POLL: Play style you play the most

[Sandman25]

Like Sprucery I play a mixed bag of characters... since it seems I can't actually retract my vote, it ends up in the "nevermind" option. Ooops?

Yes, currently the last option is like "I am a great player who adapts to what dungeon throws at me", it is not useful at all and destroys purpose of the poll.

[Sandman25]

I think you misunderstood what I was saying -- I wasn't trying to question whether it was possible to arbitrarily group characters into a small set of categories or whether you had a system in mind for doing so. I was pointing out that there are a lot of characters that do not cleanly fit into the categories you've set up, and thus that those categories are poorly-chosen, and given that that it's a bad idea to attempt to leverage it to gain any sort of understanding.

At the end of my post I offered example of an exaggeratedly-bad categorization system that's entirely separate from yours in order to make the point that poor categorization leads to poor conclusions.

But why? Melee characters kill things at melee range, casters kill things at distance with MP, ranged characters kill things at distance without MP. Add AC/EV category and you will get current poll.

Edit. Of course it does not mean that melee cannot use blowgun, wand or regeneration, for example.

[Wahaha]

Can please one of those who voted for "well-rounded characters" provide an example? I still don't understand what type of character it is.

You can see that the votes changed from "Light armor melee" to "well-rounded". That's your answer, those are still "light armor melee" characters that memorized rmsl or some other lvl 2 spell, clearly making them well-rounded half melee half blaster caster types.

[Sandman25]

Can please one of those who voted for "well-rounded characters" provide an example? I still don't understand what type of character it is.

You can see that the votes changed from "Light armor melee" to "well-rounded". That's your answer, those are still "light armor melee" characters that memorized rmsl or some other lvl 2 spell, clearly making them well-rounded half melee half blaster caster types.

It is light armour melee. Even if it has DMsl, CBlink and Statue Form.

Edit. I guess everyone treated "melee" as "pure melee" and "caster" as "pure caster"

Edit1. At least now we know that there is a player who loves ranged characters.

[Wahaha]

I was sure that was enough sarcasm.
Edit: unless you did get that I wasn't serious and are agreeing with me.

[Sandman25]

I was sure that was enough sarcasm.
Edit: unless you did get that I wasn't serious and are agreeing with me.

I am sure I am bad in recognizing sarcasm

[dowan]

Crawl players strongly resist characters being categorized for reasons I cannot fully understand. Any such conversation always meets with strong interference, and gets knocked off the rails sooner or later. Just be grateful a dev hasn't locked this yet (Sorry, but it's what happens every time).

[Lasty]

Categories are fine, but they need to have some validity. Here are some very good categories for crawl: Characters who cast any magic and characters who do not. Characters who worship [god] and character who worship other gods. Characters who worship gods and characters who do not. Characters who have a way to deal damage at a range and characters who do not. Characters who can summon allies and characters who cannot. Characters who can survive Zot:5 and characters who cannot. Characters who use forms and characters who do not. Characters who sometimes intentionally stab monsters and characters who do not.

The categories that people complain about are invalid categories that attempt to impose a subjective judgment about correct play, such as "characters that sometimes kill with certain spells" versus "characters who sometimes who never kill with those certain spells but sometimes kill with other spells or with melee but not with ranged", or as it is sometimes called "caster" versus "melee".

[bel]

I haven't seen many locked threads in CYC.

[dowan]

Categories are fine, but they need to have some validity. Here are some very good categories for crawl: Characters who cast any magic and characters who do not. Characters who worship [god] and character who worship other gods. Characters who worship gods and characters who do not. Characters who have a way to deal damage at a range and characters who do not. Characters who can summon allies and characters who cannot. Characters who can survive Zot:5 and characters who cannot. Characters who use forms and characters who do not. Characters who sometimes intentionally stab monsters and characters who do not.

The categories that people complain about are invalid categories that attempt to impose a subjective judgment about correct play, such as "characters that sometimes kill with certain spells" versus "characters who sometimes who never kill with those certain spells but sometimes kill with other spells or with melee but not with ranged", or as it is sometimes called "caster" versus "melee".

To break out a tired meme, That's like, your opinion, man.

