Why does it have to be a blanket rule? The people who complain about having their time wasted on average seem to be higher ranked players. It's also a valid criticism that in a 3v3 2 players can force a defeat from what is a potentially winnable position. At lower ranks of play the game is far more likely to be winnable from a seemingly poor position due to the greater potential for mistakes from the enemy team (since they're lower ranked for a reason).
It therefore seems ripe for a compromise approach that pleases more people than the current system. For example, in 4+ team games it works as is currently the case, and in <=2 team games it needs 100% agreement and/or just isn't an option.
Then, for 3v3s, it's only possible for 2 players to force the third to lose if any of the following is the case:
- It's a custom match (given it is likely to take longer to organise than a TMM match); or
- The average rating of the players is > x (e.g. >=1.4k? 1.5? As a lower ranked player I dont know the point at which games take forever to find); or
- The team that wants to recall has in total 75% or less of the mass income of the enemy team
To make things even simpler, it could just be a single rule - in a 3v3, you can only have 2 players force a recall if the team has 75% or less mass income vs the enemy.
While there will be plenty of cases where you can have equal eco vs the enemy team but clearly have lost, I'd have thought it very rare for it to take long at all for the clearly winning team to be able to translate their presumably dominant map position into an eco lead. So, it's not possible for one person to delay the team from a clearly lost position, but it's also not possible for 2 people to force someone to concede a winnable position.
In terms of implementation it'd need to only say 'recall vote successful' or 'recall vote unsuccessful' and not say why/how many people voted for it, to avoid being able to use the voting system to get information on how good your team's eco is vs the enemy.
I understand the argument for recall being it sucks to waste a long time on a foregone conclusion, but it sucks far more being forced to concede a game that could have been won (meaning all the time up until that point arguably was wasted as well). Especially since at lower ranks the players who want to recall are more likely to be able to find a new game if they leave the current one and rejoin the queue (TMM).