Skip to content

Speculation on race and class distribution

edited December 2018 in The Commsphere
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.

Comments

  • My quick answer is that Humans are easily the most popular followed by Jin, with Nath-el, Nusriza and Krona being amidst the least.

    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.
    Vote for Starmourn! Don't hurt Poffy.
  • edited December 2018
    Race
    1. Human
    2. Jin
    3. Elgan
    4. Decheeran & Ry'nari & W'hoorn
    5. Shen
    6. Amaian & Nusriza
    7. Nath-el
    8. Krona
    9. Tukkav
    Class
    1. Scoundrel
    2. Nanoseer
    3. Fury
    4. Engineer
    5. 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.


    "They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
    — 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

  • edited December 2018
    Kestrel said:
    1. Human
    2. Jin
    3. Elgan
    4. Ry'nari
    5. W'hoorn & Decheeran
    6. Shen
    7. Amaian
    8. Nusriza
    9. Nath-el
    10. Krona & Tukkav
    Based on rank distribution on the Unofficial Starmourn Discord.
    Not very surprising, especially for the lower ranks. I'm speculating W'hoorn to be much higher though - cat people were always popular in IRE games and MMOs in general, and I don't see why this should be an exception. I fully expect them, humans and Jin to dominate the playerbase as top three picks.
    On the other hand, poor Tukkav will be very few because W'hoorn are occupying the same player niche (people who want to play a furry character), only they're cooler, prettier and have wings, and wings are awesome. Same for Ry'nari and Nusriza - both lizard people but the former are fucking awesome t-rexes while the latter have a weird language and freaky mating habits. Not exactly a fair comparison. Krona are an extremely acquired taste as a race, I'll be really surprised if I see more than half a dozen of Krona players.

    Now, on to classes - take note that this is all preemptive and will probably be evaluated hard by game mechanics (translation: whichever turns out to be strong and/or easy to play), but my educated guesses are as follows:
    1. BEAST: looks straightforward to play and probably will offer the most power for least investment. The class just exudes raw power and says "if you want to be good at killing things, play this". Also whether you want to play Samus Aran or a space marine, power armor will never not be awesome.
    2. Fury: I know it's described as hard to master, but I also know there are many players who upon reading that react with "challenge accepted" or "if it's hard to master then it means it must be really good once you mastered it". How many will actually be able to make it work is another thing altogether, but I expect many to try. Also cool flavor for all the edgelords, street samurai and Jedi wannabes out there.
    3. Scoundrel: a preferred pick for Han Solo and/or Firefly fans, as well as players who remember that rogue-type classes are always really strong in IRE games, with great utility and PvP capability. Both groups are pretty sizeable. Not much else to say.
    4. Nanoseer: sci-fi flavor of a mage, but a pretty specific one which I expect not to be to everyone's liking. Since I suspect most players in a sci-fi MUD want to play a sci-fi flavored class, I don't expect this one to be very popular. Not obscure either mind you, just not as numerous as the first three.
    5. Engineer: someone has to be last and fittingly enough it's the nerd. Simply enough, the class doesn't have the coolness factor that the others do: if you're a fan of massive firepower I suspect you'll like BEAST more, if you like plucky improvised gadget use then it's the Scoundrel instead. So, the Engineer remains a pick only for those who really love SCIENCE or minion-centric classes. Speaking of minions, the Engineer's dependency on them means the class will either be horribly underpowered or ridiculously strong. I don't foresee much middle ground.

    So, these are my picks. A probably unnecessary addendum: I do not write this with intent of dunking on a particular race or class, nor do I think that things that I like will obviously be super popular while things I hate will be rare and niche. Only trying to predict the general preference of the playerbase at large.
  • Those seem reasonable predictions; I personally love Tukkav more than W'hoorn, but Ry'nari more than Nusriza. I adore the Krona.

    I'm hoping we have a pretty even spread, to give every org enough RP.

    #SaveTheEckin
  • I'm a bit surprised that Engineer is down at the bottom. Given the setting I was expecting there to be a lot of takers for a mechanically-orientated class. Having said that, I selected engineer not so much because of the science or minions, but because thematically and historically I am expecting some kind of focus related to repairs, construction, tinkering etc.,
  • Galen said:
    I'm a bit surprised that Engineer is down at the bottom. Given the setting I was expecting there to be a lot of takers for a mechanically-orientated class. Having said that, I selected engineer not so much because of the science or minions, but because thematically and historically I am expecting some kind of focus related to repairs, construction, tinkering etc.,
    I'm personally surprised by the popularity of Fury/Nanoseer; I would've expected the three most popular classes to be B.E.A.S.T., Engineer, Scoundrel.

