Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28092296-20190704112237

Am I the only one that hates people that claim survivor and expect to be confirmed as innocent? Because it feels like I'm in the minority here.

Everytime I get in a game and someone claims survivor, they get really p!ssed off at me when I attack them or investigate them or call them suspicious. Obviously, if I was a Vigilante shooting a revealed Mayor, that would be a good reason to get angry at me, but why would someone that claimed survivor be angry at me? Well, it's because they were obviously innocent and me shooting them as Vigilante proves that I'm gamethrowing.

It's gamethrowing if you attack your teammate in Town of Salem, and this is where the first big argument for not killing survivors comes in: Survivors are everyone's teammate, and since they CAN win with you, it's gamethrowing to kill them. My response to this is that Survivors don't HAVE to win with the Town, or the Mafia, or the Coven or whatever. They just CAN win with them. It would be like saying since Jesters don't have to kill members of the Town to complete their winning conditions, they should side with the Town.

Whenever I try and explain that to the one hundreth survivor that claims survivor and gets triggered when I execute them or shoot them or douse them, they call me 'gamethrowing' and report me. I probably have at least twenty reports for doing this.

Another thing that really p!sses me off about the whole 'claiming survivor' nonsense is when somebody gets triggered when you attack them and the only evidence they have for proving that they're innocent is that 'they claimed day one'. Claiming day one doesn't make you confirmed innocent—a Mafioso can just as easily use their keyboard to type in the chat and claim survivor day one. While all other roles require wills, sufficient evidence and trustworthiness to be deemed as innocent, Survivor just takes typing "I'm survivor" in chat at the start of every day without any solid evidence or any other source of information that could POTENTIALLY lead to the survivor being trustworthy.

I've had people argue against me by asking stuff like: "If I claim survivor, how do I prove myself innocent?", as well as: "If I claim after day one, I'll die. If I claim day one, you would kill me. So what can I claim/do?" I've always suggested to not claim survivor, as Survivors only have to win and can backstab whoever they want since Survivors technically have no teammates. They may be called 'benign' and 'neutral,' but the Survivor just needs to win. For most roles in the game, 'winning' doesn't mean 'being honest,' and even to an extent the members of the Town lie and trick others for Vet bait/hiding as an unrevealed Mayor/convince other people to vote against someone. I've pulled off games where I succesfully get someone lynched as survivor and then claimed Executioner or Jester, depending on the person's role. You can claim any Town role and Amnesiac. You can use literally any claim and any strategy as Survivor. I'd even recommend not claiming survivor and claiming something else as survivor because sitting around and saying 'I'm survivor' every day in chat isn't a very fun way to play Town of Salem and basically wastes 25 minutes.

Am I ranting? Sure. Do I think that this rant is important and related to Town of Salem? Yes, of course. Claiming survivor, at least to me, is a very cheap and boring strategy, and unless Survivor gets removed, I think the players that play Survivor need to re-think their strategies to win. 