The Tavern

Pretty good turnout, 48-49 votes on most of these! Here are the results of what most people think along with the % that voted for that winning Strength level. Then in order from weakest to strongest going by their averages. For example, Ogres won as 'average' but had many votes in 'below average' so they'll end up worse than some other 'average' species.

Results

Below Average(Hard)

Octopodes(61.2%)
Mummies(91.7%)
Formicids(54.2%)
Felids(61.7%)

Average(Normal)

Vine Stalkers(64.4%)
Vampires(70.8%)
Tengu(57.4%)
Ogres(54.2%)
Nagas(57.1%)
Merfolk(64.6%)
Kobolds(73.9%)
High Elves(75.0%)
Halflings(83.3%)
Ghouls(68.1%)
Demigods(58.7%)
Deep Elves(62.5%)
Demonspawn(84.4%)
Draconians(83.3%)
Humans(83.3%)

Above Average(Easy)

Trolls(69.4%)
Spriggans(86.0%)
Minotaurs(80.0%)
Hill Orcs(53.1%)
Gargoyles(69.4%)
Deep Dwarves(75.5%)
Centaurs(75.5%)

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Weakest to Strongest

Mummies
Felids
Octopodes
Formicids
Nagas
Ogres
Ghouls
Demigods
Tengu
Kobolds
High Elves
Vampires
Humans
Demonspawn
Draconians
Halflings
Vine Stalkers
Deep Elves
Merfolk
Hill Orcs
Trolls
Gargoyles
Deep Dwarves
Centaurs
Minotaurs
Spriggans

Finish'd

I do think having an early/mid/late survey would also be interesting.

Voted. How can we see results?

Hmm...apparently only I can see the results. I'll post them on Sunday once lots of votes come in.

I'm not sure I like the terms under/over powered - they aren't all meant to be the same - it should be something like "above/below average" imho. Anyways, that's what I filled it out as if it said.

Yeah I treated this as Below/Average/Above, 8 below, 8 above, 10 average

this would be better if you could vote on a ranking

This would have been better with an abstain for species you don't play.

zardo wrote:this would be better if you could vote on a ranking

What do you mean by this, exactly? :idea:

This poll implies that species can only be either too powerful or not powerful enough, and everything in between is just "average".

For example, I think Kobolds are above average but I wouldn't go so far as to call them overpowered.

I also think there should be a "N/A" or "No Answer" option for species you don't play very much. I haven't bothered to try out Vine Stalkers yet, so I can't really make an opinion about how good they are. I just voted for "average" in that instance.

Klown wrote:
zardo wrote:this would be better if you could vote on a ranking

What do you mean by this, exactly?

I mean I think it would be fun to ask people to rank them all best to worst.

Also, background strength. Which doesn't get discussed as much for some reason.

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?p=163858#p163858

Results of 'easy-normal-hard' difficulty coming Sunday.
In the meantime, one person voted Spriggans underpowered.

that would be me. I think fast movement is not worth not being able to use claymores and javelins.[/joke]

Hirsch I wrote:that would be me. I think fast movement is not worth not being able to use claymores and javelins.[/joke]

Whoever thought that try a Sp{Foo} of Okawaru with at least 8 throwing skill. kite everything to death with Needles and tomahawks; get lots of Curare and wellbranded darts and tomahawks from your god.

the internet: where you can joke, explicitly say you're joking, and still have someone think you're serious

bcadren wrote:
Hirsch I wrote:that would be me. I think fast movement is not worth not being able to use claymores and javelins.[/joke]

Whoever thought that try a Sp{Foo} of Okawaru with at least 8 throwing skill. kite everything to death with Needles and tomahawks; get lots of Curare and wellbranded darts and tomahawks from your god.

+1
But kiting is so boringggggggggg :cry:

Results in the first post. Thanks for taking part. :mrgreen:

If the devs ever feel like embracing the 'species are difficulties' thing, they have the Tavern's opinion on what 'Easy-Normal-Hard' should look like now.
Also a weakest-to-strongest list to unleash raging debates.

Feldis second hardest, lol.

Mummy is worst race by largest margin in the survey?

...Let me show you my surprised face T_T

Sar wrote:Feldis second hardest, lol.

Do you disagree?

Do you not?

Sar wrote:Do you not?

Most people do not...that's generally how popular-vote works.

Sar wrote:Do you not?

