one's own turns every time.

I know a lot of players have given up on ToT and this is why fewer people voice out here.

So I would like to know the reason why we are still stuck with a time penalty on conceding and ask the developers to either remove this time penalty or at least to lower the requirement for the golden box of the dailies.

AnduinTryggva

So I now decided to follow the majority of former ToT players to join the non ToT players as soon as I have the two collectibles.

Sooner or later ToT will be as dead as IC.

Numers are already twindling fast and waiting time for a new match increases. This will accelerate reduction of player base.

ToT became a waste of time and ppl now only play crow/red eagle or orgnum spam and I cant blame them. They realize the waste of time like me and go for the easy way.

Hal_Moore

I think the time penalty should be account based to eliminate exploitive abuse of the system and insure the penalty is carried out.

the1andonlyskwex

Without a time penalty people would either take up win trading (where people take turns conceding to get huge numbers of wins in very little time) or griefing (where people concede to deny their opponents wins). Both of these are things that have happened in other games without concession penalties.

AnduinTryggva

Hal_Moore wrote: »

I think the time penalty should be account based to eliminate exploitive abuse of the system and insure the penalty is carried out.

Would simply further drive down player numbers.

And it won't prevent win trading anyhow. Just join an active guild that helps you out.

Create secondary accounts.

etc.

In these kind of games there will always be people that will exploit every little thing to gain a minor advantage.

ZOS has the choice: Either make the entire thing unpleasant to the majority of honest players to reduce exploit possibilities of the minority that will do anything to achieve their goals or accept that this sort of people will always find a way to beat the system and allow a more pleasant experience to the majority.

AnduinTryggva

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Without a time penalty people would either take up win trading (where people take turns conceding to get huge numbers of wins in very little time) or griefing (where people concede to deny their opponents wins). Both of these are things that have happened in other games without concession penalties.

Sorry, this is not the case. If a player concedes the other player gets the win with rewards and point wins etc.

Win trading will also exist. It already does and removing time penalty will not remove win trading.

Personofsecrets

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Without a time penalty people would either take up win trading (where people take turns conceding to get huge numbers of wins in very little time) or griefing (where people concede to deny their opponents wins). Both of these are things that have happened in other games without concession penalties.

Point 1: People can already do that.
Point 2: Since when has "denying wins" mattered at all with respect to points or rewards gained in TOT?

The current penalty is a full 10 minutes. At the very least, if 10 minutes is some kind of standard, which it shouldn't be because games can be completed before 10 minutes without the incurring of any time penalty, then the amount of time that has elapsed in a game prior to quitting should be deducted from the 10 minute penalty.

Sit in a game for 9 minutes as an opponent who is crushingly winning simply fails to find a win condition? Okay, be penalized for only 1 minute when quitting.

The current system accomplishes very little other than punishing players who only use a single character.

the1andonlyskwex

Personofsecrets wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Without a time penalty people would either take up win trading (where people take turns conceding to get huge numbers of wins in very little time) or griefing (where people concede to deny their opponents wins). Both of these are things that have happened in other games without concession penalties.

Point 1: People can already do that.
Point 2: Since when has "denying wins" mattered at all with respect to points or rewards gained in TOT?

The current penalty is a full 10 minutes. At the very least, if 10 minutes is some kind of standard, which it shouldn't be because games can be completed before 10 minutes without the incurring of any time penalty, then the amount of time that has elapsed in a game prior to quitting should be deducted from the 10 minute penalty.

Sit in a game for 9 minutes as an opponent who is crushingly winning simply fails to find a win condition? Okay, be penalized for only 1 minute when quitting.

The current system accomplishes very little other than punishing players who only use a single character.

The penalty prevents people from being willing to concede 5-10 times in exchange for 3-5 wins, which is usually what happens when only a portion of the population participates in the win trading scheme. Without a penalty, joining a match and conceding immediately the majority of the time can still net more wins than playing normally.

Griefing by conceding to deny wins is then what happens when the devs decide that they're going to stop win trading by making it not count as a win when your opponent concedes.

Ultimately it all comes back to having penalties for conceding (which should really be account wide).

AnduinTryggva

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Without a time penalty people would either take up win trading (where people take turns conceding to get huge numbers of wins in very little time) or griefing (where people concede to deny their opponents wins). Both of these are things that have happened in other games without concession penalties.

Point 1: People can already do that.
Point 2: Since when has "denying wins" mattered at all with respect to points or rewards gained in TOT?

The current penalty is a full 10 minutes. At the very least, if 10 minutes is some kind of standard, which it shouldn't be because games can be completed before 10 minutes without the incurring of any time penalty, then the amount of time that has elapsed in a game prior to quitting should be deducted from the 10 minute penalty.

Sit in a game for 9 minutes as an opponent who is crushingly winning simply fails to find a win condition? Okay, be penalized for only 1 minute when quitting.

The current system accomplishes very little other than punishing players who only use a single character.

The penalty prevents people from being willing to concede 5-10 times in exchange for 3-5 wins, which is usually what happens when only a portion of the population participates in the win trading scheme. Without a penalty, joining a match and conceding immediately the majority of the time can still net more wins than playing normally.

Griefing by conceding to deny wins is then what happens when the devs decide that they're going to stop win trading by making it not count as a win when your opponent concedes.