Or, to not spout memes, if you don't agree with the poll, don't participate. The categories all seemed to work for the majority of players, and whether or not the data is useful doesn't really matter. This is CYC after all. You're free not to participate, but it's pretty unfair to say "I disagree with the premise, therefore the conversation is invalid" and keep saying it. You've said you disagree with the poll already, you accidentally broke it when you edited it (Why edit it? It's not yours), so why can't you just shake your head about the idiots in the thread and walk away?

[Sandman25]

Categories are fine, but they need to have some validity. Here are some very good categories for crawl: Characters who cast any magic and characters who do not. Characters who worship [god] and character who worship other gods. Characters who worship gods and characters who do not. Characters who have a way to deal damage at a range and characters who do not. Characters who can summon allies and characters who cannot. Characters who can survive Zot:5 and characters who cannot. Characters who use forms and characters who do not. Characters who sometimes intentionally stab monsters and characters who do not.

The categories that people complain about are invalid categories that attempt to impose a subjective judgment about correct play, such as "characters that sometimes kill with certain spells" versus "characters who sometimes who never kill with those certain spells but sometimes kill with other spells or with melee but not with ranged", or as it is sometimes called "caster" versus "melee".

As I tried to explain above the categories are:
1) no powerful ranged attack and high AC
2) no powerful ranged attack and high EV
3) powerful ranged MP-limited attack and high AC
4) powerful ranged MP-limited attack and high EV
5) glass cannon with OP ranged MP-limited attack
6) powerful unlimited ranged attack and high AC
7) powerful unlimited ranged attack and high EV
because it was what I wanted to know after reading about spider problems.
AC vs EV is important because of nets and Orb Spiders
ranged vs non-range important because of Emperor Scorpions etc.
MP vs non-MP important because of Ghost Moths and no easy way to retreat

Edit. As you can see there is no room for "well-rounded character" in that classification.

[Sar]

The thing with AC vs EV, and also the reason why I didn't answer the poll until you added the purpose-destroying last option, is that it really depends on what armour and spells I find, what aptitudes I have etc.

My last IE was an ogre, I wanted to cast Glaciate on a HP 300+ char, but I never found Glaciate and by the end of 3 runes game it seemed like a really hard to get spell for an Og anyway, and I also got a lucky chaos GSC, so I just enchanted a GDA and switched to melee+Throwing heavy AC character (I was with Ash but I didn't actually use Transfer Knowledge). That is an extreme example, but I hope you get what am I talking about!

[tasonir]

I looked at my last 3 character's AC/EV values in their morgues, and since AC was higher, I switched my answer to heavy armor melee. Note these values are inflated with agil pot/rings of protection etc, but they were: 75 ac, 70 ev; 55 ac, 55 ev; 53 ac, 52 ev. So heavy armor. Note none of them actually wore body armor (all statue form).

In normal combat the gap between ac/ev would be wider because they wouldn't have the agility potion.

[dowan]

Remember guys, this is before vaults, not on ascension. Obviously this makes it harder when looking through old morgues though.

[byrel]

I think it's worth talking about the utility of empirical segmentation of a continuum (at least, if anyone's interested in the technical aspect of this.) Binning (categorizing a near continuous or continuous function into several discrete outputs) is a common technique in big data and statistics in general, to the point it's frequently automated. For instance, one could make a parser that would look through morgues and categorize them into 5 automatic bins of melee vs magic. (probably take actions of each type of weapon, normalize based on minimum attack time, and then divide by total conjurations/summoning/Hexes casts, also normalized based roughly on approximate damage per cast.) The definitions going in would be somewhat arbitrary (what exactly qualifies as a conjuration?) and the divisions on the scale of melee/magic would be completely arbitrary.

How is a completely arbitrary binning useful? It lets you make generalizations about the game. Does anyone think the the killer list is going to look the same for the top 19% magic users and the bottom 17% of magic users? No way! And you can fit various correlated variables to those (arbitrary) bins. Maybe oozes tend to kill more melee heros. You can find out by fitting a line to the bins/killer graph. Maybe the middle bins tend to worship Kiku more. Maybe the more magicy ones are more likely to enter a zig.

