Speculation on race and class distribution
The open beta launches in less than a week - what do y'all think, which of the five classes and twelve playable races will be popular, and which ones will be underrepresented? Curious to hear your reasoning as well.
My own guesswork comes later, I don't want to start the thread with too much of a tl;dr if I can help it.
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Comments
Class wise, I'd expect a more even distribution given that there's only five. Fury probably the least popular, game mechanics making the most popular anyone's guess.
- Human
- Jin
- Elgan
- Decheeran & Ry'nari & W'hoorn
- Shen
- Amaian & Nusriza
- Nath-el
- Krona
- Tukkav
Class- Scoundrel
- Nanoseer
- Fury
- Engineer
- B.E.A.S.T.
Based on current rank distribution in the Unofficial Starmourn Discord.EDIT: There have been new additions to the Discord ranks. I'm going to continue editing and updating this post until launch to reflect any changes to the current rank distribution.
EDIT #2: 14 hours after launch, this is where the ranks are at. I won't be editing this post further.
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
I'm hoping we have a pretty even spread, to give every org enough RP.
#SaveTheEckin
Nanoseer and Fury both seem kind of fantastical and wishy-washy to me. If I wanted fantasy, I'd play a fantasy MUD. I'm here for the Sci-fi! So I want a class that's a bit more down-to-earth, so to speak, in which I can spew some faux-scientific jargon.
Also Kaylee is awesome. Who wouldn't want to be Kaylee?
I intend to play both a Scoundrel and an Engineer to begin with (alts) because both are of equal appeal to me. I see the draw in B.E.A.S.T. for others, but I've never been one for the brute-force classes — my characters are usually the ones standing at the back with their arms folded across their chest, smirking at the bumbling old fool who's trying to punch his* way through every problem. (*I'm sorry but it is usually a he.) And then either calls in a favour or circles around the back to pull on some lever and prove there was a much easier approach all along.
The second multiclassing is released, I know that no matter what's released, my Scoundrel is going to become a Scoundrel/Engineer. Give me all the tinkering, jimmying, wiley and crafty skillsets.
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
I have warmed up to some of them since but I still can't help but wonder if race distribution would've been a little more even if the racial art/appearance had been well, a little less creative.
If for example Amaians had been a bit more like Aetolia's Kelki, and a little less like people with shark heads. If the Ry'nari had been a little more like Lusternia's Trill with feathers for hair, rather than having a literal beak. I remember reading a blog post where Matt describes the thought process that went into designing the Krona, by far the weirdest-looking chaps, and how he specifically wanted to create something 'different' because the other races were all too human-like. For my part, I was thinking that I actually would've preferred an option that was more human-like and a little less 'out there'. I have a very strong aversion to anthropomorphic characters and the races I tend towards on IRE games and elsewhere have been imps, atavian, elves, half-elves, halflings, gnomes, kender, tiefling etc. — basically, 'mostly human + some horns/wings/claws / maybe a bit shorter/taller than average'. I know I'm not the only one on either front.
Only 2 out of 106 people who've marked down the race they intend to play on the Unofficial Starmourn Discord have expressed an interest in playing Krona. For being 1 of 12 races, their popularity is less than 1 in 50.
The overwhelming majority of players in Starmourn are going to play Humans, which I think is a shame. But I wonder how many of them might have been willing to branch out a bit if they had other human-like options, similar to elves/dwarves/imps/atavian etc., which are at least visually more relatable.
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
Also you can add me to the Krona list. There's a quarter dozen of us! Enough for a racial leader trio
But relatable, or I suppose 'easy to roleplay', is. They do need to be human-like for that. They need to be able to smile, to raise an eyebrow, to smirk, to grin, to sneer, to flare their nostrils. How does a Nusriza smile? How does a Ry'nari scowl?
These limiting factors are why I would be happier playing a Trill/Atavian than a Nusriza. To be able to express or understand the palette of humanity is a primary draw for me when consuming or creating any form of media. To reflect on depictions of pain, joy, love, betrayal. When writing a human character, without outright saying 'X is sad', I can draw from my own understanding of human body language to show that the human in question is sad. But take away the features needed to express such things and well, it becomes a challenge, to say the least.
I said this as a joke in the Unofficial Starmourn Discord, but honestly it's true:
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
With humans accounting for 25% of the IG population and Scatterhome accounting for 50%, it’s going to be a major problem.
