Finally, an answer to survivor (GG)

Good morning!

I've been reading the (long) Survivor thread with great interest and have noted good points on both sides of the argument. However, once you read past the first few pages, every post becomes redundant, and the entire discussion boils down to endless repeats of the following:

PRO (changing the survivor title):
1) Old characters that have had lots of time and effort invested in them have no chance of getting this title
2) Lag spikes can screw you over
3) It's too hard

CONTRA:
1) Unfair to people who have gotten the title and the work they put into it
2) Beats the point of the title (on the issue of death resets etc)
3) If you're willing to sweat for it, good, if not, tough

Now, when reading it, I kept having the feeling that there was a solution somewhere. I personally don't feel survivor needs to be changed as it's not needed for God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals, but I do understand the bitterness of having a Prophecies character that has faithfully served as your main for the entire game and cannot get "everything", so to speak.

Then, I had an idea. I thought of posting it in the thread about survivor, but as I don't expect much progress there and I don't want it to get lost in the mash of repetitive posts there. Also, as it's a different and specific idea, I think it ought to be judged on its own merits.

Going over the arguments for changing survivor, I think that the only valid one is number 1. Lag spikes just happen. You get error 7 just before picking up that Crystalline Sword from Halls, or at the end of a long and tedious farming run. Whilst frustrating, there's nothing, or very little that can be done about it. When it comes to making it easier, I don't think it's fair to people who have worked for it as it diminishes their achievement. If they could do it, so can you.

So what does that leave us with? We don't want survivor to be easier to get, and we don't want a "death reset" either. The whole point of survivor is that if you miss it, you either make a new char or forget about it, and I don't think that should be changed. But people that have loyally played the game since it game out and accumulated several thousand hours of play time on that one Prophecies character shouldn't be denied the chance of "perfecting" it. Also, one has to take into consideration the limitations of the game. There is no way to reverse a death counter (as demonstrated after Vizunah Square). So how do we solve it?

Well, at long last (thanks for bearing with me this long ):

Survivor revamped

Make 2 new NPCs, whichI would suggest putting in the Hall of Monuments, Lion's Arch, Chantry of Secrets and Kaineng Centre.

1) "[Scribe]" (yes, I know there are some Scribes and Scriveners in game already, it's just an easy option) which offers the following service:
15K + 25 Rolls of Parchment + 10 Vials of Ink: Scroll of Valor. Just a standard, no sell item like Kournan Coins or Tournament Tokens.

2) "[Registrar]", which provides the following service:
What do you wish to do?
a) I want to bestow a new deed upon by brethren
b) I wish to register an achievement

If a)
Which character do you wish to create the deed for? *List of your characters* (if you have doubts this can work, try doing Hero Battles: the registrar asks you to choose a char to name your account for the season, so the mechanic is there).
Are you sure you want to bestow your Survivor title upon this character? Y/N
Then you get a "Deed of [Legendary] Survival", (depending on rank) customized for the character you chose and lose your Survivor title.

If b)
Which deed do you wish to register?
-) Deed of Survival (if in inventory)
-) I think I'll pass
The game checks whether it's the right character, then whether it's level 20 (I still think there should be that restriction ), then poof, takes the deed and you get the title.

While this is much ado about nothing, it does seem, to me, to be the only way to give:

a) People who missed survivor on their favorite character can get it without
b) Taking away the fact that you need to get 1337K experience on a single character without dying once.

As such, if you get it this way it is no less "deserved" - you didn't have an easier time getting it - but you can give it to the character of your choice rather than the one you made especially to get it.

There, end of Wall of Text has been reached. Gogo commenting!

PS: unfortunately I don't know how to do a poll >.<

[Edit] PPS: Actually, by extension, this could work for any title. I'm not sure that's a good idea though... feedback on that would be nice too

A major flaw with what you've suggested, as I see it is:

I want survivor on my main, being a ranger, and yes it'd still be reasonable difficult to get the xp, although not as hard as on a new character so..

I hop onto my assassin and keg farm or whatever 1337k xp for a couple of hours, easily not dying and then register that onto my main.... no difficulty and no achievement.