Poll results are very close to my personal ranking, I don't even know what I would change.

I think most people who downranked Fe just never really played Fe, and honestly, I can't blame them. On the paper, Fe do look like a challenge race, I guess. They have low HP (worst in the game!), they also have severe item restrictions (worst in the game!).

In practice, that doesn't matter that much. You're fast (that's huge!), you have great EV, you have built-in savescumming to help with stuff like opening door only to face Nikola who one-hits you with chain lightning. Nice aptitudes, too. Probably melee backgrounds are somewhat less playable with Fe than the one who start with a book providing a ranged option (or, at least, less fun), but they can work too.

Sar,

Early game Fe should run from almost everything, Orc Priest is a nightmare and sometimes you are cornered despite high speed. What species is second worst in your list?

Fo without a single doubt.
Fe 2nd hardest and Gr over Tr, Hu and Og. Seems reliable.

I guess different players have different backgrounds in mind when rating species.
I have wins with melee Fe and melee Fo and Fo felt much much stronger. Probably that would change for book background.

Felids are kind of weird to place because they have extreme drawbacks and extreme advantages.

I'd disagree with a lot in the list from easiest (on average) to hardest (on average), but on the other hand I broadly agree with the placements in tiers. Naga I would consider tougher than average, Felids average, Gargoyles... feel between average and strong, but if push comes to shove I'd place them in average I think.

Sandman25 wrote:Early game Fe should run from almost everything

That's not how I remember my Fe (well okay, I remember FeCK being an awful experience). Damn, I need to play something like FeVM.
Anyways, even if you have to run away from a lot of things, you can do that easily due to your speed!

Sandman25 wrote:Orc Priest is a nightmare

for a lot of characters?

Sandman25 wrote:What species is second worst in your list?

I would probably put Formicid and Naga below Fe, and maybe stuff like HE? I don't know, I don't like thinking of species way - some are better at everything, some are awful at everything, but the ones in the middle, it's hard for me to rank them - and Felids I would place in the middle, possibly even closer to top.

I see, it looks like there is little sense in talking about species without backgrounds. My HE ranking is close to OP (slightly above average).

If someone was holding a gun to my head, rolled a random char and told me I had one chance to win it to save my life, I would be MUCH happier to see Fe than Fo for almost any choice of background.

If, on the other hand, I wanted to just have fun playing crawl and not hate everything forever, I would play Fo over Fe every time.

Whoops, misthank. Anyways, some races are strong regardless of background (like DD, Ce, Tr, Sp). Well I guess DDDK would be an annoyance since you can't leave Yred too early and join a healing god but eh.

Edit: and some races are bad regardless of background, and by "some races" I mean mostly Mummies.

I don't think it's 'felids suck' as much as 'mummies are ten levels below everything else'.

Sar wrote:Whoops, misthank. Anyways, some races are strong regardless of background (like DD, Ce, Tr, Sp). Well I guess DDDK would be an annoyance since you can't leave Yred too early and join a healing god but eh.

Edit: and some races are bad regardless of background, and by some races I mean mostly Mummies.

Returned misthank

All those "always powerful" species are in strong species section as expected. I cannot even say that Mu is always the weakest species, MuCj of Sif Muna was quite powerful, definitely stronger than FeMo of Nemelex.

Well as a DDDK I guess you can spam crane life on slugs, which has the side benefit of not getting minions.

Sar wrote:I would probably put Formicid and Naga below Fe, and maybe stuff like HE?

I've just played (and won) a HEBe, and it was a hundred times easier than Fe anything. Although I admit I played very few felids.

A Be was easy? What sorcery is this?

Edit: I'm fairly sure FeMo of Nemelex is a much stronger character than a MuCJ of Sif at pretty much any point in the standard game.

For a random, small sample size internet survey, the results look surprisingly coherent.

So this is the survey result:

sp mi ce dd gr tr ho mf de vs ha dr ds hu vp he ko te dg gh og na fo op fe mu

And here's minmay's list for comparison (posted earlier up in the thread):

dd ce sp tr dg ho mi fe dr og vs mf hu gr ha ko vp gh op te he ds de na fo mu

Most species are within +/- 5 spots, which I think is pretty good. The exceptions are: gr de ds dg og fe

So the survey ranks Gargoyles, Deep Elves, and Demonspawn high (unsurprisingly, these are among the more popular species) while ranking Demigod, Ogre, and Felid low. This perhaps explains why there are proposals to buff Dg and Og, and I suppose it won't be long before there's one for Fe too.

