Survivor title and reconnections ...

First of all:



This to show that I was able to achieve LS, and this is not a rant from someone who failed.
I got the title farming in HM with a bonder hero, which IS a cheat in my opinion, but after LS I completed 3 campaigns, got other 7 titles and I all I received was less then the amount required for LS, and I died several times in the meanwhile.
Many other players do it with FFF runs, which is another cheat anyway.


Recently I created a new paragon, and playing normally I easily reached level 1 survivor:



Of course I'm tempted to get another LS.


Nevertheless, recently my DSL connection is having problems. I get often disconnected during missions or exploration, and thanks to the reconnection feature, I'm able to rejoin the party and I don't lose the progress.


But from a survivor point of view, this creates a huge possibility of failure.

I discovered that in case of DSL failure, your character remains in the map, whereas before the reconnection system it disappeared and was teleported to the nearest outpost.

This happened to me with the paragon a couple of days ago, in Cantha and in the middle of a fight agains a jade brotherhood mob. I was disconnected, and when I rejoined the heroes had killed everyone.

But, imagine that you're traveling in the Realm of Torment and you have a failure with your connection, or an electric power failure.
Your party remains where you left it, 2 or 3 patrols of torment creatures aggro, you remain there helpless, cannot move, fight, run away, nothing.
GG to survivor.


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Now, reconnection is probably one of the best technical improvement of the game, it's absolutely a must, but it makes LS very critical to any kind of problem on your PC or internet connection.

You can lose your title because of something which is beyond your possibility of control.

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That said, what could be done to avoid this risk?


I don't know, some ideas could be:

1. Make reconnections optional. In the general settings, you could choose whether you want to be reconnected or teleported to the nearest outpost after a disconnection. Good if you're playing with hero/henchies, less if you are in a human party ^^

2. "Freeze" the game while you are disconnected, don't let the battle or the action go on until you are again in the party.

3. Don't make deaths occurred while disconnected count for the title

4. Change survivor title in some way, like resetting the counter (I already know the flames about this LOL).


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Actually, I don't know if the any of above ideas are feasible or not.

But there'a a new problem now, someone should start thinking about it ...

Survivor is bad as it currently is. It's a 'luck' title, not a skill title.

Th difference is that you can try all the other titles again, but you can't try again this one.

Boohoo. This isn't a thread about how good/bad the Survivor title is.

As to the OP. Yes it's a risk you'll have to take when surviving.

I've had unstable connections before (usually wireless).

In that kind of situation I avoid playing on my Survivors.

Making reconnects optional would be helpful. But even without it, your character may be standing there for a while before you're able to reconnect anyway, depending on how long it takes to boot you off if the signal is lost.

From what I've seen, if a player disconnects, they disappear from play as if they've quit out. When they come back in, they appear back as if they've loaded into the map for the first time and it gives the message that they've reconnected.

So no, Legendary Survivor isn't dependent on whether you don't get disconnected in the wrong place.

Slightly off topic: If you want a real challenge, Abnaxus, try going for it with a front line class. Warrior, Dervish or Assassin. It's a lot easier* when you're a mid/backline caster/attacker where you have complete control, positioning and view of the battlefield. It's entirely different when you HAVE to be in the front line to do your thing and you have to give up your position of safety in the hands of protection and healing.

*Easier in comparison. Not saying the title is easy in itself.

Getting LS on a frontliner is just as easy if you build to stay alive, rather than building to be effective. Dervishes usually have the highest HP in the party also, which means that they're less likely to be targetted even as a frontliner.

I know that your character definitely sits there until you reconnect. I've seen people stop moving and just stand there when they disconnected.

Your character should disappear until you reconnect.

Yeah, players don't disappear when disconnected.

It does fulfill your last command though.
I noticed that when a friend ran into a huge bunch of foes with his heroes...

Had to save his arse (he wasn't surviving) and then later realised he had disconnected.

The problem with reconnections and disconnections is that there is always that lag period where the game doesn't know you are disconnected. Implement whatever you want but that will still be there.

Probably the best option...give people the option to disable reconnects.

So what is everyone else in the party going to do while waiting for you to reconnect? I can tell you hero/hench quite a bit and didn't quite think this one through. Using this option would piss off a lot of people doing PUGs....they'd have to wait until the disconnected party reconnects or disconnects completely. I just don't see this one happening.

