I've been outclassed

Okay you guys - you've won. Through mass voting for a poll question 'Choose a class' you've driven me to concede. I mean, it's threatening to become the most popular poll ever.

My original plan was to explain how the question 'Choose a class' at the start of the game essentially is meaningless to a player, and that by asking it, you're asking them to play a mini-game called 'look at gamefaqs.com and ask around on the forums', which takes place outside of your control as a game-designer. I mean, I've already made it clear I'm no big fan of classes.

To this end, I designed the choose a class poll game, which featured some hidden information about the poll including how to score points. I'll leave that for you to figure out for the rest of the week, if you're still interested. This would have created a set of haves, and have nots, and hopefully some gaming of the poll questions to show that the actual choices you were making were less important than the underlying game rules.

It did get some of you to pick 'tailor' though...

So why did you pick your class choice?

And will you complain if I nerf roboticist?

(A big thanks to everyone who made the effort to play)

At least two people have realised I'm not (completely) insane...

Casey has a high score of 98, having chosen paraphysicist.

I am trying to make a point or series of points with 'the choose a class poll game'. One of which is that having the high score is not necessarily how to win the game.

All will be revealed when the poll closes. In the mean time, at least make an effort and try to figure out how to play...

Press ? for help

Your class determines a number of important factors in the game.

The length of your class name determines your in-game magic factor, which can be used immediately to cast spells or retained as an accumulating psychic multiplier.

The number of letters between the first and last vowel in your class name determines your starting gold, but inversely for your personality factorisation. For the purposes of this rule and rule 7, y is counted as a vowel on odd-numbered days.

Soldiers have a special vulnerability to blue imps that can be countered by multi-classing with politicians.

Picking the other class can boost your initial score early in the game, but is not recommended as a long term strategy.

In a three or more larger player group, the scientist class can accumulate both buffs and de-buffs for a diurnal period.

Here's how help works:

Every day I'll check how many people have voted for 'Press ? for help'. If I see that it's more than 10, I'll provide a help file. But you only get a score of 0 voting for this voting option, so it's not an optimal voting choice - unless you want to help other people playing the game.

DeathClam has the current highscore

DeathClam has a high score of 68, having voted for tailor.

BTW: You can always change your vote, but I'll only accept new high scores for different voting combinations from the same person.

The Amateur: WYSIWYG Game Design

My latest column for GameSetWatch is up featuring WYSIWYG Game Design. It's not as strong as the other columns I've written for them - but still has some interesting ideas that I wanted to explore. It may have some strange relevance for other activities occurring on this site at the moment.

With 54 votes so far

The maximum possible score is 53. No one has successfully registered a score yet, except me.

It's worth pointing out that it's a very stubborn '?' button - it might need a few more people to vote for it press it before it clicks.

With 5 votes so far

With 5 votes so far, the maximum possible score is 42. Don't forget, you have to correctly register your score in order to have a chance to get the high score.

Choose a class

I'll point out now that you should seriously reflect on the choice you make for the latest poll. This will direct affect your enjoyment of the 'Choose a class' poll game that will be run all week. Once you've voted, you should check back regularly for updates and to assess your final score.

Results for 'What features must a game have to be a roguelike?'; new poll

Of all the polls I've run, this has probably been the most interesting in terms of results. 136 people voted with the following choices.

80x24 screen	6 (4%)
Ascii instead of graphics	32 (23%)
Character advancement	68 (50%)
Character generation system	40 (29%)
Classes or skills	40 (29%)
Fantasy setting	8 (5%)
Hit points	30 (22%)
Keyboard based	44 (32%)
Line of sight	37 (27%)
Lots of enemies	45 (33%)
Lots of items	47 (34%)
Overhead view	53 (38%)
Permadeath	77 (56%)
Randomly generated levels	102 (75%)
Shopping	14 (10%)
Single @ to control	41 (30%)
Single dungeon with multiple floors	5 (3%)
Single player	38 (27%)
Turn based combat	77 (56%)
Unknown items / identify system	48 (35%)
Using items in unusual ways	42 (30%)
Other	15 (11%)

Now I don't think any of the above 'must' exist in a game for it to be a roguelike - I'm a big believer in prototype theory. But there's definitive clusters of essential (randomly generated levels), nearly essential (turn based combat, permadeath), and relatively important features that make interesting reading.

Let's focus on the 'character generation system' for the next two polls. Surprisingly, this is not a critical feature for roguelikes.

First the fun question: 'Choose a class'