Given that you can't meaningfully operate on each individual game due to their uniqueness, binning lets you ignore the variability in favor of simply dealing with the statistics. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_binning

In this particular case Sandman wants to fit perceived lair branch difficulty to a 2 dimensional binning system. This is useful in spite of the fact that individual games don't fit the bins very well because there are a lot of games. Overall, we'd expect some correlation trends between tools routinely available to a chacter and percieved difficulty. Binning lets us largely ignore the variance and just find what effect this has overall.

(Note that the sample size is really low here, and the initial prompts probably led to inaccurate binning. I wish Lasty hadn't added the option, as it's basically noise and doesn't fit the bins, and had just reset the options with clearer instructions.) Regardless, I think this will be at best marginally significant results. But that complaint hasn't been brought up. Instead people are complaining that binning like this is inherently useless because edge cases are arbitrary. They're wrong, that doesn't keep it from being useful. It's a pretty standard statistical tool.

If you want a none of the above option, it shouldn't be 'well-rounded character'. Hell, no character is well rounded in the Lair! There isn't enough XP! It should be I play a wide variety of characters. This is actually realistic.

[Sandman25]

The thing with AC vs EV, and also the reason why I didn't answer the poll until you added the purpose-destroying last option, is that it really depends on what armour and spells I find, what aptitudes I have etc.

My last IE was an ogre, I wanted to cast Glaciate on a HP 300+ char, but I never found Glaciate and by the end of 3 runes game it seemed like a really hard to get spell for an Og anyway, and I also got a lucky chaos GSC, so I just enchanted a GDA and switched to melee+Throwing heavy AC character (I was with Ash but I didn't actually use Transfer Knowledge). That is an extreme example, but I hope you get what am I talking about!

Ok, here is my example. You are greaternaga so I assume you play Na often, correct? And you like to play hybrids (start as IE and then branch into melee, for example), correct? Then you play high AC casters often.
I am not sure you didn't miss that it is about pre-vaults. The same poll about Zot would not make much sense indeed because then you can find some amazing items which would change the way how you develop character too often.

[Sandman25]

If you want a none of the above option, it shouldn't be 'well-rounded character'. Hell, no character is well rounded in the Lair! There isn't enough XP! It should be I play a wide variety of characters. This is actually realistic.

I expected that players would not vote if they cannot pick an option. Probably too naive, I know

[Sar]

And you like to play hybrids (start as IE and then branch into melee, for example), correct? Then you play high AC casters often.

And a lot of my Nagas stayed in robe and trained more Dodging than Armour. I don't feel confident calling those chars "high AC".

[Sandman25]

And you like to play hybrids (start as IE and then branch into melee, for example), correct? Then you play high AC casters often.

And a lot of my Nagas stayed in robe and trained more Dodging than Armour. I don't feel confident calling those chars "high AC".

Ok, if you are not sure if most characters were high AC or high EV, you can pick any of "high AC caster" or "high EV caster".

[Sar]

b-but how do I decide what to pick?!?!?!

Edit: I think a "high defences caster/hybrid" would be a better option, because I see people just getting 20 EV and 10 AC on their casters and going for 9s all the way, and that is a distinct playstyle that differs significantly enough from "get good AC or EV, ideally both". AC vs. EV isn't that much of a difference really, it just means you aren't comfortable with being a glass cannon and go for the best defence you can afford.

[pickled_heretic]

And you like to play hybrids (start as IE and then branch into melee, for example), correct? Then you play high AC casters often.

And a lot of my Nagas stayed in robe and trained more Dodging than Armour. I don't feel confident calling those chars "high AC".

Did you do it by choice, or because the dungeon dictated your path for you? In either case, you should have an answer that falls into one of sandman's categories.

[Sandman25]

b-but how do I decide what to pick?!?!?!

Throw a coin. Or don't vote

[Sandman25]

I see people just getting 20 EV and 10 AC on their casters and going for 9s all the way

There is a separate option for that (No defense caster (very low AC/EV/Fighting, killing with conjurations/hexes/summoning))

[Sar]

Did you do it by choice, or because the dungeon dictated your path for you?

I made my choice based on what the Dungeon suggested to me!

[Lasty]

To break out a tired meme, That's like, your opinion, man.