This brings us back to the issue I brought up above...there's always a period where the game doesn't quite know that you have disconnected. I think the best solution is to make your character disappear so it won't take damage and can't die.

I don't think resetting the counter is a good solution to the problem. I don't like the idea at all. The only exception to that is for characters created before the Survivor title was created. For those I would support a one time reset of the death counter (for only those characters) so they could have a shot at Survivor like everyone else. I think this is something that definitely needs to be done considering Survivor counts for the HoM...and possibly GW2 rewards.

Okay, maybe I'm not reading it right, but suggesting the option to chose whether you want reconnects or not doesn't change anything. As said by everyone, there's a period sometimes where the game doesn't quite know that you've disconnected. That happens regardless of reconnects or not.

The solution there would be to probably decrease the length of the timeout for re-establishing a link. Sometimes you can get a major desynch and the the server and client wont realise you're entirely disconnected until say 5 minutes later. Bring it down to something like 5 seconds.

It could piss off a lot of people then disconnecting every 5 seconds, but then the problem isn't really with the servers, but their own connection or something in between. Either way, if you have a ping of over 5 seconds, maybe you should be trying something else other than playing an online game.

place mouse over the "x" in top right then hit enter key and right after click x. Problem solved.

If you're disconnected, no packets are being sent to the server; server interpets as an accidental disconnect, so after you've disconnected, regularly disconnecting does nothing.

True.

I've done some experiments. I have 2 accounts and 2 PCs with 2 different internet connections, DSL and mobile.

- on PC #1 with DSL I logged with my mesmer on account #1
- on PC #2 with mobile I logged with my dervissh on account #2

Teamed the 2 chars and went outside an outpost.

I switched the #1 DSL modem off, thus simulating a disconnection, and on PC #2 I had the message "mesmer has lost connection with the server", but the mesmer was still there in the party.
Then with the dervish I lured a group of foes towards us, they attacked both and we were both killed and rezzed at the closest shrine.
At this point I reconnected the DSL, and found the mesmer at the shrine, with +1 on death counter.

Second try, I disconnected and answered NO to the reconnection request, pressed X and closed the game on PC #1.
Again the mesmer remained there, we were both killed and ressed.
Then I launched again GW on PC #1, logged with the mesmer and at this point the mesmer disappeared from the party and spawned in the outpost, of course with +1 death.


So, there's no way to avoid to be killed while disconnected.

Considering what has been said about the delay, probably the only solution at this point would be giving the possibility to disable reconnection from the option menu.

There needs to be a way for those characters to get the Survivor title, especially since HoM is character based. If it was account based I could just get the title on another character and it would be no big deal.

I don't see what's wrong with resetting the title as long as the experience counter for the title starts from scratch. It would save the trouble of having to remake your character.

If this can't be done, I'd actually like a way to be able to transfer existing customised items (weapons/armour) to the character of the same name to restart. I'd dearly love to restart my Ranger in order to obtain Legendary Survivor on it, but already have a bunch of rather expensive weapons and armour customised to it.

I know why it was implimented, to prevent PvE characters obtaining runes and such for free which would ruin the economy for them, but I don't see why such things can't be given a PvP tag to prevent it or have an NPC in town to tag the items to be transferred across to a new character with the same name.

So you let your character get to 20 with as many deaths as you want, then reset the title counter. Now you have a lvl 20 that has more armor, skills, and attributes to go fight in any areas you want. I just don't see that working out well, or being fair. It's a title that has hard to achieve, as it should be. Shouldn't be die as many times as I want, reset my counter at lvl 20 and then go fight in easier places. Even with the decreased XP, scrolls would still help.

In both Factions and NF it isn't that hard to get to lvl 20. after lvl 20 theres still two tiers of the title. So pretty much 2/3 of the title is fighting anywhere you want and with max armor/weaps like you just described.

After the whole EotN preview weekend, my new survivor character was the victim of numerous disconnects (over 3 per day, as opposed to the previous 1 per month, max). *Somehow*, I managed to survive by virtue of being a backline character surrounded by decoys/spirits. But having spent 30+ hours doing odd & end quests the "safe" way, I shudder to think that my time would go down the drain because of something beyond my control.