The three most popular/personable races (Humans, Jin, Elgan) are all Scatterhome based. I personally don’t care too much about PvP, but I predict a very clear winning side and a losing side as a result of the problems I outlined above.
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
In here, I think civilization representation is going to be much more of a concern than racial. Other than RP, race is just a description, there's nothing mechanical to it.
But with cosmpiercers and the like, civ is much more important, mechanically.
Oh, and Kestrel, you're doing it again. "The three most popular/personable races (Humans, Jin, Elgan)". That's completely subjective. To me, Jin are creepy and cold. The opposite of "personable". And humans are vanilla. They are absolute bottom of the list for me. So I really don't think what one person finds more attractive in a racial description is going to amount to a hill of beans. Everyone has their own tastes. And those tastes will keep a fairly comfortable racial balance.
Again, though, race doesn't really matter. Civ, that's gonna have consequences. Especially when, and I agree on this one, the majority of people are all in Scatterhome.
Hey, that just means easier newbie bashing for me. Less crowded zones and easier leveling. Why don't you all go Scatterhome for the first couple of weeks? I'm cool with that.
Like... want to play a Decheeran and have a grove? You're more likely to find that on Song.
But further than that, you're also likely to have Decheeran npcs around to interact with for racial rp stuff and so on. Historic stuff seems easier as well.
Similarly, people that might be less interested in their race and more interested in their org may choose a race to fit in to their org, giving the people more interested in race story lines more members of their chosen race to work with.
It's not to say you couldn't have an Elgan group on Song, but if you want to explore rp on that line it seems likely that it'll be harder.
People who universally dislike generalisations, frankly, don’t understand what a generalisation is or the purpose it’s meant to serve.
Most people are going to play humans. Most people, if they don’t strictly play humans, have a strong preference for personable, human-like characters which they can more easily relate to, in the same way that most female players play female characters, and that most male players play male characters. There are outliers — I myself play both, you play bear-people and tree-people, but we’re exceptions, not the rule. (And even though I can play both genders, I still have a preference for one over the other most of the time.)
These observations are useful to make. They help us understand overall trends and the reasons behind them. ‘But not all x’ is not a useful rebuttal. It’s a red herring.
It’s like responding to ‘smoking kills’ / ‘smoking causes cancer’ (an objective, irrefutable, factual, statistical truth) by saying, ‘Yes, but not all smokers die of cancer! My aunt was a chain smoker who lived to be 90 years old until she got hit by a car!’
Humans are statistically the most popular race by a large, large margin. Jin come in second, also by a large margin. Elgan aren’t far behind. Scatterhome is overwhelmingly the most popular faction, yes, for most people, that’s what ‘popular’ means, no one said ‘everyone will only play a Scatterhome human’ so why point it out? These aren’t subjective opinions, they’re facts. There are probably reasons worth acknowledging behind these facts. Reasons drive trends. Trends drive consequences. The fact that you have different reasons and different trends is actually totally irrelevant to the topic at hand.
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
This data is far from reliable, highly susceptible to interpretation based on personal influences, and entirely un-representative. We won't have any actual data until the game launches, and probably no reliable data until a few months in.
24/108 (22% currently) is not statistically insignificant for a race that constitutes a total of 1/12 races, meaning they would be 8% if there was an even distribution. Nor is it statistically insignificant that only 2 of those same 108 (1.8%) chose Krona or Tukkav. Combine those marked as Human, Jin, Elgan and Krona together and you have 52/108. These four include the three most popular races in the game and represent, based on current data, 48% of the game's population. This is consistent with the poll for the lead civilisation. Certainly people can play different races in different civilisations, but that's as true for Decheeran being able to play in Scatterhome as it is for Jin being able to play in Song.
The fact you do not have a 1000 randomly selected respondents, which certainly would be ideal, does not render the responses of 108 players engaged on Discord useless.
Not having absolute perfect data does not detract from the importance of the limited data that's actually available. General trends are not rendered meaningless by the presence of outliers (or in this case even the majority) who buck the trend. That is why they are called 'general' trends.
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."
The game isn't open. Maybe instead of casting doubts without any actual In-Game information, we should just enjoy things as they come. I've seen a fair amount of fear-mongering and worry when we really just don't know until it opens and the general populace begins to play. I don't think we can honestly start fixing bigger systems (like races, crafting, dynasties) until things calm down in 6 to 9 months and the shiny things start to tarnish from wear and tear. Right now, a few days before release is when the devs need to focus on hunting down last minute bugs and getting ready for release day.