Or, to not spout memes, if you don't agree with the poll, don't participate. The categories all seemed to work for the majority of players, and whether or not the data is useful doesn't really matter. This is CYC after all. You're free not to participate, but it's pretty unfair to say "I disagree with the premise, therefore the conversation is invalid" and keep saying it. You've said you disagree with the poll already, you accidentally broke it when you edited it (Why edit it? It's not yours), so why can't you just shake your head about the idiots in the thread and walk away?

Are you trying to say that I'm not allowed to participate in threads where I disagree with the original poster?

It was definitely bad manners to break Sandman25's poll, and if I had realized that was a possible outcome I absolutely wouldn't have done it. Maybe I shouldn't have done it in any case. My initial intention was to add the option to allow the posters who were already dissatisfied with the options to have another option and to not comment myself at all. After apologizing for breaking the poll, I felt that I had been drawn into the discussion by being actively associated with the new poll option. After making my point, I did "keep saying it" but only because it seemed like Sandman25 was misunderstanding what I wrote. At this point I consider the point to be communicated as well as possible.

[pickled_heretic]

I think what he is saying is that you are allowed to not participate if you disagree. A subtle, but important difference.

[byrel]

I think what he is saying is that you are allowed to not participate if you disagree. A subtle, but important difference.

Not a terribly useful statement then... I don't think anyone was under the impression that Lasty was obliged to post. I think the point was more along the lines of 'you're beating a dead horse already'.

[pickled_heretic]

I think it's perfectly useful. If you don't like all of the options in a given poll, you don't have to vote. It seems like this little tidbit of information was lost over the last 2 pages and it really needed to be said. It's not at all the same as e.g. discussing a topic which people disagree on. It's more like if someone did a poll asking if people wanted Romney or Obama as president and then someone saying it's not a good poll because it doesn't have Darth Vader as a selection.

[dowan]

Yeah, what pickled and byrel said. A forum where users weren't allowed to disagree with the OP would be pretty pointless! I just meant if you've made your point, you don't need to keep making it over and over, which is something that happens a lot with certain subjects (Not directed just at Lasty, I'm sure we've all done it). I know you didn't mean to break the poll though, I just questioned why you felt you should edit it in the first place.

If someone keeps going back to the same points over and over, it tends to prevent the discussion from going anywhere.

That's all I was saying, I certainly don't think anyone shouldn't be allowed to disagree with anything.(Double negatives abound!)

[Sandman25]

I think what he is saying is that you are allowed to not participate if you disagree. A subtle, but important difference.

I ignore some threads in CYC because they seem too stupid to me but I realize that some players can like them and even have fun. The same can apply to polls - if you think they are too stupid/useless, ignore them and don't vote. Posting with questions/suggestions is ok of course.

[Lasty]

Binning

I appreciate the thoughtful response. I don't think this is an effective use of binning, though: it's effectively rounding the continuum of "majority of damage through magic versus damage through melee" to two values. If you were binning a continuum of numbers between 1 and 100, would you really set up the bins as 1-50 and 51-100, which is essentially what we're talking about here? The difference between 1 and 50 is significantly larger than the difference between 50 and 51, and yet you're putting them in the same bin. As granularity increases, that issue decreases. In the example of "melee versus magic", it might be okay to have 3-ish bins for melee and 3-ish for magic -- ["never melee", "sometimes melee", "always melee"] and ["no magic", "some magic", "tons of magic"].

That binning is useful in principle doesn't mean that any sets of bins are of equal utility. Binning also works out better, as you point out, with bigger data sets, and that's not what we have here.

[johlstei]

I think the high AC vs high EV is kind of a false distinction, at least for me. Bins for high defense vs glass cannon would be better for me. My characters are generally high AC + EV and I generally try to maximize that, which of them is higher varies a good bit throughout the game. I think the closest is heavy armor melee but I generally don't wear stuff like cpa or gda and even wearing plate is pretty rare.

[Sandman25]

If you were binning a continuum of numbers between 1 and 100, would you really set up the bins as 1-50 and 51-100, which is essentially what we're talking about here? The difference between 1 and 50 is significantly larger than the difference between 50 and 51, and yet you're putting them in the same bin.