Sar wrote:A Be was easy? What sorcery is this?

Well, FeBe is pretty bad, no?

DracheReborn wrote:For a random, small sample size internet survey, the results look surprisingly coherent.

So this is the survey result:

sp mi ce dd gr tr ho mf de vs ha dr ds hu vp he ko te dg gh og na fo op fe mu

And here's minmay's list for comparison (posted earlier up in the thread):

dd ce sp tr dg ho mi fe dr og vs mf hu gr ha ko vp gh op te he ds de na fo mu

Most species are within +/- 5 spots, which I think is pretty good. The exceptions are: gr de ds dg og fe

So the survey ranks Gargoyles, Deep Elves, and Demonspawn high (unsurprisingly, these are among the more popular species) while ranking Demigod, Ogre, and Felid low. This perhaps explains why there are proposals to buff Dg and Og, and I suppose it won't be long before there's one for Fe too.

Well, I am not sure why you are comparing it with minmay's list, it's just one person's list. For instance, I find it weird that Fe is above Dr and Mf. Maybe that list was for speedrunners.

Am I the only one surprised by Naga placing so low on the list? I know I'm biased as them being my favorite race but I got the sense from many sources that they were considered on the upper half of the list. Definitely didn't think they were in the bottom 5, and according to some peoples' opinions the bottom 2.

@Drache I don't think most of the 'buff Demigods' talk has much bearing on the fact that they are weak. The problem comes in the fact that they are both boring(have basically nothing unique about them other than hard restriction to Atheism) and counter-intuitive. But that's a separate topic altogether.

Nagas are very slow, that is very bad.

Sar wrote:Nagas are very slow, that is very bad.

A very one-dimensional approach to a very complex game. By this logic, Felids should be undisputedly in the top 3, yet by this listing they are among the lowest...even lower than Nagas.

NessOnett wrote:
Sar wrote:Nagas are very slow, that is very bad.

A very one-dimensional approach to a very complex game. By this logic, Felids should be undisputedly in the top 3

In this very thread, you can see that many people agree with that.

duvessa wrote:
NessOnett wrote:
Sar wrote:Nagas are very slow, that is very bad.

A very one-dimensional approach to a very complex game. By this logic, Felids should be undisputedly in the top 3
In this very thread, you can see that many people agree with that.

And yet by the list that is being quoted, it is not. The key word is "undisputed." Maybe you should look it up. It means "Impossible to engage in argument or debate" about. The fact that there is disagreement on this, and that the popular opinion is contrary, mean it is in fact disputed. So in reference to this list of popular opinion, where the question surrounds, the opinion of the stubborn minority doesn't actually matter as it has no bearing on why the consensus on the species is negative...since the consensus disagrees with your valuation.

I was just trying to give your statement a little charity, because if interpreted literally, it's completely ridiculous: Sar didn't say nagas were the worst race in the game.

You asked why people rate Nagas low, I answered it. You can look at the list of Naga disadvantages (twisted body, slow movement, below average Dodging apt) and figure it yourself, because one of those disadvantages is clearly stronger than the other ones.

How exactly did you arrive at "felids are top 3 if the premise 'a species being slow is really bad' is valid"? First of all, being fast and being slow are two different things. With normal speed, you can escape from the huge numbers of speed 10 monsters in the game, so while being fast is really good, being slow is crippling to a greater extent. Second, naga has slow 2, felid has fast 1. And finally, starting with a wand of healing is better than being fast and the statement "nagas are bad because they are slow" does not contradict that.

Movement speed and HP are two of the biggest factors, if not the biggest factors, in how strong a species will be in a wide number of backgrounds and different situations. Pointing this out is not one dimensional. On the contrary, the fact that Crawl is randomized and may confront you with a a variety of unexpected and unusual challenges in the course of a game is the reason that movement speed, in particular, is so valuable. This is because movement speed is directly linked with your ability to control when, where, and how any given encounter transpires.

"Objectively" the most lethal enemies in the game are orc priests, orc wizards, adders, etc. So it makes sense to place a lot of emphasis and weight on "ability to avoid/survive encounters with orc priests, orc wizards, adders" in terms of judging how strong a species is.

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