    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.

    "They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
    — 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

  • Kestrel said:
    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.
    This is why I expect Nanoseer not to be super popular, but Fury is a sword wielder, and sword wielding melee combatants are an established thing in science fiction. You have Jedi Knights, you have street samurai and other cyberpunks, you have basically anyone who does any kind of combat in Dune, and then there's whatever is going on in the Warhammer 40k universe:
  • Cubey said:
    and then there's whatever is going on in the Warhammer 40k universe:
    Warhammer 40k has always been hilarious to me, and I love it for how weird everything they do is.

    But yeah, guessing Human will be high. I'm actually guessing at a more even divide on classes than a lopsided one (except in Scatterhome, where I'm guessing 90% of us are scruffy-looking nerf herders).
  • edited December 2018
    A few years ago someone asked me what I thought of Starmourn, and I told them that although I'd still be willing to give it a spin, I was a little disappointed in the race selection — in that nearly all of them seemed to be furries or just too goddamn weird.

    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.

    "They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
    — 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 think you might be overestimating how high "similarity to human" ranks as a criterion for picking a race. I think a lot of people are interested in those races because of how different they are, and likely wouldn't be as much into them if it was just humans-but-scaly as opposed to OMGTREX. Besides, if somebody just wants a human with feathers for hair, they're pretty likely to just go as Nusriza and make their description extremely humanlike anyway. You see it in the other IRE games.

    Also you can add me to the Krona list. There's a quarter dozen of us! Enough for a racial leader trio :+1: China doesn't play well with Discord so I don't bother logging in anymore.
  • edited December 2018
    As I mentioned somewhere else a while back, a race's popularity (in my experience from years of playing MMOs) depends on three factors: 1. pretty, which usually means human-like; 2. cool/badass; and 3. easy to roleplay. 1 and 2 can very often be opposite of each other, for example ry'nari aren't very humanoid but they're cool enough that it makes up for it and thus there will be a sizeable space t-rex population.
    The problem with krona is that they are none of the above, at least for most people. There are always statistical outliers and people who have different taste than others, and that's perfectly fine. However the general trend says krona will be very few in number and so far everything seems to confirm that.
  • 'Pretty' isn't the concern for me. Let me show you my Imp's description on Aetolia ...

    She is a normal Idreth of Imp heritage in most respects, with a short, squat build that only exceeds three feet in height in accounting her horns. The pair follow the line of her knife-like ears, spiralling upwards and away from her skull with an S-shaped undulation. Their narrow tips point skywards, while their bulk is hefty and ribbed. Stony in hue, their shade is only slightly darker than her mottled skin, which alternates greyish-pink and turns a deeper, plum-purple shade at the extremities. The colouration of her tail is ringed along its length, darkest at the line of wicked barbs which recede from its tip. She has a voluptuous figure for her meagre size; thickly muscled thighs curve from her round, swaggering hips, and her sagging breasts are squashed into a proudly-displayed cleavage atop a gourmand, pudgy beer-gut. Her limbs are as skinny as they are flabby, notched with cellulite and poor fat distribution. Atop them hunches a squarish head too large for her body, which bears crooked, asymmetrical features. One of her eyes is notably bigger than the other, yet both are equally sanguine in hue and bearing; her irises seem to shift their exact shade depending on the lighting and her mood, transitioning from a glittering red to the almost-black of coagulated blood. A small, misshapen snub-nose sits between them, and above protrudes a dark, mischievously quirked brow that arches at the corners. A shock of sleek, obsidian-black hair sweeps from a widow's peak to down past her shoulders, with a jagged, wiry structure that lacks need for maintenance. Tufts of its growth trail down her nape to the top of her spine, from where her leathery, bat-like wings extend. Though small, they look powerful enough to carry her into the skies, and bear hook-like claws at the visible joints. Her most distinctive feature transcends the physical: it is her near ever-present, Impish grin. Vivacious and sardonic, every broadening of her wide, lopsided mouth exudes an oxymoronic synchronicity of good-humour and being up to decidedly no good at all.

