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[bhaak]

Hi there!

After the big success of the Crawl poll in August (the results can be downloaded from http://crawl.akrasiac.org/poll_results.txt) and in loose cooperation with the Crawl developers responsible for that poll, we present you the "NetHack Poll 2009".

The intention of this poll is to gather some information about NetHack players, both currently active and past players for helping us variants developers for design decisions and to get a small insight into the NetHack community as a whole.

Even if you no longer play NetHack regularly, please take part in this poll. Most questions make sense also for former players and one question asks explicitly why you no longer play NetHack.

This poll will run through the month of November. Afterwards the results will be released to the public and a pointer will be posted here.

Please spread the word about this poll to other NetHack playing people you know.

You can either directly reply to this as mail and send it to
nethackpoll@gmail.com

Or post it in here.

Or fill out the online form on
http://nethack-de.sf.net/poll.html

Many thanks,
Patric Mueller (lead developer of NetHack-De and UnNetHack)

Note: Your e-mail address will not be shared with any third parties.
After the poll is closed and the final results have been published all replies will be deleted.

• What is your age and gender?
• Which country do you live in?
• Do you play locally, on a server or both?
• Do you play Tiles or ASCII or both?
• On which Operating Systems or Devices do you play NetHack?
• Where did you get your copy of NetHack from?
• Do you play a patched NetHack or variants of NetHack?
• Which other Roguelikes have you ever played? (Crawl, ADOM, Angband, etc.)
• Where did you learn about NetHack?
• And when?
• How often did you win NetHack? (If never, you may specify your best game.)
• To what extent do you use spoiler for playing NetHack?
• If you no longer play NetHack regularly, why and when did you quit?
• If you take part in the NetHack DevNull tournament: where did you hear about it?
• Did you ever recommend NetHack to someone?
• Which computer game other than NetHack did you play most in the last three months (August, September, October)?
• Please specify a valid e-mail address if you would like to receive the results of this poll directly.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Hmm...
This intrigues me.

[Cheeetar]

Forgive me if I am wrong, but this looks suspicious.

[bhaak]

Forgive me if I am wrong, but this looks suspicious.

In what way suspicious?

[Sowelu]

I don't see how this doesn't look legit.  I'm going to send out a response when I have the time to write one up!

[Sowelu]

Who are you, now?

Download links, E-mail requests, and personal questions, oh my.

Are you kidding me?  The download was a text file with pretty neat information.  We have multiple Nethack topics on this board, we clearly have a community of players in the tournament.  Did you start complaining when we had AI War topics, and the actual creator of AI War himself popped in and started being helpful?

[BloodBeard]

There's nothing shifty about it, he's got this posted on r.g.r.n and there's a link to it on Nao. I send in my answers a few days ago.

[ductape]

Who are you, now?

Download links, E-mail requests, and personal questions, oh my.

Are you kidding me?  The download was a text file with pretty neat information.  We have multiple Nethack topics on this board, we clearly have a community of players in the tournament.  Did you start complaining when we had AI War topics, and the actual creator of AI War himself popped in and started being helpful?

Yeah AI War is awesome...what are we talking about?

[bhaak]

Who are you, now?

Download links, E-mail requests, and personal questions, oh my.

As stated in the first post, I'm Patric Mueller. You can google me or my nick bhaak without a problem.

My profile has a link to my homepage and two links in the post go to the two NetHack-related projects of mine on SourceForge. I'm not a member of the original DevTeam of NetHack, in case that's what got you puzzled.

I think all of that would be a little bit much work for a scam just to get gender, age and country of NetHack players. 

The other information isn't really that personal and you don't need to enter a e-mail addresse. The pointer to the results will be posted everywhere where I also posted the poll itself.

[eerr]

Interesting.

But I must know.
What is _your_ motivation?
None of this wishy-washy "we" or "I feel"

[bhaak]

Interesting.

But I must know.
What is _your_ motivation?
None of this wishy-washy "we" or "I feel"

Okay, no wishy-washy then.

