duvessa wrote:At the moment over 65% of online wanderer games are quits/leaves, so people do startscum them. Writing a script to do it would be pretty easy but starting several games per second would probably be pretty obnoxious to people trying to actually play on the same server.
It would probably be worse for this background since Wn can no longer get good stat distributions and doesn't start with items that are interesting or compare to book backgrounds, whereas this background can give you the god that is better than trog, or the gods that bad players think are better than trog.
Huh, I hadn't considered the effect on the servers. Does startscumming cause noticeable lag? Or is does it just mess with game history?
Either way, I feel this could be addressed with a simple special-casing: wanderers (and hypothetical random backgrounds) aren't allowed to quit or leave the dungeon. You have to at least tab to your death. This should slow down the scumming process enough that it becomes a waste of time compared to just starting with a real background.
Or, if you want to be more thorough, change wanderer so that it doesn't generate a random background every time. Instead, when you choose it, the game checks to see if a wanderer background exists for you. If not, a background is generated. Now you get that background every time you choose wanderer. If you win with that background (or maybe just get a Rune), your wanderer background is erased and a new one is generated the next time you choose the class. The background can be erased under less harsh conditions, like winning with anything or just waiting a day.
Regarding Supplicants, I think the real problem with the concept is that the strongest gods, Elyvilon and Trog, make your starting skills and equipment largely irrelevant. My goal with the background was to create situations where you have to rely heavily on god powers which may are may not be suited to the race and build you were given. But there are too many gods that just define your entire playstyle, meaning you don't have to put in thought regarding how to play the background.
Here are my final revisions to the idea:
-Gods that are already given by a background aren't chosen, or are given far less weight.
-You start with 0 piety. Nothing else changes.
-Jiyva is a possible starting god.
-If bonus starting piety is kept, your piety gain is cut (or halted) until you find your god's altar and pray at it.