Oh, I've played the gnome a lot - there was a time when Darvin was going around doing crazy things with JJ and this kinda led me to go around gnoming things. Reason I'm not much into them anymore is that for a long time the trisword had a stacking +2 dmg bonus whenever you drank a potion which, as can imagine, made both the potion races into dmg powerhouses with very little effort. So playing the gnome basically ment that you had both the crazy damage and the refill power, and was well and thorughly explored (by Darvin if by noone else). The general consensus on halflings was that they only had the trisword and compared badly to the gnomes (there seems to be fewer things you can do with health potions, you know that, except that's not exactly true).
But the trisword was so overused and omnipresent that I actually started avoiding both the "the triling", as it was called, and the gnome, just to see what else is there and what else have we not been playtesting (this actually turned up a LOT of stuff, you wouldn't believe). But then when the trisword finally got what's coming (very late in the beta), people were really concerned that this would take away any reason to play the halfling at all! It was a legit concern. People (me included, ofc) get drawn to the obvious stuff and this shapes their outlook and it takes actual willpower to go try crack something that seems sub-optimal at first glance.
Now, I've had plenty of experience with non-obvious stuff turning out to in fact be more broken than the obvious stuff once you dig into it - the first vicious Gaan'Telet wins did not come from a default popular meta (which was always rogues; warlords and gnomes pretty much); lvl 1 bosskils came from TT and Taurog (most complained about god ever, for being underpowered); then at one point the devs have been progressively buffing CP values on junk items to see what happens and it took a while for anyone to notice at all; basically stuff you couldn't break with gnomes (and it's a whole load of stuff) was sitting around being all ludicrous and broken and... people didn't notice. (all right, people played other things, and the devs could whip out a most-played list but I'd bet you the potion races are the way most heavily played and most of the halfling play is from trisword times).
I also remember that asking for buffs rather than nerfs usually always turned out to be the wrong thing - just about always it turned out that the thing which looked underpowered hadn't been underpowered at all, we just haven't cracked or approached it properly. People thought Monks were in need of buffs when they had 50% resists both and a lower dmg penalty.
I kinda went around looking at things which haven't been looked at, stuff which was being complained about as underpowered and in need of buffs, and more often than not it just turned out that it was pretty legit. Or even more than pretty legit - sometimes even broken on purpose to see if anyone even tries it. The devs approach of quietly buffing stuff and not telling anyone to see if it entices people was great and smart in theory but in practice anything more complicated than trisword or gnomes, or other simple and obvious stuff like that which attracted people strongly. meant that stuff you can't even bombastically overexagerate, and which was on a whole different power curve - had a hard time getting noticed.
So it's not that I haven't played gnomes, I've played them quite a bit. What I've underplayed severely is Dwarves and Elves because spending locker slots on kegs, or anything other than the vicious rewards, was out of the question most of the time (and I don't really pay much attention to Elite items most of the time). The thing is that managing something with a gnome, especially a gnome with a trisword, had never been a matter of using my head, just efficiency, efficiency, efficiency and it was done to death by other people already. It also lead to Triswords and Warlords and generally stuff which had already given all the answers to questions it could've - and it didn't beat stuff which had yet been unbeaten and it didn't shed light on stuff which was still unclear.
I still used the gnome as my default no-brainer spellcaster race (instead of elves which I generally used only for fighters when not goblin), but I did take every opportunity to go Orc Pissorff, Goblin Sorcerer and late in the beta Halfling monk/priest/bloodmage. I've gone through the PQI a few times. All of it. For Science! And I can rather safely say that the advantages of Goblins, especially on vicious token runs for Mystera Sorcerers, are quite tangible. (Not that I'd be the only one saying it, ofc XD I'm just the guy who stopped playing those because he got bored with them
)See, when I try to not be bombastic and I try to explain stuff in depth - textwalls.
And I still mean no harm, and I'm actually writing this because I find the whole process of how discoveries about game features were made from the player perspective kinda fascinating. I guess when you spend so much time pondering the DD learning curve you sometimes can't help yourself but write an essay/testimonial on it (or at least I can't). Even if another person only took a lovely joke-poke at you However, once I get back to the game (things still a bit hectic but getting better), I'll probably give the gnome more playtime - I've done goblins to death on two playthroughs (I discovered the old martyr wraps gnome bloodmage on the first one, and the mystera gobbo sorcerer on the second one so I've overdone them quite a bit). Trisword's gone, halflings turned out to be hella legit even without it, I still don't feel like lockering and prepping kegs and yendor, so I guess I I'll be playing me some gnomes ^^ And crystal ball elves!
