Angband player's age
 

I've recovered from the Void (archive.org) ancient Agnband statistics:
https://tangaria.com/statistics/

So I wanna make some polls about modern Angband.. Vingt ans après ;)

I wanna start with some demographics and then come to gameplay details.

All polls are anonymous.

Comments and discussion under this polls are very welcome :)

Needed to vote quickly ;)

Oh, Eru.

I'm so young, huh

42, even though I feel like 62, act like 12 and most of my classmates are about 22.

This is not really the age of players but the age of forum users. My son, 12, plays a fair amount but he's not here. My other son, 9, plays only when I help him.

Me too, for what I suspect is the same reason (and the same age)! :D

olde people
 

Play ascii games and have laptops

my teenagers have phones and watch videos about other people playing first person shooters

Happy birthday, Nick!

Not that quickly, I actually have some months, but it's close enough that I had to think which bracket I was in. Which probably says something itself...

hah, okay, I thought it was like tomorrow or something. :p

Oh yeah, I'll jump to the next bracket in about 6 months. I try to forget about that, stopped having birthdays, but that trick didn't seem to work.

Damm.. Just noticed I'm jumping next bracket quite soon too :eek:

I think this poll reflects well how graphics influence young people on videogame opinion. I'm on the 18-24 bracket and all my mates who i showed the game hoping to recruit more players, had the same reaction. They can't understand how a game with such crappy graphics(in my opinion they are beautiful) can have such an interesting and deep gameplay.

Sounds like this poll would have much different results in the not too distant future. I jump brackets in less than 3 months.

Just to be curious: did you show your mates the game with tiles, or with ASCII graphics? Is it just the graphics that they hate, or something else as well (for instance the complex controls or the permadeath)?

Yeah, that's weird. I jump brackets in November as well.

I switched brackets a few months ago.

It seems like most people currently playing angband and its varients are in their late 30s to early 50s. I remember there was a similar age survey a few years ago. Were the age ranges the same or is the angband population just getting overall older?

I started playing in the <12 bracket (not much less though) and this past year jumped into 35-44 bracket.
So playing for around 24 years, off and on again. Started with Moria, then some old version of Angband, then Oangband (which ran on an old secondary computer for about 11 years), then I moved on to TOME2 & Hengband. Now I mostly play poslikes.

32 here. Been playing for about 10 years or so though ever since I found Angband on a PC Gamer demo disc I swiped from one of the magazines at the store I worked nights at. I'm still playing 3.2.0 because I only just learned there were newer versions. Once I'm done my so far so good game I may go for the update.

Welcome back! I also returned after a decade-plus away in October.

It's not so much that I was away, I meant I've been playing the game for about 10 years. Mostly as an eternal boob as I didn't know there was a message board or anything to ask questions on, of which I have so so many. 10 years and have yet to even get halfway down to Morgoth.

Welcome to the 21st century, then! :)

I showed them both. Permadeath also seems to be a no go for younger people since they aren't used to hard punishing games like Angband. Games nowadays don't punish the player with exceptions such as Dark souls and others. Controls are not the problem once you figure out how to cast spells, perform basic actions etc...

Just to turn that question around. Is there a game with good graphics/video that has a similarly in-depth gameplay. IMO, anything using a controller usually has fewer options right out of the gate (and if it does, it's usually way more cumbersome to access than a keyboard)

Imho, the Heroes of Might and Magic series qualifies, as well as the King's Bounty series (naturally, because the first KB game is considered the ancestor of HoMM).
I like the chess-like quality of the battles and the tactical and strategic elements. KB is a bit more linear because of its pasted-over storylines, like the campaigns in HoMM.
Also, HoMM has lots of user generated maps and even random map generators, while in KB you have always the same maps. Still, the variety of monsters, spells, treasures, equipment, and artifacts ensures for new experiences each time you start a new game.

As a long time Angband player, I'm pretty happy with the Diablo series. But yes, there are fewer options during gameplay, you have to decide in advance what commands your character has available.

Recently discovered Grim Dawn which, while closed source, is pretty moddable, with plenty of character classes and abilities available.

I agree with HoMM. The second and third game are amazing. I tried also kings bounty but it doesn't have the charm of the first HoMM games. I haven't tried them but people genrally agree that from HoMM 6 onwards are crap games. HoMM 5 was the last decent game on the series IMO. 4 is crap too.

Well I already completed the poll for myself but finally introduced one of the little Hounds to it a few days ago an' she's hooked so we can add another < 12 :).

(I have to wonder, did I really have that kind of mortality whenI started? Probably...)

Also, +1 for Heroes of Might & Magic 3. I miss that one.

Permadeath exists in more games than just Angband, and it's not necessarily a turnoff for young players. The term Roguelike nowadays is used to mean not actually games that play like rogue, but games that are one-shot, one life, and with multiple playthroughs intended.

I've explained what in *my* view are the biggest problems that Angband has: the tiles do not work well (they do for me, but often can be a pain to set up properly and instead they stretch horribly), the UI needs a cleanup (for example, unite wands, rods and staves under the same command), the keybinding process is vastly unintuitive, a whoooole big bunch of Quality Of Life improvements need to be made. Some are small, some are big. It's definitely not the need for a new Blackguard class what's keeping the game down.

Hey, i like the blackguard. Or, i did, but haven't played since someone decided that the tiles needed to punch me in the eyes to work properly.

That .. and you need some social media exposure. Go post on some reddit forums, show it to your friends, etc ... people won't come looking for it if they don't know it exists, and won't stick around if they cannot figure out how to play (without dying from hunger, or cant figure how to recover HP, or what Free Action means, and so on ..)

Maybe we could assign "i" to this purpose...?

I fully agree with Sky's above comment.
I would go further and say "u" executes the default action on each item.
Use, zap, read, quaff, activate etc. It would also free up a lot of keys.
And without this forum I would have never found out how resists work, how speed has less and less use and many such things. Without having nice memories of playing Angband back in the 90's I probably would have stopped playing not much after I returned to the game and would not even care about looking for the info.

I'm a new player (age: 33). Personally, the key bindings don't bother me at all. But, I do agree that it would be nice if the in game descriptions were better.

For example, my first character was a fighter, they start with a Potion of Berserk Strength, which "heals 30 hitpoints, cures fear and extends berserk rage for 25+1d25 turns". What does that mean? If I don't have berserk rage, does it give it to me? What affect does berserk rage have? The same is true for other potions, like boldness. Then, I tried a Paladin and discovered that spells have much better descriptions for the same effects.

I also don't think I understand what resists are doing other than drastically reducing the damage I take. Or, what all a "brand" or a "slays" implies. Does it do something special other than modifying the damage calculation that's displayed in the item description?

That said, over the past year, I tried a wide variety of rogelikes, and Angband was the most appealing to me and the most fun as a beginner. It might just be that I haven't tried some of the classes that are harder early game, but Angband's early game feels a lot more beginner friendly than a lot of other games.

So the 'U' command ('X' in roguelike keys) does exactly what everyone is asking for here.

And it uses arrow keys to move between equip, inven, floor and quiver. You dont need much more...

Nick--
And I almost never use it because it makes miscues easier. And brings up a whole lot of irrelevant stuff on screen. I agree it is easier to learn. That said, the original different usage for priest vs. Mage books was insane.

I didn't know about shift-U. I learned all the a/u/z/r etc commands long ago, so it seems intuitive to me. I was trying to make a joke about the i command. That's why my kids use for everything, despite my constant refrains of "yuuuuuu-se a staff, aim a wand," etc. I'll see if they like U.

Whoa... you can activate a wearable item from inventory???

I noticed that, but it doesn't recharge.