This was good enough for my purpose. I wanted to see if my assumption "most players of forum play heavy armour melee characters, this is why they find Spider so easy" is correct.

[Sandman25]

I generally don't wear stuff like cpa or gda and even wearing plate is pretty rare.

and this is what I would know from your vote.

[byrel]

would you really set up the bins as 1-50 and 51-100, which is essentially what we're talking about here? The difference between 1 and 50 is significantly larger than the difference between 50 and 51, and yet you're putting them in the same bin.

Well, for binning to be useful, you have to get a decent number of replies in the bins. We are chronically low on data, so you need few bins. The thing about the 50/51 case is it mostly doesn't matter which one you put it in. Assuming we have a straightforward correlation here, no matter which bin you put it in you drag the average closer to the center. 50:50 guys should have a fairly average opinion about lair branches, so it mostly doesn't matter what bin they're in.

it might be okay to have 3-ish bins for melee and 3-ish for magic -- ["never melee", "sometimes melee", "always melee"] and ["no magic", "some magic", "tons of magic"].

These sets would certainly be way easier to place characters in I think, and might be better. But you would have a lot of different boxes to put a handful of marbles in.

[dowan]

I'm beginning to suspect, although I can't be completely sure, that lasty doesn't think the poll is valid. I can only guess that of course, since he hasn't posted that sentiment enough times yet for it to sink in through my thick skull. Maybe if he says it 10 or 20 more times, with more exaggerated examples of other bad polls, I might finally get it. I don't know though, I am pretty stupid.

[byrel]

OK, I tried to make a different poll with a different breakdown. It also allows voting for multiple archetypes, which might help resolve some anxiety...

Basically I hope we can get more interesting data out of that poll, since it seems we all agree this poll's data is fairly useless at this point.

Also note my clever filling of all the options to prevent any diabolical mod-sabotage

[johlstei]

comedy option:
I chose high AC melee because I play gargoyles in robes

[Sandman25]

comedy option:
I chose high AC melee because I play gargoyles in robes

It is expected. Why comedy? I don't care how you got AC (plate armour, ring of robustness, mutations from xom, intrinsic AC), I care how much you rely on AC comparing to EV.

[Magipi]

I would pick "Light armour melee", but I think your classification is wrong here. In my experience, light armour characters tend to have balanced AC/EV scores (something like 25/25 in the midgame), while heavy armour character are more likely 40/10.

Likewise, I think "heavy armour caster" is pretty much impossible. There are some extreme cases, yes, like gargoyles or chei-characters-in-plate-casting-firestorm, but in general if you use damage spells as your main option, you wear something light. This is just common sense.

[Sandman25]

I would pick "Light armour melee", but I think your classification is wrong here. In my experience, light armour characters tend to have balanced AC/EV scores (something like 25/25 in the midgame), while heavy armour character are more likely 40/10.

25/25 before Vaults? What body armour is that?

Likewise, I think "heavy armour caster" is pretty much impossible. There are some extreme cases, yes, like gargoyles or chei-characters-in-plate-casting-firestorm, but in general if you use damage spells as your main option, you wear something light. This is just common sense.

Gr/Na/HO/IE/Dr, some Ds

[radinms]

IE/Dr are not heavy armour casters.
IMO
IE:EV caster, Dr:AC caster

[Siegurt]

I had 32/21 ac/ev on my robes wearing GrSu entering the vaults, who cast a bunch of summons, then whacked things with his polearm (which was his highest trained skill as well as the most used action) -- for whatever that is worth

[Sandman25]

IE/Dr are not heavy armour casters.
IMO
IE:EV caster, Dr:AC caster

  Code:

High AC caster (AC >= EV, killing with conjurations/hexes/summoning)

[duvessa]

i mostly play melee characters, like fox, falco, marth, that sort of thing

[pickled_heretic]

i mostly play melee characters, like fox, falco, marth, that sort of thing

d3 main

[and into]

I play pretty mixed. Probably more than 50 percent of my dudes (but not a ton more than 50 percent) wear the heaviest armor they can find and are only starting to get spells online just before the Vaults (unless Trog), so I went with the first option. In large part that's just because melee is more streamlined right out of the box—don't need to alter as much with macros and whatnot. I tend to go in cycles though and sometimes will play a lot of book backgrounds in a row, including some that intentionally plan to lean on magic throughout the game (plan ahead to worship Vehumet)—of course, sometimes the game has different ideas, and gives me that gate-to-hell Lair 8 vault that always seems to spawn a branded demon weapon.