Option 1 looks fine. Option 2 could be available only if doing hero/hench (because, and we all know this, survivors are the last ones to consider joining a PUG). Option 3 might work too; sure there's a period where it doesn't know you've disconnected, but once it *does* realize there is a problem, it should try and protect your progress. Option 4 gets a no-comment as far as yes/no, although Konrow is absolutely correct; I got to level 20 in 6 hours in Factions, as well as access to all the uncustomized & bonus items from my other characters (I'd say it's closer to 8/9ths of the time spent in top-condition, however).

I'd be happy if the title progress reset to Zero (you still get to display the best you have) every time you died. Thus you can try again. :\

Please don't turn this into another discussion about how survivor title is and how it should be.

I put option 4 -counter reset- (and now I realize I did a mistake to suggest that idea) because in case all other won't be feasible, it's the only way to compensate the fact that a player can lose all progress because of a whatever technical failure on his IP connection or PC.


The situation is this:

- Before- a skilled and wary player, who was able to perfectly manage aggro, used right skills and strategies without doing a single mistake, well this player didn't have to worry about anything else.
Skill (and time) were the only things he needed to reach his goal.

-Now- the same skilled player, even playing perfectly and without doing any single mistake, can be killed because of an unpredictable technical failure, beyond his possibility of control.
And when this failure happens, he has no possibility of doing anything, his character is still playing and can't be controlled.

Maybe hundreds of hours can be lost not because of a mistake, but because of an unlucky event.


That's what we are discussing about.

I hope someone in A.net is reading this thread, realizes the problem (if he's not already aware) and at least gives an hint about a possible solution.

This whole thing is similar to the "I lost my Survivor title to lag" deal. There's a delay before the server knows that there's a problem, but it has the ability to detect that you've disconnected. So instead of doing nothing, it should at least:

1. Make your character disappear.

2. Don't make deaths occurred while disconnected count for the title, said in the first post.

3. Rollback to the moment you disconnected. That way, if you get killed, when you reconnect, your character will be there in the exact state it was when you disconnected. I'm talking about health/energy/location stats, not a complete rollback of your inventory. So there's no chance of duping items.

The best prevention of losing the title to lag/reconnects is to apply option 2 if you have a very high ping. So it would be a preemptive protective measure. The death count is a huge deal for characters doing the survivor title, so they should put in as much protection as possible to ensure no technical issues ruin things for you. It won't make a difference to people that aren't trying for the title. You could still get killed under lag, only it won't count against your survivor title.

Options 1 and 3 would allow your party to survive if there was a wipe out after you disconnected. Making your character disappear when disconnected would be the best solution besides not making deaths count when you have a high ping. It would definitely be a huge improvement over doing nothing.

I don't think this is valid because people already get run to areas so they can get better armor and skills. Besides, you would level up much faster fighting enemies of your own level. Lower level characters get max armor so they have better survivability. It's basically the same thing as resetting at level 20 besides your health.

Even if they don't allow it for every regular character, since if you messed up the survivor title on a new character, chances are you haven't accomplished much on it, so there's no harm in deleting it. This isn't the case for characters that were around before the survivor title. They should definitely allow a reset for those characters.

I wouldn't mind if they didn't. As I said before, I wouldn't mind starting my Ranger over again to get the survivor title. The only thing stopping me is the amount of expensive gear they have customised to them. What'd be nice is to be able to transfer that to a newer Eseen Hawkins in order to reset the character. Even if it's something like 50k to do it, I'd farm up the 50k and go for it.

I experienced this myself lotsa times already

lag/disconnection grants u a free Death Count +1

I dunno if something could be done about this, some kinda "detection" of the character experiencing the thing.

If u know how to play, lag is prolly the only thing that can kill your character, and like posted above, it's very beyond frustating when it comes from an element you cant control. The prob is, ANet ll prolly answer this with the usual "get a better ISP and check yer router carefully" BS

/huge +1 about the problem of old characters that dies before LS/LDoA was implemented.
Another "Experience" Title should be available only to those

Now I can join in properly. Ring of Fire just then, capped an elite then continued on, next group of fire imps rapes the team, I run back, as I'm running BAM client crashes. What does it do? leave me standing there to receive a complimentary death count.

*restarts Ele*

RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO you Ring of Fire. RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO you.