Analytics

[Mark]

Out of curiosity, and out of a desire to improve my programming, I decided to try to answer the question "has there been a winner of every race and class combination?" by using a script to scrape the character dumps from the ladder and then spit out a CSV and then analyze them in Excel. (I filtered for only Vanilla dumps, but kept dumps across all version numbers)

Very happy to explain/share any of the details if anyone is interested.

Here is a screenshot of the results!

There are many questions we could try to answer through analytics (cautiously!), the next one I want to try is analyzing the "Last Messages" part of the dump to discover which are the most deadly monsters!

[Derakon]

Interesting! High-Elves are a heck of a lot more popular than I expected, and meanwhile the poor Half-Troll is sadly neglected despite being one of the best races.

And nobody likes elves or half-elves, but I guess that's to be expected.

[MattB]

10 half-troll rogue winners?!

That's got to be tried next...

[Estie]

Interesting! High-Elves are a heck of a lot more popular than I expected, and meanwhile the poor Half-Troll is sadly neglected despite being one of the best races.

And nobody likes elves or half-elves, but I guess that's to be expected.

High elves are the best race bar none, as I keep saying *broad grin*.

Interesting indeed. What surprises me is dwarf making it second, I would have expected highelf-dunadan-halftroll as top 3, in this order. Maybe its just Timo playing dwarf priests all day though

@Matt: Half Troll rogues are awesome! Both from a rp viewpoint (sneaky lumbering....) and powergame viewpoint (rogue class countering the 2 big troll weaknesses, stealth and device). Yes, I feel the urge, too.

[donalde]

Interesting how many hT mage winners there are, rd most common winner on hT classes... and hT is actually 4th most common race to win as mage ... go figure. As priest class, hT priest is 2nd most common .. nice. I think I might play another hT game in any time soon.

Another interesting fact: All race / class combinations have been won, at least once.

[Derakon]

I suspect that half-troll mages are disproportionately likely to be posted to the ladder. I also wouldn't be surprised if several of the "only one dump has been posted of this race/class combination" instances were posted by the same person, who was out to do a victory with every combination.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Interesting! High-Elves are a heck of a lot more popular than I expected, and meanwhile the poor Half-Troll is sadly neglected despite being one of the best races.

And nobody likes elves or half-elves, but I guess that's to be expected.

I think this encourage the idea that perhaps these classes need to be made more interesting?

[Patashu]

I think this encourage the idea that perhaps these classes need to be made more interesting?

Well, not necessarily. In Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, some of the least played races are really well balanced and fill their niche well, it's just that they're not 'trendy' or 'fashionable' to play, so they don't get played.

[Derakon]

I think this encourage the idea that perhaps these classes need to be made more interesting?

I think a lot of races could stand to be better-differentiated; notice that Half-Orcs and Gnomes also have considerably smaller play counts. The whole Human -> Half-Elf -> Elf -> High-Elf spectrum is problematic though because it is a spectrum, and min-maxers are only ever going to see sense in picking one end of the extreme.

I'd suggest renaming Half-Elf and Elf to something different at the very least, to reduce the "spectrum problem".

[Timo Pietilä]

Interesting indeed. What surprises me is dwarf making it second, I would have expected highelf-dunadan-halftroll as top 3, in this order. Maybe its just Timo playing dwarf priests all day though

I have very few ladder dumps. Maybe two or three total from comps. Or less.

Dwarf priest is easiest combo there is. Not the fastest, but easiest. You get high HP, bonus to CON, STR and spellcasting stat, one ingredient of the lock as innate resist and zero failure rate to spells. Priest with lock is also only class that can get to situation where it doesn't absolutely need any consumables at all (though restore mana potion or two is useful).

With dwarf priest you can play more relaxed game than with any other combo. It allows you to get near-fatal mistakes and survive, and it can stay toe-to-toe with any single opponent for entire duration of fight without any healing potions.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think a lot of races could stand to be better-differentiated; notice that Half-Orcs and Gnomes also have considerably smaller play counts. The whole Human -> Half-Elf -> Elf -> High-Elf spectrum is problematic though because it is a spectrum, and min-maxers are only ever going to see sense in picking one end of the extreme.

I'd suggest renaming Half-Elf and Elf to something different at the very least, to reduce the "spectrum problem".

Currently problem with those lesser elf races is penalty to CON in addition to lesser hit die for elf. That's just to important stat, especially mid to late game. Remove that and you have potentially somewhat playable races. In fact those two are only races with CON penalty.

Elf should have small penalty to STR and big bonus to DEX. Half-elf perhaps 0, +1, -1, +1, 0. Elf -1, +1, -1, +2, 0. Totaling +1 for both.

[Carnivean]

Take out Half Elf and make Elves significantly different. As Derakon points out, they are just nerfed High Elves at the moment. Make them more stealthy, faster and weaker. They're renowned for their archery, so give them a to-hit bonus there. That might give people a reason to play them.

Instead of finding a way for the Half Elf to be a relevant race, perhaps replace it with a different, more challenging race? Yeek or Sprite?

[fph]

With an eye to new players, I think that elves, half-elves and humans now violate the principle of least astonishment. People come from other games, such as D&D, where they are good choices for a beginner; there is a great amount of previous fantasy and gaming 'literature' that encourages them to play this race. It's natural to think "too many choices, do not want to read the documentation, I'll just play a human, that can't be wrong right?'. No one expects them to be a challenge option.

[quarague]

lots of discussion about the races, little about the professions, to counteract. Warrior as most common winner surprised me a lot. I always thought there were very easy early on but annoying/ hard later on, when everyone else has gotten reasonably good with their spells. Rogue as least common winner was what I would have expected, to me they feel like Rangers without the extra shots bonus for bows. In 3.5. they got better item detection but that is more a convenience feature than a strength thing, so I think they could use some boosting.
On the principle of least astonishment, for a rogue-like I would expect humans to learn=level fastest but be mediocre at everything. Mages are hard early but powerful later on, easy beginner options are strong melee builds like HT warriors. So to me Angband works as expected.

[Timo Pietilä]

lots of discussion about the races, little about the professions, to counteract. Warrior as most common winner surprised me a lot. I always thought there were very easy early on but annoying/ hard later on, when everyone else has gotten reasonably good with their spells.

Warrior is quite easy very late into game. It's the mid-game that is hard for them, because they lack really reliable detection until detection rods, and pretty much need ESP to avoid things they do not want to deal with. You need to use your inventory space for rods and wands instead of books, but that's about it. They also advance very fast and have best survival stats.