User:Gaile Gray/Support FAQs/Survivor Title

Death Counts and the Survivor Title
Players who are attempting to achieve the Survivor title occasionally write to Support to ask about the title or to express a concern that they’ve gotten a point in their Death Count and they’re not sure how it happened. Here is some information that could be of help for Survivors or Survivors-to-be.

Logging Out
When you log out of the game, your character will still remain “in game” for anything ranging from a split-second to a few seconds, even if you appear to be logged off on your screen. There are several ways to log off, including:


 * Menu -> Log Out -> Yes
 * Alt-F4
 * F12 -> Yes (if not remapped in the Options window)
 * clicking the Window’s "X" in the upper right of the screen.

All of these choices will get you out of the game, but closing the program through the in-game interfaces, such as the Windows "X" icon, will inform the server that you are quitting and remove your character from the game servers faster than closing the program with Alt-F4.

Map Switching
Changing maps is not a failure-proof way to preserve a character from death. When you change maps, you can experience the same situation that can arise when closing the game: You may have a momentary pause, and that pause could be extended with latency. In such a situation, the character can die during that period of time.

Latency
If there is severe latency, the period between visible log-off and actual, server log-off can extend to several seconds; latency can also result in a desync that makes the character appear to be somewhere other than where the server knows it to be. If you were about to die when you hit "Log out," your character can remain in game long enough to die. In such a case, when you log back in, you will have +1 to the death count. This is pretty rare, and it generally happens only when people are in a tight situation and try to log out really quickly to avoid imminent death.

The "Lag" Indicator
The Green/Orange/Red connection indicator in the lower right of the screen is helpful, but it should not be viewed as a 100% accurate indicator of your connectivity, because it, too, may have a bit of a pause while it recognizes a change in connectivity.

Desyncs (Rubber-banding, Character Hopping)
Latency can cause desyncs such as "rubber-banding," where you think you’re one place on the map but the server knows you are actually somewhere else. With desyncs, the character might seem to move forward but then suddenly snap back to its actual position, or it may look as if it is hopping around the map instead of engaging in smooth movement. If you are desync’d at the time that you disconnect, you may be in a mob and not realize it.

Mob Mobility
Lastly, there are certain monsters whose movement or patrol range is wider than might be expected. Someone might think his character is safe because he doesn’t see any “red dots” on the radar. However, the movement or aggro range can be wider than expected, and the monster can take out the character while the player was off making a tuna sandwich. :) So, seeing a screen clear of monsters doesn’t guarantee that the character is safe and will not die, because:


 * with sufficient latency, the character may not really be where he appears to be on the screen
 * rubber-banding may land the character back in the middle of a mob
 * the monsters just off the edge of the screen may travel into aggro range because they are programmed to have a broader "roaming pattern" than others

I'm not dead yet!
Am I really dead? Did that count? Am I ok because it's a special event or an unavoidable story-driven death? Can I brawl with death immunity? Those are really good questions, and the Guild Wars Wiki offers answers. To find out what constitutes a death and what doesn't add a point to the DC at all, check out the list on the Survivor page. (The direct link on the Survivor page is Types of deaths.)

Resetting the Death Count
Support cannot reset a character's death count or roll-back a character to an earlier "save." To roll back a specific character, we'd have to roll back the game as a whole and obviously that's neither practical nor fair to do. In addition, Support probably shouldn't be able to reset the death count, because it would be almost impossible to determine the actual cause of the death in cases where the player feels it was beyond his control, and it would be extremely difficult to justify resets in certain circumstances and not in others. So please don't think Support team members are hard-hearted or uncaring if they decline the request; it's just not something that can be done.