Ultimately it all comes back to having penalties for conceding (which should really be account wide).

So your second concern about griefing is speculation of what devs would probably do?

To be honest: I don't think so. We already have the pay-money-become-emperor trading going on. So why should they do something for a niche game that they did not implement in a much more important part of the game?

Again: It is a trade-off: punish the few that exploit by punishing all players or just accept. Considering that the rewards for a high rank is pretty moderate. There is not even a unique costume associated with a first place.

AnduinTryggva

I forgot to add:

To be honest I think for a game that is so heavily random driven a sort of ranking and rewards depending on rank is just strange. Or have you ever heard about coin flipping tournaments?

So I could not care less if ppl manipulate the ranking system as apparently the game itself does not give you enough control over the outcome of a match.

Aashiana

I agree about the need for conceding without further punishment - I love ToT but this is one thing that makes me want to quit. Every RL game has a concession option. It is a "tribute" to a highly skilled (or very lucky opponent) to have someone concede that no matter what they do, the other person will win.

I have sat there knowing I was going to lose for literally 30 minutes while the other person cycled through their entire deck over and over as slowly as possible, dragging out the match and rubbing it in for literally as long as possible. Given that some of these win conditions are based solely on RNG at the start, it's especially galling to lose so much time to someone needlessly punishing you. You should be able to concede at any point, accept a loss and the win for another person, and move on to the next match. It just adds insult to injury that you have to wait 10 minutes for another game. Not all of us have all the time in the world to play and sit through these time-consuming approaches.

Since the queue is random, it would be hard for two players to actually match up against each other over and over and claim their wins. Sure a minimal application of AI could be used to identify players outside the queue system that are abusing conceding to one another.

The other thing is the Orgnum Deck. It's infuriatingly random. All you need is one 4-gold power card on the first play to have an insurmountable power advantage and just flip the patron over and over and over. The other player just has to sit there helplessly while you do it - again UNABLE TO CONCEDE without punishment. I don't enjoy either winning OR losing to that system. I really enjoy the actual cards in that deck and on the rare occasion when there isn't patron spamming it's quite fun to play - so this deck could be easily fixed by making the patron cost one more gold than it does (or similar). In the absence of that at least let us cut our lost time and concede gracefully.

AnduinTryggva

Guys, please just remove the silly concede penalty. I will continue to concede even at round two when my opponent has just managed to grab so advantageous cards that a recovery is unlikely.

Just accept that contrary to your initial believes and maybe your inhouse trials of the game ToT is extremely snowballish. People now are much much more expert in this game as your game designers ever could be during the conception and tests. So it is quite understandable that the designer could not realize the snowball nature of this match. I am 100% certain that the designers would wish to concede at an early stage too if they played several ToT matches a day (for the golden reward) for several months now.

Just remove the concede penalty.

If you really cannot drop it for whatever reason (I'd like to hear that one) then please reduce the requirement of the three wins against a player for the golden box to three matches against players.

Sheezabeast

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

Guys, please just remove the silly concede penalty. I will continue to concede even at round two when my opponent has just managed to grab so advantageous cards that a recovery is unlikely.

Just accept that contrary to your initial believes and maybe your inhouse trials of the game ToT is extremely snowballish. People now are much much more expert in this game as your game designers ever could be during the conception and tests. So it is quite understandable that the designer could not realize the snowball nature of this match. I am 100% certain that the designers would wish to concede at an early stage too if they played several ToT matches a day (for the golden reward) for several months now.

Just remove the concede penalty.

If you really cannot drop it for whatever reason (I'd like to hear that one) then please reduce the requirement of the three wins against a player for the golden box to three matches against players.

I think a good compromise would be to do what they do in Battlegrounds. We have a quest to Win 3 Matches, but also have one to simply play 5. If they did this with ToT and let you either win 3 or play five it would be easier on people.

Kappachi

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

The developers please care to explain why we have to stick to a match that we have already lost in order to play again?

Why don't we get at least the respect to be explained why this time penalty is maintained?

It has been a design decision by developers to force players to WIN three matches against other players via activity search to get the golden box. As a consequence one has to play A LOT of matches to qualify for this golden box, because statistically one loses at least about 40% of matches if one is really better than most players that one draws.

Sometimes one has a bad spell and has to play four matches to win one.

Knowing that due to the snowball nature and rng which makes up 80% of your win chances it is very often decided in the first three rounds who will win. In order to queue again right after the present match one is now forced to sit through a match that one knows is already lost. Can the developers please understand that this is highly frustrating for players to be forced to stay in a match that basically turned into a solo match for the winning player. I hardly can see how this is even enjoyable by the winning party because the only solution to accelerate is to skip one's own turns every time.

I know a lot of players have given up on ToT and this is why fewer people voice out here.

So I would like to know the reason why we are still stuck with a time penalty on conceding and ask the developers to either remove this time penalty or at least to lower the requirement for the golden box of the dailies.

Um... you do get respect. You're able to surrender if you've played enough of the game, you're surrendering way too early when there's still time to make a comeback, I have plenty of games where i build the deck methodically, can still be like 0-25 but then i blaze through and end up 56-40 for instance.

bulbousb16_ESO

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

Guys, please just remove the silly concede penalty.

Remove the silly one... replace with a ranking penalization.