Anyway, I have no problem with classifying the game, but it is a question of what the goals of that would be. In terms of game play, a "melee" character that finds and uses rod of the swarm or rod of shadows a lot can be much closer to a dude who casts summons, when compared to the exact same character start who didn't find an early summon-stick, both in how it feels as well as in the tactics that are most relevant to you. If you mostly kill with a crossbow, your game play and a good deal of your tactics (minus MP concerns, + ammo concerns, obviously) are closer to a "blaster caster." Using god buffs before melee, or using charms, or using both, have some differences but are very close in terms of how you play. Abyssal Knight (beginning around D4/5) and enchanters (from like D2) and artificers (from start but with "ammo"-like limitation) tend to worry about, and not worry about, a similar set of monsters, despite having quite different play styles overall, because each has (or quickly gets) very strong responses to enemies with sufficiently low MR. Etc.

So it is not so much that all games are unique and can't be categorized, nor that too much stuff is being lumped in together, but that these classifications actually fail to grasp important similarities between these different "bins."

[nago]

High AC caster (AC >= EV).
High EV caster (AC < EV).
It covers everything I believe. Your HONe was the former.

No because he was also a solid tab guy! For that I said the poll miss High AC\EV tab cast guy!

Would it equip CPA if it found one? If yes, then you are right, it is a heavy armour melee guy. If no, then I am right, it is a high AC caster. In any case I don't see why I need another option.

Well actually I equip a GDA in Depths 1 or 2! . And I keep to both cast and tab with similar frequency (actually I believe I tabbed much more than cast but only because most of fights are cannon fodder, while I casted and tabbed in the few which mattered).

Another current example isthis one who got lv.5 summons and other spell castable by V:1\2 (so a little out of your poll options, ok ). Probably I could get spells earlier if I hadn't switch from polearms to lb with 11 skills point already trained - but I hadn't leech I probably wouldn't have felt my char so strong to differentiate so early and get some other kind of offensive, neglecting a bit to train defences (for my taste). But on the other hand in Vaults I easily survived at least a couple of extremely bad situation (due to fucking vault wardens) only thanks to spells, avoiding to use consumables or extreme measures like escape in the abyss.

In other words, I consider a general classification like "well-rounded" fitting for this char, while either high ac caster or melee guy are too narrowed to describe him. He was definitely a high ac melee guy before Vault though. But he could have been a high ac Evo and melee guy between D:4 and D:12 if I had bothered to use that sweet rod of destruction! So again too narrow description!

[mps]

People always talk about an amorphous, inscrutable continuum of characters, but having watched a lot of people play a lot of characters, I think there are indeed a relatively small number of narrow regions of the space of possible skill allocation, item and equipment use, spell use, and combat behavior that the vast majority fit into. I suspect partisans of the continuum hypothesis of crawl characters exaggerate the differences among characters they've played and seen others play.

I would be very interested to see some kind of clustering techniques applied to logs of online games to figure out what these regions look like and whether they correspond to categories put forth in threads like these.

[archaeo]

FWIW, I always got the sense that the "partisans of the continuum hypothesis" were coming from basically the same place that disdains over-specific wiki guides. More of an angle on giving advice rather than anti-binning for the sake of anti-binning, in other words. It's almost always better to aim at working with what the dungeon gives you rather than hewing to the expectations of a "play style," at least as far as I understand the advice of good players.

The main problem, though, is the same one that comes up whenever somebody decides it's important to have a perfectly precise definition of "roguelike," which is that getting everybody to agree on a set of classifications is difficult.

Using Sandman's classifications, I'd say that I usually turn to "heavy armour melee" if I'm just looking to blow off some steam with a crawl game, because it's relaxing. If I'm playing online with my archaeo account, I just do whatever works best for the given species, and will probably do so until I finally get greaterplayer done sometimes in the year 2020.