Personally I find it shows clearly even with N_CHOICES=2

even? you think 1/1 to 1/2 is less of a change than 1/26 to 1/27, so that the former's significance proves the latter's? Have you been drinking? Or perhaps aspiring to bureaucracy in order to make such an argument with a straight face?

Seperately, I gather you are interpreting by 'real cost' I meant any cost at all greater than 0.00, but I wasn't speaking that precisely. I mean that when x is large, if x choices don't cause choice paralysis, x+1 would clearly never be a justification remotely close to proportional to cutting a player favorite character. Tearing out a favorite species (one justification given was that it was played too much) is a big move, while paring down N_choices, in only one very particular spot, and when N is large, by 1, is a very small justification.

If instead the justification is 'draw a hard line that we will cut things and that's too bad but it's not going to change', and also 'better to cut too hard than cut too little', 'don't cave to pressure', etc, it's not so obviously out of proportion, and things start to make a bit more sense.

If you want to deny this for some reason, the second most plausible explanation is that it was done out of sheer assertiveness, not that MDs were removed because the design considerations weighed clearly and utterly that way, with not a single 'substantial' reason to recommend other options. (even one massively outweighed by opposing considerations.) "only disagreement with the devs on the design direction of the game"

To be fair to the devs it's also important to consider that there is still plenty of badly designed legacy stuff in the game, so for example the critique "we still have other species with no-brainer weapon choices" should indicate that those species may have a problem, not that ogres didn't have a problem.

just so long as you presume that weapon choice, a brief decision with usually a clear right answer or no tie breakers, which occurs once per potentially 4+ hour game, is a significant decision that not only matters at all, but matters so much that every species needs to have it, -that casual one off weapon choice commitment is the very essence of what makes DCSS DCSS.