NECRO
Re-reading this I still agree with all my points but disagree with my method of discussing it. I was a bit of an arse who was pushing a point without really reading the true point of what others were writing. Reading through the other post on the matter who I "troll" spidey, I was completely immature about the discussion and clearly in some sort of mental breakdown. Anyway, I want to revisit it without the drama.
Dorjan, what the $#@! is your point anyway?
As a community, frowning upon #resign as a feature encourages toxicity that will eventually kill the game. Being disappointed in teams who give up too easily is absolutely a good thing, but recognising the skill level of your opponent and treating them accordingly would grow the community and make the competition stronger.
#resign happens when 50% or more of the team loses faith that they can win. The leadership of the team is responsible to ensure this doesn't happen.
To quote spidey:
spideycw wrote:QUOTE (spideycw @ Jan 30 2012, 11:08 PM) There is one very big glaring issue with your idea that resigning should be allowed and standard Dorjan. I think it shows slight ignorance of the fact that a game that is lost can still be fun. It may be lost now...it may be lost in an hour from now but if you resign now you may miss out on a good and hard fought game.
Frankly based off what you have said why shouldn't any lesser squad just resign one minute in against SysX? When was the last time @SF defeated us? They know they have no chance out the onset of the game but do they not cling to the glimmer of hope that they can defeat us? They do and THAT is what it is all about. Why doesn't GRAV just resign 4 hours earlier? Because that time has the potential to create some great moments win or lose that would never be realized if such cowardice was allowed. You propose to eliminate that by having teams be cheered, not villainized by resigning 4 minutes when their first op con dies - or they don't get the home rock they want.
Let's break this down into the two very valid points:
Point 1:
QUOTE a game that is lost can still be fun. It may be lost now...it may be lost in an hour from now but if you resign now you may miss out on a good and hard fought game.[/quote]
Point 2:
QUOTE why shouldn't any lesser squad just resign one minute in[/quote]
These are the two support pillars that support the whole "you should never resign" mentality - very well put by Spidey. And in the context of Spidey being your leader, how could you disagree? This comes from a very particular perspective however: a great leader with great skills.
Point 1: a team's ability to have fun even whilst losing is almost entirely dependent of the team's leadership. The ability for a team to keep it together long enough to come back doubly so. The ability to execute the plans and actually come back is a product of skill from both the players and the leadership. If a team isn't strong in leadership, this point changes as I'll show in the examples below.
Point 2: Underdogs have nothing to lose, but everything to gain. During the opening moments of a battle anything is possible. But if the underdogs lose, it's not too disheartening as, well, they were expected to lose. The ability to keep the team together and pull out a victory depends on the same things as point 1. In other words: a lesser squad turn up to give it their best, but their best has a limit as I'll explain below.
Examples;
Let's examine these points with an example situation. A team is losing slightly, they've just lost their only tech base and all seems lost. These are the very few situations that #resign should be seen as a sensible solution and not a heinous act:
Situation A - The team has weak leadership and poor skills but resign is an acceptable part of life:
The team doesn't know what they're doing and also believe they have lost. They all resign and the game ends. The other team wonders why they bothered to turn up because they're stomping noobs but go on with their day by raiding pubs. The weak team think they gave it their best shot but understandably they were beat, still fun though. The strong commander knows full well they're far superior and explains one or two ways they could've attempted to recover or even prevented the situation itself. Both teams walk away knowing it was a mismatch in skill but the losing team hopefully learnt something positive and will go into the pubs to shadow their opponents or attempt to regain honour. The lesser commander hopefully is full of ideas on how to improve and will train in pubs until next time.
Situation B - The team has weak leadership and poor skills but resign is seen as the devils child:
The commander has lost control, the team are shouting amongst themselves and have started to resent their poor commander. They're no longer listening the whatever plans have been created and it only gets worse as time goes on. Eventually some players afk in base, or "probe" pointless places to disguise they're now watching YouTube. In 30 minutes when the game actually ends the whole team is stressed and most quit to desktop without saying anything.
Situation C - The team has great leadership yet poor skills but resign is an acceptable part of life:
The commander keeps control of the situation, comes up with plans to try to win. The team feels engaged and happy at all times confident that they might come back into it! After a few hours however the other team has realised they've won and started trying to buy that really weird tech that costs a lot and will take another 20 minutes to farm. So they bottle the losing team into their bases and just camp them out. The losing team tries everything but eventually the commander has enough sense to realise that team morale is far too low and although they can keep them here and they will fight on everyone will walk away thinking their day was wasted. #resign gg, wp. The winning team gets annoyed that they didn't get that rare tech but that was not a great way to go about winning and the commander knows it. If they want to play with that tech in the future either their plan needs to include it or it needs changing to be viable in a competitive sense.
Situation C - The team has great leadership yet poor skills but resign is seen as the devils child:
The commander keeps control of the situation, comes up with plans that eventually leads to a loss. The team feels engaged and happy at all times confident that they might come back into it! After a few hours however the other team has realised they've won and started trying to buy that really weird tech that costs a lot and will take another 20 minutes to farm. So they bottle the losing team into their bases and just camp them out. The losing team tries everything constantly trying but eventually the team are incredibly bored. They know they should stay to save face but you know what? This game is boring, I won't bother to turn up next week.
Experience:
At the height of Alleg' squad games SysX was a dominating force few others who could stand up to them on even their best days. Eventually this skill game got wider as skilled commanders left the game and players who liked winning switched to SysX. I tell you some games felt like an NFL pro team beating upon a college team.
Spidey of course had high leadership abilities and high skill so none of those situations ever happened to them, or so rarely that they were always able to bounce back. Most of the other squads were not so lucky. SF had me who was laughably bad. PK lost aarm and got Adam who was just not able to replace him and so on and so forth. Eventually these squads who turned up with the underdog energy of "we'll give it our best shot!" but knowing if they lost it's OK because they lost against the best, were forced to be humiliated for hours well after their skill allowed them to even have a chance to come back. Their commanders weren't able to learn from that situation as they were past their skill limits.
The main opposing arguments were from people with at least high confidence. They themselves were sure of their abilities and could keep fighting to the bitter end. As a pilot, I myself never wanted to resign. I was arrogant to almost always think there was a way to win. As a leader, I had in my head a way of winning but lacked the skills to keep the team together in such a way that allowed them to execute. I saw them degrade and eventually resent me (and I resent them!).
Closing statement
Before when I proposed this point I came from a single perspective: of the commander with enough leadership to have my team stay together to the end, but not enough to keep them focused. My skills were lacking and what ended up happening was my squad starting quitting from being fed up of being ground on. If I was able to give it a good go each week, and slowly learn how to keep it together. Each game I might've been enabled to carry the team one more step further. One more set back before the team fell apart. Eventually, maybe, able to keep up with the best of them. At the very least the squadmates' who, let's be real here, knew they weren't top grade, could have that stab, that attempt at winning and once the team fell apart could sit back and say "we did our best today. We will do better next time" instead of "I must stay until the bitter end and satisfy this elite team's bloodlust because we weren't able to perform to their standard".
7 years too late, but there you go.
Dorj