I want to know who plays NetHack, who played NetHack and why they left. Are there only old people playing NetHack because it was fun when they were hip? Want people something new or consider they vanilla NetHack sacrosanct and anybody who's doing patches or a variant is just wasting their time? Are the players spoiler-ridden because they feel they wouldn't win otherwise and do they like it?

I know we won't get definitive answers on those questions, but even a small sample helps.

[bhaak]

Just a small ping.

6 days left before the poll closes.

[JoshuaFH]

So Patric Mueller, if you're in any way related to the making of Nethack, I'd personally like to shake your internet-hand. I had no idea there were still people developing and modifying it, and while I haven't tried any non-vanilla version, I have played the hell out of vanilla. Ascended 3 times you know, and died with a samurai on the astral plane when I choked to death on a Titan. Fun times.

Allow me to fill out this little survey you have here:

Spoiler: Survey (click to show/hide)

What is your age and gender? I am Twenty years old and am Male

Which country do you live in? Michigan of the United States of America

Do you play locally, on a server or both? Whenever I played, I played locally. I've attempted to play on NAO, but I'm much too turned off by it's different ASCII format which requires me to re-memorize what certain objects look like, it's different controls which are different enough from the local's version to be make it difficult for a local-grown fan to jump into the NAO, and several other things (like the incredibly unusual customizable palettes and such) which make getting into it an obtuse and nonintuitive experience.

Do you play Tiles or ASCII or both? ASCII all the way. I could never get into the tileset for whatever reason, but I can understand why some would prefer it over ASCII

On which Operating Systems or Devices do you play NetHack? Windows XP

Where did you get your copy of NetHack from? From the official website

Do you play a patched NetHack or variants of NetHack? No, I have always played vanilla. Although this could be attributed more to my procrastination of downloading any different mods than any bias I have towards the original.

Which other Roguelikes have you ever played? (Crawl, ADOM, Angband, etc.) Spelunky, Liberal Crime Squad, and, of course, Dwarf Fortress

Where did you learn about NetHack? TvTropes Wiki
And when? A long time ago

How often did you win NetHack? (If never, you may specify your best game.) Not much anymore, due to a rapidly shrinking free time, so I guess that would fall under never. My best game however, would have to by my very first ascension, which was a Neutral Human Tourist with something like 4 different artifacts. I took screenshots if you want to see them.

To what extent do you use spoiler for playing NetHack? At first, I attempted without them, but when I started playing serious I ALWAYS had the Nethack Wiki open in a browser while I played the game. I personally don't consider them spoilers, it's more like the instruction manual.

If you no longer play NetHack regularly, why and when did you quit? I can't remember when I quit, but I remember it was because I eventually got absorbed by other games that were capturing my interest, and then from changes in my life that forced me to put down computer games altogether.

If you take part in the NetHack DevNull tournament: where did you hear about it? N/A, I've never taken part in it.

Did you ever recommend NetHack to someone? Only to my cousin, who was into more fastpaced games to enjoy it, but I've also told some other people of the game online.

Which computer game other than NetHack did you play most in the last three months (August, September, October)? None, I haven't played any computer games in a long time.

Please specify a valid e-mail address if you would like to receive the results of this poll directly. Yunderbeast@hotmail.com

[bhaak]

So Patric Mueller, if you're in any way related to the making of Nethack, I'd personally like to shake your internet-hand. I had no idea there were still people developing and modifying it, and while I haven't tried any non-vanilla version, I have played the hell out of vanilla.

I of course didn't have anything to do with the development of the original version but I've been trying for almost a year now to do a decent variant. 

Ascended 3 times you know, and died with a samurai on the astral plane when I choked to death on a Titan. Fun times.

Yeah, you need to get NetHack's humor to find that funny.   

[bhaak]

The results of the NetHack Poll 2009 are online.

They are downloadable in text form from here:
http://nethack-de.sourceforge.net/nethack_poll_results.txt

There's also a thread on rec.game.roguelike.nethack where I
commented on some parts of the results:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/browse_frm/thread/5d5fdb7d6976fb44

Thank you for participating in the poll!