    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:

    [4:55 PM] Kestrel: I can't be the only one who read the Martias and the Angel story and thought, 'OK this story is really cute but logistically speaking, and root wine aside, how did Tasa and Kimera actually make out'
    How do beaked people kiss, guys?! Inquiring minds need to know.

    "They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
    — 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

  • Similarity to human is a big reason not to pick a race for me. If I wanted a human, I'd play a human. I'm set on Decheeran for my main and struggling to choose between Krona, Elgan and Nusriza for my first alt. Wait, Ry'nari is pretty cool too...
  • Uneven race distribution isn't really a problem though. There are plenty of races, and some will be seen less often. At least there are options for everyone.
  • Indi said:
    Uneven race distribution isn't really a problem though. There are plenty of races, and some will be seen less often. At least there are options for everyone.
    Strongly disagree. 

    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.

    "They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
    — 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

  • Kestrel said:
    Indi said:
    Uneven race distribution isn't really a problem though. There are plenty of races, and some will be seen less often. At least there are options for everyone.
    Strongly disagree. 

    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.
    You make a good point there. While I don't think it will matter much in terms of RP - any inter-organizational fights may be one sided. Particularly when it comes to the Ascendancy vs Song. Scatterhoom seems like a, "meh, you kids have fun with your war" style of place to me, but that remains to be seen.
  • edited December 2018
    Any race can be present in any civ though. It's not like Lusternia where each race had a clear city/commune affinity and it was very rare to see its members outside of their designated civ, assuming they weren't banned or heavily discriminated against outright (Merian in Magnagora, Viscanti basically anywhere but Magnagora, etc).
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but all three Starmourn civs are written with assumption of being egalitarian and non-discriminatory race-wise. Ascendancy and Scatterhome are open-minded, while the Dominion doesn't care what shape you have as long as you contribute to The Cause(TM). And yes, there are individual racial tensions but each civ is not run by a single race, unlike once again Lusternia.
  • edited December 2018
    In Lusternia, race doesn't matter that much either. I'm a Tae'dae (one of the least represented races) in Gaudi and being rare doesn't mean a thing to the way I play or RP.
    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.
  • Any race can be in any civ, afaik, but each civ has it's typical races (for CA and SD it's their founding races) which can lead players of those races to gravitate towards those civs.

    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.
    Avatar by berserkerelf!
  • bairloch said:
    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.
    No, it’s not subjective at all, it’s statistical. Anecdotes are not data. I didn’t respond to you on the other thread because your mindset is one I’ve encountered before, in many contexts, and I don’t generally find it one that’s productive to debate. Most people with this mindset possess it due to very strongly innate personality traits which aren’t good or bad, just circumstantially useful, and you and I are unlikely to ever agree — by all accounts of prior experiences I’ve had with such people!

    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.

    "They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
    — 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

  • edited December 2018
    Your data is from a voluntary poll taken from a self selected list of active forum users. It does not represent all those interested in the game or even all those currently planning to play at launch. And you are assuming that people want to play these races because they are "personable" which is a completely subjective designation.
    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.
  • edited December 2018
    bairloch said:
    Your data is from a voluntary poll taken from a self selected list of active forum users. It does not represent all those interested in the game or even all those currently planning to play at launch. And you are assuming that people want to play these races because they are "personable" which is a completely subjective designation.
    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.
    It's the best data available, which is over a hundred respondents within a small community. The people who selected their race/class in the Discord can change it at any time, and some have, so this represents the most up to date preferences based on the information they have available. Are you trying to be asinine for the sake of it, or do you genuinely not understand how data works?

    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. 

    "They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
    — 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

  • The best data would be from the closed beta contest thread as its had the most responses and includes what people were wavering between.
    Vote for Starmourn! Don't hurt Poffy.
  • And it is all useless at this point being self-selected. Bad data gives bad results. Speculating on bad results is bad planning.
  • Unless there is an overwhelming mechanical advantage to a more wacky race, I can't imagine the more human-like races ever being less popular. I'm still not too worried, honestly. The pendulum will always swing one way or another in terms of org power unless there is a mechanically imposed equilibrium. That's just the way things are.

    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.


Sign In or Register to comment.