I'm not seeing the flaw. All classes can get survivor anyway, and I don't think there's anything inherently harder about it on any class - my own survivor toon is a sin and I failed misereably at getting it on my monk. This idea doesn't change how survivor works: I can make a ranger and get survivor on it by doing lvl 1 to 1337K experience, or any other class right now. You'd still have to obtain it the way you obtain it now. But once you have it, you can move it somewhere else. I.e. you're not stuck with it on the character you got it with - I don't think that's flawed, unless you can seriously argue it's impossible to get it on some classes yet easy to get on others, and with ANet being all ape about class balance, I don't feel that's the case.

you miss what I'm saying.

Ok I could create an assassin... but I'd need to get to level 20, get through campaigns, get to eotn, get specific skills etc before farming the rest of the experience.

While if, under your suggestion, I could go out now and get this experience without any problems and about 1% chance of dying. This applies to any profession that farms.

In short there are easier ways of gaining experience than others, and some professions that can get experience easier than others... I'd like to see paragons keg farm as easily as an assassin!

it would be nice to be able to transfer titles between characters. since the survivor title is easily done by farming fronis irontoe's lair, i don't count this title to the more "valuable".

More or less, your idea.

Along with just having the title reset after deaths, I see this method to be another great solution. Your way just has to be refined to keep the transferal between characters with the same profession and campaign of origin.

the validity of the title is a moot point since you can pay for someone to run the title for you for like 50k regardless of your profession. The only point is that it's a title that was never available for older characters.

I still think it would make more sense having a rolling xp counter, ie. title should be based on xp earned since last death, not on the death counter itself. It would make a lot more sense than 'gifting' a title.

Yea, how is this any different then resetting the XP title? Sure, yea, you have to go through the trouble of a new character, but let's face it - It's easy to not die in Ascalon, KC, or even NF.

In fact, of the 6 LS's I have on my account (3 the normal way, 2 from Kilroys, and one from kegging), I've only had to restart about 12 times or so. Of those 12 times, I think maybe 2-3 were in pre-level 20 areas. Most were due to enemies spawning where I didn't think they would, or having patrols larger then what I thought. Or going AFK.
One death was from a combination of the 3 above.

As it stands, deaths in the lower-level areas are rare. Especially because once you hit level 10, you're as good as at level 20.

So, how is your idea better then just restarting the XP counter? It would be far more simple then this whole process for the devs (I hope it is, otherwise they made some serious programming errors). IF I were to suggest anything, it would be this: A rather difficult quest that could not be permaformed/obsidian tanked, farmed, or otherwise build-able, that would reset the counter. This quest could only be preformed once - Dying in said quest would allow you to take it again though, but it had to be restarted. Similar to a solo mission. I don't mean "Stupidly hard" either, like trying to solo DD in HM with a level 1 and no skills, but enough to present a challenge, maybe one that would actually encourage, I dunno, strategy.
Maybe.
Probably not.

Survivor is not hard. The only things that can really prevent a player from getting Survivor in 1..3 tries is non-gameplay problems, like connection problems, lag spikes, system crashes, someone entering your room and distracting you...

Now that titles become account-based when a character enters the HoM, the account gets Legendary Survivor as soon as a Legendary Survivor add the title to their HoM.

But, characters can't get it, even if a survivor made by all characters of one profession from one campaign has basically the same difficultly for all of them. Making survivor with a Canthan monk is as hard as making it with any other.

So, moving the title from one character of one profession from one campaign to another character of the same profession and origin would be perfectly 'valid'. You made a Canthan monk survivor it doesn't mater which one, you did that already.

But I still think that it would be better to change the title from "getting xxxXP without dying a single time" to just "getting xxxXP without dying", and resetting it to 0 every time the character dies. You want the title, you start again, you don't want even to see it in your hero panel, you let yourself be killed and it vanishes from the list.
Since you'll have a higher level, the XP required for the levels you already have would be increased.
You start getting skill points for 15,000XP at level 23. That makes 22 levelups under 15,000XP. (169,200XP)
We remove that from the max (1,168,300XP), and add 22 times 15,000XP instead (330,000XP) .

That makes 1,498,300XP for a retry after each death. It's just 160,800 extra XP, but it's an extra, anyways.

^ Smart man
12chars

I fail at search yet again... suppose this can be closed.