Playing the ranked mode in Pokemon Unite fills me with tremendous rage. The matchmaking is a disaster, the rewards are pathetic, the character balance is nonsensical, everyone is stealing my jungle and my laners will not stop inting. There’s a million problems with Unite right now and many of them don’t have easy solutions. That said, there’s one thing that the developers could do right now that would massively improve the quality of every single match, both in ranked and quickplay. Timi Studio Group, I’m begging you, please get rid of Surrendering.
There is no reason to ever surrender if Pokemon Unite. One of the best things about Unite is how many opportunities it gives you to recover a losing game. There’s always a chance for the team that’s behind to come back, and almost every game can be won or lost in the last few seconds. It’s what keeps Unite so exciting and why it’s one of my favorite games. Unfortunately, a lot of the games I play don’t make it to the grand finale, thanks to early surrender votes.
A lot of players start spamming the surrender button as soon as they lose the first goal in their lane, or sometimes when they receive their first K.O. It seems like a lot of people want to give up the moment they realize their opponent is going to put up any kind of fight. They either don’t know how easy it is to come back, or they don’t want to try. It’s ironic, considering the number of complaints about Zapdos being overpowered. You know that the losing team can kill Zapdos and win, so why are you giving up five minutes in?
Zapdos can often be the Hail Mary for a team that’s really far behind, but you can easily overcome losing an early lead or getting punished by an aggressive attacker with the right tactics. When you lose your first goal, the lane instantly fills up with wild Pokemon to farm. Just focusing on them, instead of taking fights you can’t win, will get you a quick level so you can get back into the fight. Those early goals don’t mean much as long as you’re working with your team to secure Drednaw and Rotom, which reward tons of experience and a way to counter score, respectively. If you group and manage to knock out some opponents - who will undoubtedly be overextending, as everyone in Unite tends to do - you’ll earn tons of experience if they’re higher level than you. There’s a lot of ways to catch up even if you lose both lanes - and even if you don’t, Zapdos is always a last-ditch effort.
If you vote to surrender a game any time before Zapdos is killed, you’re trolling. Even then, losing the Zapdos fight doesn’t necessarily guarantee a loss. I won’t deny that there are circumstances where you know for a fact that there’s no way your team can win, but I would rather suffer through the last 40 seconds of an unwinnable game every time if it meant I never had to vote against another surrender. There’s simply no reason to have it in the game because it only contributes to bad attitudes and players giving up on games they could have won if they tried.
Taking away the option means more people will leave games early, but that’s what the Fair Play system is for. Leave too many games, and you won’t be able to play at all. This would ultimately lead to more games without quitters and a lot more last-second wins, which are always the most exciting part of Unite. Michael Jordan said you miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take, so stop surrendering your games and take your best shot.